First swell of summer surf season due to hit Gold Coast this week
THE first of the summer swells is on its way, with veteran surfers predicting chaos when surf-starved boardriders finally get to hit the waves this week.
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THE first of the summer swells is on its way, with veteran surfers predicting chaos when surf-starved boardriders finally get to hit the waves this week.
After three months of next to no waves, surfers will no doubt make the most of the 1.5m swell expected to arrive on the Coast tomorrow or Wednesday.
“It’s going to be madness, it’s going to be insane — it could be scary,” said veteran surf reporter John Charlton of the hordes of boardriders ready to descend on the beaches.
“It is going to be a carpark from Brisbane to Burleigh — you can feel there’s a real summer vibe in the air.
“Anyone with something you can ride a wave on will be out.”
While spring is traditionally the season that surfers spend less time in the water due to small, choppy conditions, this season has been even worse than normal.
Mr Charlton said surfers had been driven mad — or to golf — with unusual conditions which included a lack of howling northerlies.
Without any decent surf since August, he said surfers were so keen to get wet more than 100 boardriders had been in the water at Duranbah in the mornings for the past week, fighting to make to most waist-high surf.
Mr Charlton said the upside to barely any storms hitting the Gold Coast this spring meant the sandbanks were ideal for the waves when they hit.
“There’s about 15m worth of sand in front of Elephant Rock (at Currumbin) on the low tide,” he said.
Coastalwatch chief forecaster Ben Macartney said a low pressure system was expected to form over the Solomon Islands and could produce waves up to 1.5m by Wednesday.
He said it would be the first “notable” swell event for the summer.
“Well, here it comes folks — the first notable easterly swell-event of the tropical swell-season,” Mr Macartney said.
Swellnet chief forecaster Ben Matson said the easterly would arrive at all the breaks along the Gold Coast and northern NSW beaches.
“We’re looking at an extended run of east swell and it’ll eventually favour all coastlines,” he said.
Gold Coast Chief Lifeguard Warren Young said spring had not been unusual.
“Small swell comes and goes,” he said.
“It just seems that way (because it’s been small for a long).
“But over the next days I think the surfers will be really happy.
“It looks like it is going to be really good on the southern pointbreaks.
“I think they’ll be packed.”
