Raves & Rants . . from Penzance

It was morning, and work timings had unusually left me free for a couple of hours. That would normally mean the surf was onshore, or blown out, or flat or something, adhering as it usually does to the First Law of Surfing . But not today. Blue Rinse Today looked like a bleak, grey, midwinter day with (from a brief glimpse of the sea on the school run) a weak looking swell and the wind threatening to go onshore. But I had time. Time to take pictures. So I trawled along the coast looking for surf or seascape images, but found very little. Until I came to the reef. Which, oddly, seemed to be firing. Fryer  Several locals and some of the Aggy crew were making the most of a small day before the expected 'Hercules II' storm at the weekend. An acceptable peak Empty Dan Joel Mole getting critical Captain Fryer on a set wave A chill wind cut through the grey pall that hung over the break, warmed slightly by the relaxed atmosphere. Styling ...

There's such a lot of imagery and video coming out of Teahupoo, the massively challenging reef break in Tahiti, that I thought I'd keep adding things below as I find them. This is the biggest swell to show up since the Code Red swell of 2011, and the world's elite/ craziest big wave surfers have shown up to the Code Red II party. SurfLine's Fantastic crop of photos Wave of the Day Yesterday:   Mark Healy, pic by Ted Grambeau Raimana, pic by Shane Dorian Koa Rothman, pic by More photos from yesterday here: Teahupoo Photos In the video below you can see the green bottom of a boat getting caught out and flipped over the falls on the inside. Hopefully no injuries, but that would have been a nasty wipeout. Tomorrow is supposed to be even bigger, keep an eye on the Teahupoo Live Cam More photos of the scene here:  Teahupoo Code Red

Likeness of a wave seen on a child's head Return to Ocean-Image.com

It's finally here. The long awaited landing of the cable for the Wave Hub project happened this morning at about 5am, on the beach at Hayle rivermouth.  Once the cable has been attached to the electricity substation at Harvey Towans, all that remains is to unreel the cable to about 10 miles offshore, drop the Hub device to the seabed, and it will then be ready for business. The end of the line This is important for Cornwall, since the wave power devices that are tested on it will be at the very cutting edge of renewable energy technology, placing us at the forefront of that branch of engineering.  It's also important for surfers, since they will be able to see if the potential 5% reduction in wave size in the swell shadow (due to energy absorbed by the wave devices) is noticeable. This would mean a 20ft wave becomes a 19ft wave, a 10ft wave becomes a 9.5ft wave, a 5ft wave becomes 4.5ft - who will notice? Presumably, unless there is a veritable Barri...