Johanna - Victoria

, originally uploaded by m_hagen.

I've been getting hammered down here. Nearly all my sessions I've surfed alone. I guess I should learn something from that. Follow the locals... The thing is, offshore, onshore, high tide, low tide, tiny or fricking huge, if that's what it looks like when we happen to be passing through that's what I'm going to end up surfing. Traveling up and down the coast is a crap shoot where you hope you end up at the right place at the right time. Without any kind of local knowledge you wake up, assess the conditions and try to make the right call on where to search for the day.
On this day at Johanna I got absolutely slaughtered. I'd started the morning looking at some of the reefs in the area, but the swell wasn't really clean enough for any of them to be working. The offshores were cleaning it up though, so in the afternoon I thought I'd have a chance at Johanna. It looked absolutely perfect from the lookout. Offshore, empty, clean and green back lit barrels. I grabbed one of my bigger boards and headed out. After 30 minutes of non-stop paddling and catching only one wave on the inside I pulled out. I'd been wondering where all the other surfers were. I guess they knew better and were up at Bells actually riding waves rather than getting drilled into the sand like me....