Devon Dreams

Huge southwest swells pound UK shores a few times a year, but lining them up with sailable easterly winds is more of a once in a decade occurrence. Fifteen years after scoring an epic mast high plus port tack session at Bigbury, John Carter rolled the dice on a mission to the famed south Devon spot, hoping for the stars to align once more and score a repeat performance! The lucky crew that scored pick up the tale.

- Timo Mullen, Jamie Hancock, Dave Ewer, Andy King, Paul Hunt, Ben Page & John Carter

TIMO MULLEN

This low pressure system was like the elephant in the room, it just wouldn’t go away! Normally when these sort of weather systems show up they promise the world but quickly disappear. But this system just kept getting better, in fact, I don’t think I have ever seen such a perfect low. Bigbury is a popular windsurfing and surf spot, it picks up loads of SW swell, but in my experience (I lived at Bigbury for a few years) it rarely gets epic as it needs a very specific and elusive combination of wind and swell to fire. In fact the last time it worked perfectly was about 15 years ago!! Myself and JC both use the webcam at Bigbury as our go-to webcam to check for surf on the south coast of England, so we are pretty familiar on what sort of swell works here and the forecast 6-8 feet @ 17 seconds we knew would be epic. Obviously we needed wind too and we were not to be disappointed, this rare low was producing E/NE winds at 20-25 knots which is perfect cross-offshore at Bigbury. We knew the swell was due to hit late and last for two days, but when we pulled up to the beach at about 11 a.m. it was flat, and when I say flat, I mean flat, barely 1 foot! Suddenly our decision was not looking so good, but we knew the swell was coming, we just had to wait! Within two hours the swell really started to pick up and at 2 p.m. I hit the water. My first wave was logo high and just perfect, and within half an hour the swell was pumping - solid mast high and getting bigger!