Flatter to Deceive

Judging by the storm - a 948 mb very tight low pressure system that peaked on Sunday morning 2,350 miles SW of Cape Town at 40 deg S and 30 deg W (230 degrees direction to Cape Town) - the peak of the swell arrived in the dark between 12 and 5am this morning. Looked like there could have been some very spaced out 25 ft sets.

Big swell can be funny like that.

The surf then began to back away. It was already off its peak. I was originally excited by this swell, though like many long period forerunners the beginning was not the fun part, but the peak. Arriving as a six foot x 22 seconds open ocean swell, you were never going to get excited. I was expecting virtually no movement for most of Wednesday, barring a very gradual, almost imperceptible long-lulled three foot pulse start to tickle the reefs at half an hour intervals from late morning.

You don't often see wave periods like this. It was close to the longest period I have seen. But Mark Sponsler from Stormsurf.com told me a 22 second swell was nothing!

He said that in the early 2000s, a 33 second forerunner swell pulsed at Mavericks. He said it was the leading edge of a 25+ sec period swell. How big was this 33 second swell? It was 1-2 ft, he said.

Go figure.

However, the expected main armada was late, as it usually is, and packed a lot less punch, as it often does. At last, by nightfall, a few bigger sets were indeed starting to arrive. At 8pm in Camps Bay, I saw a 10ft set break at Glen Beach, comprising three waves. I counted a 20 second period. The brunt of the swell was beginning to make landfall. Judging by how fast the storm formed, the swell was due to pick up rapidly within hours. Midnight was four hours later.

The surf appears to have peaked after midnight at 20 feet, maybe with a few rare rogue 25 footers. The central burst of fetch within the storm had been shortlived though, which meant the main pulse did not last. By 5am, the main part of the swell was done and dusted. After that, it was a waning 15ft swell, with extremely long gaps, that flattered to deceive.

Still, the boys got their whistles wet. And if that was getting whistles wet, a few hours before, there was pandemonium at Jaws, which photographer Jimmie Hepp said was worse than Honolua Bay. See our gallery of enema-inducing horrors.