Winter Retrospective

Atlantic Winter Retrospective from Mikey @ Show 'n Tell Media on Vimeo.

‘There will always be another big swell’ is what I tell myself when I miss big waves the same as I tell myself ‘you can’t be everywhere at once’ when I make a bad call concluding in me missing the best or biggest waves. I find myself getting so wrapped up and focused on the Atlantic winter swells I can’t see the wood for the trees so to speak, I need and want to make the most of every swell as I won’t have the luxury of jetting half way across the world in the summer to get my fix. It doesn’t help living in Devon either, because there’s definitely no big waves here so it’s great to leave but always greater to come home to my family.
So this is my Atlantic winter retrospective and a few of the waves I surfed from a few key sessions. It was a pretty epic winter for me and the first real time I’ve spent chasing big swells out of Ireland with a lot of time put in at Nazare, a session at Belharra as well as the old faithful Mullaghmore and a big wave paddle comp at Punta Galea in the Basque Country. Hope you like it.

Mission on.

I’m on a bit of a personal mission at the moment so when a low the size of North America filled the Atlantic all I really wanted to do was surf the biggest waves there was on offer.
As ever it turned into a bit of a scenario, loads of travelling and more driving than once thought humanly possible but a last minute decision left me driving through Portugal and Spain with Eric Ribiere to get to France where the plan was to paddle Belharra, which is a spot 2km out to sea and a world famous big wave spot.
I didn’t really know what to expect although of course I’ve seen videos and photos of the place but it’s usually known as a tow spot, so paddling around out to sea and trying to get yourself in the spot was definitely going to be testing.
The long and short of it I ended up getting a few on the head but I also managed to get myself under this, that’s me on the left and Nathan Fletcher on the right, it’s a pretty bumpy fat wave but a really good experience and I hope to be down there next time it breaks. Thanks to Eric for lending me a board big enough and Alex Laurel for the ski ride out there. I got the photo from Timo Jarvinens facebook page.