Easterly Endurance

Like ants that foretell a rain storm, the surfers knew what was coming and began acting differently.

Monday morning dawned with 6-8 foot lines out of the east-northeast and almost no wind at my local break. The surf wasn’t great, yet on any other day the takeoff spot would've been jammed by 7am. Instead, I surfed with a mere handful of people.

The same surfers who would otherwise be in the water stood up on the headland, watching, showing little interest in what appeared before them. They were assembled in groups planning tactical raids for later in the day, tomorrow, the day after, and even the day after that.

Rather than rushing out for a shred they acted like project managers calming planning the week ahead.

This was the story of the swell.

Water temperature aside, the conditions on the Gold Coast were more reminiscent of late summer.

Monday afternoon at Kirra. (Photo above by Andrew Shield, below by Josh Bystrom)

As a long time East Coast surfer the instinct to gorge on whatever swell you see becomes native. A south-west swell glancing the coast, a rapid southerly blast, an ECL tracking towards New Zealand, all that weather moving west to east across the continent, occasionally throwing something back as it speeds away from the coast. Jump now ‘cos it won’t be there tomorrow.

The exceptions of course, are South-East QLD and Northern NSW. Those regions are far enough north to escape the interminable west to east flow, so the weather patterns are more stable, longer lasting.

Yet over the past few years - it's hard to say exactly how long, but possibly since the La Nina three-peat - the characteristics of East Coast swells has changed. This was never more obvious than the past autumn when, at the end of the three-month swell bender, it emerged that not a single pure south swell struck the coast. 

Instead they were all easterly quadrant swells, and the other thing they had in common was endurance - they weren't one-day wonders. The latest swell was a continuation of the same pattern.

Two days at a blue water tidal delta. The wave is not only exposed to swell but it's also exposed to wind. Light offshore necessary, slack winds preferred, a rare swell/wind combination in this part of the world, yet it happened on consecutive days this week.

This afternoon was as good as it gets," said photographer Josh Bystrom. "The swell pulsed while the wind dropped right out till it was plate glass."

Ben Williams arcing off the bottom of a wave that looks characteristically like a South Pacific reef pass instead of a sand bottom on mainland Australia (Josh Bystrom)

Billy Watson stretching out (Josh Bystrom)

Bede Durbidge wrapped up in blue (Andrew Shield)

So much of surfing is pattern recognition: making sense of a seemingly chaotic lineup, making sense of seemingly random weather.

Ian Goodwin is a surfer from Sydney's Avalon Beach and an Associate Professor in Climate and Coastal Risk. After fifty years spent studying East Coast weather he believes the tropics are expanding and, among other things, that means prevailing East Coast swells will shift counter-clockwise. They're now predominantly south but will shift more towards the east.

It's only a theory, a postulation, but it also matches a pattern that's slowly being recognised.

South swells may light up many East Coast ledges but there's also no shortage of east swell spots. Pedestrian beachbreaks that elevate themselves when the swell shifts counter-clockwise, towards the east, even further towards the north-east.

Wollongong's Dane Nelson harnessing serious beachbreak power on Tuesday morning.

And for those wondering, this is a paddle wave. (Steen Barnes)

"Low pressure development and east quadrant swells are not completely uncommon in winter," says Swellnet forecaster Steve Shearer.

"However, it's more common for these low pressure systems to form further south, off the NSW coast, with swells tending more south-east," adds Steve, echoing Ian Goodwin's big picture analysis.

Instead this system formed off the Queensland border and drove easterly swells onto the coast. By Tuesday the fruits of the slow-moving low pressure system were beginning to be felt from South-East Queensland to the Victorian border. A day later it'd even strike Tasmania's north-east coast.

By Tuesday morning a light south-west wind had brushed most of the coast, stripping out tinny treble while leaving only solid pulses of bass to slam the sandstone reefs.

Just after 10am, Tom Myers splits the pack at Queenscliff Bombora for another stunning wave. Click to read a full interview with Tom.

Still Tuesday but ten kilometres down the coast: Sydney's Eastern Beaches roar under a mix of front-loaded east swell and light south-west wind (Photos Bill Morris)

Meanwhile, a further ten kilometres south the playing field shifts from expansive open ocean reefs to the short and squat set-up that is Cape Solander. A sensible assesmment would say the energy was overhwhelming the reef but sensible doesn't come into it when the Cape is big and hollow.

Above, Harry Fisher on what's being considered one of the biggest waves ever ridden at the Cape - at least equal to the wave Richie Vaculik caught during the Red Bull Cape Fear contest in June 2016.

The outcome for Harry was similar to that of Richie: crushed by the Cape compression chamber (Dimas De Novais)

Cape veteran Kirk Flintoff runs out of rocker as the wave coils tightly beneath him (Dimas De Novais)

Far from perfect and yet absolutely mesmerising. Noa Deane runs the razor's edge on a grotesque Cape wave (Dimas De Novais)

Any system that delivers five days of waves is worth studying, and that's precisely what Steve Shearer has done. Attempting to make sense of its endurance, Steve notes the low pressure system wasn't typical. It was multi-centred, moved slowly, and created extended wind fields, all of which added to the prolonged nature of the swell.

"The other factor that appears to be having an influence," says Steve, "is the enhanced EAC [East Australian Current] supplying increased volumes of warmer water and offering extra potential energy for low pressure systems."

Whether these changes are cyclical or a canary in the climate change coal mine is a conversation for another time.

By Wednesday we were three day's deep into the swell and, in some regions at least, the best was yet to come.

On a coast that's lined with rocky ledges, Taj Air drops into sand bottom bliss.

Photographer Aaron Hughes swam for three hours, noting that on Wednesday afternoon it was the best he's seen the place in many, many years. He should know, he lives just 300m away (Aaron Hughes)

Not to be outdone, Sammy Lowe also swung on a few. Though the lineup counted a few old heads it was the two young goofyfoots who pushed deepest (Aaron Hughes)

See video footage of Sam from the same session.

On Thursday afternoon I drove into the carpark of the local - the same wave I surfed on Monday morning. Southerly winds had taken the edge off conditions, yet solid five foot sets still stacked up off the back.

The crowd was again minimal. Surfed out. Coming down off an extended adrenalin high. And for one friend who fractured a vertebrae at this very wave, staring down a long convalescence.

Local consensus was that planning paid off. Rather than an up-and-down peak we had a long plateau that allowed surfers to pick the eyes out of the swell, choose the best windows without compromising the work-life balance to any serious degree.

If only all East Coast swells were so accomodating.

Maybe they soon will be?

// STU NETTLE