Another late vicco forecast?

Guys, sorry for the updated forecast - we've had some tech difficulties in our database for some unknown reason, that we're having difficulty sourcing a fix for over the Easter break. The detailed notes have been updated but the short forecast is as per Wednesday's notes (which, hasn't actually be changed much anyway).

which report are you referring to?

jonno, vicco's referring to last Friday's Victorian notes, which unfortunately couldn't be updated due to massive logistical dramas. I'm sure no-one wants to hear the full story, but I'm gonna tell it anyway :D

Having worked very long days for almost two weeks on site at the Rip Curl Pro (with only one surf to my credit for the entire time), we were down to the wire to finish the comp before the Saturday. I worked all through the night on Thursday - including a 3am weather/buoy report for the contest directors at Johanna, and a 4am weather report/wakeup call for the event staff at Colac - of which we then headed down to Johanna for the finals of the Rip Curl Pro on the Friday.

I had five Swellnet staff with me, all of whom required internet access and needed power to charge their laptops. I thought I had everything covered.. but the portable 12V inverter I brought along to power everything blew up around lunchtime. This left us with just an hour or so (at best) of laptop battery until we had nothing whatsoever (unfortunately there was no "media room" at Johanna for us to utilise). I managed to squeeze out the Victorian "short forecasts" as a precaution in case I ran out of laptop juice... which I did shortly thereafter.

So, after finishing the event at 5:30pm - without a single free surf - we drove home in the rain, arriving thoroughly exhausted in Torquay around 9pm. I was too tired to finish off the notes I'd half written earlier in the day (around 500 words), hoping to get them done on the way home the next day. But it was not to be.. we ended up leaving for Sydney at 8am, and for reasons unknown to me, I decided to drive the entire way home - I can't imagine my typing would have been that good in the car anyway.. and we hadn't got around the replacing the inverter either so there wouldn't have been any power.

Anyway, we're back on track now.. apologies for the intermittent downtime in recent weeks. I've got a long list of tech and power requirements for the next staff outing.

Ah fair enough mate, i'd hate to see the pressure on you guys to find quality waves from that waiting period, looked dismal. I was surprised that there was that much size in the few Johanna waves from the highlights.

Good to see that vicco lives and breathes on the back of when your forecast comes out.

Hey Superadmin dude, all good and reasonable excuses but you failed to mention the wasted time spent at the endless corporate parties spent drinking endless amounts of grog while boasting about the pits you got in Indo last year. A Bells event wouldn't be the same if that didn't go down.

Actually vinny, aside from the Rip Curl party (which was quite entertaining - see The Outsider Day Three), and ten minutes at the Tracks party, we didn't go out at all this year in Torquay. Truth be told, I felt inadequate without any 2009 Indo war stories to rabbit on about ;)

vicco, Phillip Island was very high on the agenda throughout the entire waiting period - we nearly pressed 'go' a number of times, but it's a logistical nightmare that needs to be prepared for well in advance. The Island is quite different to Johanna, in which you can feasibly do a number of road trips from Bells over successive days - a move to Phillip Island is permanent for the remainder of the event - there's no ferrying back to Bells at the end of the day. Tie this in with the need to find at least 200 beds on the island, plus all of event infrastructure (including a satellite broadcast capabilities, which require many hours to set up), and it's a really hard decision to come to.

Also, a large number of WCT surfers and RC event staff had been surfing 13th before and during the Easter period, and were very familiar with the banks. This weighted in favour of the decision to move there on the Tuesday instead of PI. We'd also had conflicting reports from PI over the previous few days too - we knew that the banks were good, but the best waves were apparently quite some distance from the carpark, and we'd also heard that it wasn't holding through the tide very well.

But truth be told, it was a knife-edge decision.. we almost went to PI (the decision would have had to be made the previous morning, to get everything there in time). A lot of people don't know, but the surfers also have a say in where and when the competition is held... and the general consensus was that 13th offered the best return per road time.

Anyway, it was certainly a very testing event but I'm really happy with what we came up given such a limited forecasting scenario. In particular, the plug was almost pulled to go down to Johanna on the last Friday morning, as the surf was barely 1ft and completely unrideable - however we pushed ahead and scored some of the best waves of the competition throughout the day.

Hey Ben, was there any thought/discussion put into extending the waiting period a few days?

Yes.. it was considered at length. But in general the ASP won't grant a time extension unless there's a complete lack of swell, which rarely happens in Victoria (Tahiti's extension was due to the fact that there's no back up location.. it's Teahupoo or nothin'). As a minimum, we knew that there'd be clean waves at Johanna on the Friday, and onshore waves on the Saturday, the mid-week debate revolved around the banks at Johanna (or lack thereof).

It's also a logistical nightmare to organise an extension of the event window. A couple of hundred people (at least) are bedded down in rental properties in Jan Juc, which are basically local houses rented out while the owners go away for the Easter period. As such, if the comp extends for another two days, how do we know which houses can extend their rental bookings? What if half of the property owners are coming home from holidays on the Saturday, expecting to move back in.. where do those surfers/event staff live for the next few days? How about the on-site security/caterers/scaffold hire/telecommunications (etc) - are they all able to hang around for a few more days, or do they have work commitments elsewhere? Even the ASP judges had to fly off the Taranki for the Womens event straight after Bells, so this would have presented another problem to solve at short notice.

As such it's easy to see how a simple request to extend the competition window by one day can create a major headache for the organisers. But, I can assure you that it was definitely a consideration by the core event staff.

With reference to discussion here about the Bells event & problems caused by lack of swell including thoughts of relocating to Phillip Island .....

All praise to mother nature for not playing ball for this now highly commercial circus.

As for thoughts of moving it to Phillip Island I wonder on what basis the event managers would think they would be welcomed at another location. Apart from Philip Island businesses who else over there would care to have their relative peace broken?

The Bells event is not a cultural or social celebration nor is it something the general community would hold dear or special about being Australian so I say keep it at Bells where it rightly belongs regardless of conditions and let everyone else get on with the daily lives. Just like those connected with Formula 1 the poor sods in the professional surfing circus will be somewhere else in the world next week and Melbourne will be remembered only as just another spot to promote a product or career.

All praise to mother nature.

Go choke on a mung bean, hippy.

Beach2Bush,

Given this event doesn't appear to occcur in your area, how the hell would you know whether the "general community would hold [it] dear" or not? You've actually got no idea whatsoever, as you don't live at Torquay.

I'd put money on it that quite a few people in Torquay and surrounding areas would, in fact, view the Bells contests (and others) in a positive light: the shop owners who profit from increased takings, the owners of housing / rental / beach accomodation, etc., hell, even Ben at the gang at Swellnet, given I assume they are paid (in some form) for their dedicated work at these events.

It's fairly obvious that you'd prefer to live in total isolation with no 'outsiders' to 'harm' your little corner of the world; too bad, then, that PI will probably be like Torquay is now, in about 10-15 years.

should have moved to johanna earlier, it is bells!