Day 3 at the Ballito Pro

Day 3 . . . . . . hmmmmm!

Muscroft trying to figure it from the competitors area

A shocker of a start to the day with 2' max on multi-angular mini peaks, still unsettled from yesterday's strong onshore. Strange for the overnight offshores to not tidy up yesterday's mess but I guess all I can say is that it was the same for all four competitors in the heats, but for us it was disapointing to see Nic have a bad heat and be one of the first casualties of the day. There isn't much consolation in knowing just how bad the surf was but the two who managed to get the most out of the heat were defending Champ Pat Gadauskas and Eric Geiselman. And so it continued for the next two heats before the heats began to deliver some higher score availability.

Granger Larsen, Adriano deSouza (#1 seed for this event), Jordy Smith and Hodei Collazo were all heat winners as well as, with an incrible performance, Peterson Chrisanto from Brazil took the win in what turned out to be the last heat of the day, with an 8.90 and a 9.00. That heat went so dead that  it was a very quick and easy call to make and tomorrow wil be another early on with us on standby for another 07:00 start(local time).

We still have 28hrs of surfing ahead of us to complete the Mr Price Pro over 4 days so there is still a heavy schedule to keep. The light winds have dropped off altogether and the spectators on the beach have been watching some crazy free-surfing with loads of sick airs of every description being thrown. Cape Town is at present being blasted by a heavy storm and we expext the SW wind to come humping through here later this arvo bringing with it by morning hopefully, a chunk of swell. We don't expect anything near last year's heavy conditions but we could be in the 4' – 5' range.  But for those out of this event already there is a mad scramble to get down to J Bay as there are cooking waves at the moment and with the storm already hitting Supers there are predictions for 6.5m of swell for the first half of next week to get the Billabong Pro moving. The guys are amping!

Ain't life great Nick? (the view from his room where he relaxes
after a day commentating at the Ballito Pro in South Africa)

So all of us are making the most of our stop-start-stop days and today we have all scored a few waves. I'm tapping this in after my 3rd session and need a siesta in the muggy calm-before-the-storm. Tonite is the Oakley One Wave Wonder awards evening at Zimbithi Golf Club with the winner getting £4000 for the wave voted best in an online poll, while the videographer will walk away with an all expenses paid trip for two to Indo! Ain't life sweet?

That's it for today


Nick