So I’ve now left Byron Bay – along with Kez, Frank, Katie, Ben and Sam – and headed to the southern end of the Gold Coast (search ExperienceGC on Twitter for all of STA Travels info on the area) to the Coolangatta/Tweed Heads border to watch and shoot the Quiksilver Pro.
The event lasts until March 10th and is the first stop on the ASP 2010 Tour, closely followed by the Ripcurl Pro at Bells Beach next month.
As the opening event of the tour all 45 top seeds are competing hard…with a tasty cash pot of $50,000 for winner and a shed load of tour points its the first stage in all the surfers goal of winning the 2010 tour.
Amongst the surfers is defending champion Mick Fanning (Ripcurl, AUS) …who I randomly ended up sitting next to on the rocks watching the surf! And 9 times world champ Kelly Slater (Quiksilver, USA) who is aiming for his tenth world title…along with the reported $10million payout Quiksilver is offering him to do it!
The venue for the event is the iconic Snapper Rocks…a right hand superbank at the Southern end of Rainbow Bay which produces long, steep barrels and in the right conditions a wave which can be ridden right through to the next bay at Kirra…a 1km away!
Anyhows I missed the opening day and first heat due to being in Byron and finishing my didge…and the second day was postponed due to the Tsunami warning that saw all of the NSW beaches closed!
For the first part of the second heats yesterday it was lashing it down…so I opted out of shooting and just watched.
Today however I braved the cyclone conditions….yes apparently we’re in the eye if a cyclone covering pretty much the whole of Eastern Oz!…and headed down for the second part of it.
Highlight of the day being Andy Irons return to form (after a frankly p*ss poor first round heat) in a closely fought 30mins against fellow Hawaiian Roy Powers. They took each other wave for wave, but the definer came close to the end when Irons let Powers take the first wave of the set – which he promptly tore apart, scoring one of the highest waves of the day. Irons however dropped into the following wave, slotting himself straight into a deep barrel before hitting the lip hard and vertical, pushing his heat score to 14.57.
Powers tried in vain to retaliate but had to settle for an overall 13.36.
…roll on heat 3 (tommorow hopefully) which opens with an all Brazilian heat and will certainly draw the crowds when Slater takes on wildcard Patrick Gudauskas and Fanning is pitted against Brett Simpson.
