The February school holidays in France have been blessed sunny skies, warm weather and pumping surf after a fairly brutal winter. With the much-threatened lockdown 3.0 still not yet materialising, it’s been about as busy as it gets in Hossegor-Capbreton in terms of visitors.
The Capbreton one way strip along the port has been bumper to bumper all weekend, the sands filled with beachgoers. The gale force winds, floods and widespread destruction of Storm Justine just two weeks ago seem but a distant memory, as all day offshores puff against thick Atlantic lines.
Meanwhile, despite single digit temps first thing, a new phenom known as the mid winter dawnie has manifested. First light reveals a good 50-deep pack between the jetties in Capbreton, where the raw double overhead swell is filtered into manageable everyman A-frames, unheard of a couple of seasons ago. The dawnie session is probably busier than it typically is in August.
Needless to say, a 4m swell at 15s out of the west rendered giant, thick teepees in Hossegor, with the west direction meaning almost no swell registering at the famous big gun necessitating peak at La Nord, while huge lines stacked pretty much to the horizon outside the knuckle in the coast by Les Estagnots in Seignosse.
Jetskis rule the lineup on the such days, with Hossegor pretty much having become the global epicentre of step offs, with a dedicated a crew of skilled and tooled up locals are revelling in huge tubes in hooded 5mils anytime conditions conspire.
“One of the best waves of my life” said Joan Duru of a huge right tube Marc Lacomare buzzed him onto yesterday (Sunday 14th). Joan’s ridden a few out there, as well as around the world doing a couple of laps of the CT, and generally doesn’t do superlatives, or finger flick claims for that matter, so you know it must been pretty spesh.
Marc got a few bombs of his own, as did the likes of Remi Arauzo, Miky Picon, the Laborde bros, Matthias Maallem and Pierre Rollet amongst others.
Stay tuned for our full gallery from a pumping run of North Atlantic surf.
Images by @camille_lesaux / Surf-Report
