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It never ceases to amaze me how a scraggy bunch of canoe riding Vikings raped, pillaged and plundered across the north sea. This area has an incredibly violent sea, constantly at odds with the gulfstream crashing against the north and artic seas. You really have to imagine how it was all possible given the equipment and clothing these individuals had to fend against the elements....... Well, the surfing situation has gotten a lot better. I have gotten acustomed to my gear and feel almost as agile as in trunks. As the days become shorter my hours for surf are limited to between 10am-4 pm, so I have to time the sessions real well. Last saturday was such a day. I met up with D, an Air Force JAG, who only has been surfing 7 years. Interesting guy, learned how to surf in Okinawa, then told me about epic sessions in the mediterranean along the coast of Turkey. He was real excited to come to Iceland, since his next duty station was supposed to be at some landlocked base. This guy is a real trooper. We load up and decide to head northeast from our base and then south east. A real round about way to get to where we are going, but then again, the land here is so torn up from all the eruptions and tectonic shifting, there's no other way to do it. We where heading for Thorlackshofn, Iceland's answer to Rincon. This place handles swells of all sizes, a real gem. Cobblestone right hand point the wraps into a protected cove. It is best when the seas are over 12' and the wind is blowing South West or west. It's a pretty far drive. An hour from home, over snow capped extinct and active volcanic systems. Once we get there and peer over the boulders, we see the wave firing... A right hand wave breaking at chest to head high, wrapping tightly around the cove. It wasn't breaking all the way to the inside cove, so we didn't surf it at it's best, but nevertheless, it was good. I won't bore you with any of the waves, suffice to say they were all gems, but what was really awesome were the views of shore, Snow capped ranges as far as the eye can see, just me and wild man D. Today was another good day of surf. Winds were blowing hard last night out of the south east, gale force50-60 knots, seas were 20-30 feet. Winds were wrong for Thorlackshofn, but we were determined to find offshore conditions somewhere today. So we started checking around our house. Foggy and misty, 50 degree air(warm mist off of the gulfstream) with a side/offshore breeze, but the seas would not let us in. 16 ' waves breaking all along are western shore. I thought Id check a wave Ive heard of that is protected from the south easterly breeze. So we check it, but it's stormy and not really looking good. D suggests we check the north west area to see if we can get a bit of wrap with off shores. So off we go. And what a good find. One side of the penninsula(300 feet) to the south of us, the sea was heaving something fierce, but where we were standing, it was head high, offshore perfection...Suffice to say, we surfed today. ... |
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