Cover shot: Gearoid McDaid by Michal Czubala. Video: Mal Anderson, Rob Blackett, Bella Bunce, Michael Germer, Oscar James, Mike Lacey, Chris Levi, Stephen Maloney. Produced by Jason Lock. Executive producer, Chris Thomson. Edited by Oli Chapman.
We had seen this coming. Swell from Hurricane Erin rifled into Western Europe yesterday [Tuesday August 26th], setting off spots all along the Old Continent’s Atlantic seaboard.
From Scotland through to Morocco, swell from Erin’s last breath was felt across multiple countries. And that is rare for August. Usually, swells from hurricanes are for the autumn and winter months only, as part of the Atlantic hurricane season. To get swell like this is unheard of in the summer.
So there was definitely the novelty factor going into big swells in thin wetsuits, especially for the UK and Ireland.
Up in Scotland, the early reports were promising: “Barrels, all morning, everyone’s getting some,” reported filmer Mal Anderson, before gluing himself to the lens for the next who-knows-how-many hours. The next day, nothing Erin had blown through and vamoosed.
Right after that, Western Ireland started to blip to life. “The morning was a bit slow,” said Gearoid McDaid. “Got up early with the swell being a bit smaller than we thought. It was still pretty epic in summer and August to surf the slabs then onto Mullaghmore.
“It was warm too in a 4/3mm wetsuit. We were all sweating which was weird. Had a few paddle ones, there was a solid crew out, couple people flew in for it and the locals were having a good time. Pretty cooked now.”
Down into England, and this was always going to be the wild card. Those big, straight swells hammered the coastlines of Cornwall, Devon and Wales, creating chaos on Atlantic-facing shores, but if you knew where to look, there’s always a few hidden corners around these parts.
Empty caverns, like August has never seen before. Maybe! Photo: Michal Czubala.
“Been out of the water for six weeks due to there not being any waves,” said 2017 bodyboard world champion Iain Campbell, who now calls Cornwall home. “Crazy surfing in a 2/2 with waves like that for August.”
But one of the waves of the swell was courtesy of Natxo Gonzalez, the Basque’s big wave charger who ditched a prime session at Mundaka to head to Ireland.
“All the boys were like ‘go, go, go’,” Natxo told Wavelength, about this absolute bomb in the video above. “I was like, ‘you guys are sure’, they said ‘yeah’, so I went, full send. The wave was a bit of backwash and then went clean on the inside. It was nice to feel the energy of that wave again and share the line-up with the best community in the world.”
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Wavelength is Europe’s longest-running surf magazine; we’re a small but hard-grafting crew. If you liked the edit, please consider subscribing to the magazine, delivered twice yearly straight to your door. Go here for details.
