It’s early August, the sun is shining and the biggest week in British surfing is about to get underway.
It’s a magical time, when Fistral is endowed with not one but two beach bars and the fields above Watergate Bay swap flocks of sheep for huge music acts and almost 60 thousand revellers.
There’s loads of info about the festival itself on the Boardmasters website so here we’re going to focus on the surf event and other bits happening down around the town. Let’s dive in shall we?
Marco Mignot. Photo: Luke Gartside
When is the surfing on BoardMasters 2024?
The surf event is split across three divisions; the Open, the Junior and the longboard presented by Wild West Jerky.
The waiting period for all kicks off on Wednesday the 7th and runs until Sunday, but there’s no word yet on what will run when as it all depends on conditions. Check our breakdown of the forecast below for a bit of educated guesswork and keep your eyes peeled here for regular updates on the call.
The ones to watch
For those not across the finer details of competitive surfing in 2024, here’s a quick refresher: Every world tour campaign starts in the regional qualifying series. In Europe, we have four events, with Boardmasters marking the first of the season. At the end of that, the top seven get onto the Challenger Series. Then, the top 10 from there make the world tour.
Put simply, the Boardmasters Open is the first rung on a long and slippery ladder to the dream tour. The field this year features the usual mix of local talent and Euro up-and-comers. Thanks to scheduling clashes there are some notable absences including 3X Boardmasters Champ Yolanda Hopkins, who is out in Tahiti for the Olympics and last year’s men’s winner Kai Odriozola, who is in Huntington Beach for the Challenger Series event. In fact, the highest-seeded surfer in the men’s division is 14th-placed Yago Dominguez from the Basque Country, offering a great opportunity for some fresh talent to make it to the podium.
Stan Norman. Photo: Luke Gartside
A Brit hasn’t lifted the trophy in the WQS Open since Russell Winter way back in 2002 (incidentally, the 48-year-old will be back competing in the event for the first time in 8 years!)
For 2024, all eyes are on local hopefuls Lukas Skinner, who just won 2nd in the world at the ISA Juniors, British Champ Stan Norman and Welsh dark horse Patrick Langon Dark.
In the women’s, Wales’ Alys Barton will be looking to do one better than her second-place finish last year, while Newquay-based shredders Lucy Campbell and Lauren Sandland will seek to utilise extensive local knowledge to blaze past their Euro opponents.
Lucy Campbell. Photo: Luke Gartside
Over on the other side of the world right now, Ben Skinner is into finals day at the Huntington Beach Longboard Classic. As soon as that wraps he’ll be jumping on a plane, with fellow Brit Emily Currie and several other world tour competitors, and dashing back to Newquay in time to compete here. While Skinner has won the event several times, he’s yet to take down 5X Boardmasters winner Eduardo Delpero in a final. Smart money says this could well be the year.
For fans of grand storylines, look out for a potential three Skinner family winners across three different categories (as well as Lukas and Ben, young Lila is competing in the junior girls), surely a world record if the crew can put it down?
Ben Skinner. Photo: Luke Gartside
On the women’s side, Emily Currie will be equally hungry to take down a French adversary – 3X event winner Alice Lemoigne – on her home soil.
You can find the heat draw for the longboard and shortboard open divisions here.
Emily Currie. Photo: Luke Gartside
The Forecast
In our 2021 overview, we wrote the following:
“While this year’s forecast doesn’t stray too far from the usual summertime mix of strong winds and jumbled swell, at the moment, conditions look set to be more consistent and contestable than many previous years, with four days of waves lining up on the charts.”
It turns out huey is a fan of copy and paste, as that’s pretty much identical to what we’re looking at now. Let’s break it down.
Wednesday will see sunshine, solid surf in the overhead range and strong onshores. For best spectating, look to the morning and evening high tides (7:47AM, 8:00PM) when action will be closest to the beach bar(s). The spring-low tide at 2:00PM could also offer some good action, with optimum viewing from the cliffs in front of the Headland Hotel.
On Thursday the swell drops and the wind swings more southerly for the first half of the day offering slightly cleaner conditions. Expect choppy, crosshore-affected waves in the shoulder to head-high range in the morning and bigger, onshore lumps in the afternoon. With rain forecast for the AM, best spectating will be from about 3:00PM onwards when the swell starts to fill in. On Friday expect more of the same; strong onshores and choppy head-high waves.
Classic North Fistral. Photo: Luke Gartside
Saturday is looking better, with lighter south-westerly winds in the morning and a slowly building swell. The weather will be warm and the sun may even make an appearance. While it’s by no means a classic surf day, there’ll be plenty of sections for the competitors to get stuck into and all-day spectating is heartily encouraged.
At the moment, Sunday is looking like the best window with smaller, but longer period swell forecast and the potential for offshore winds. There’ll be lots of lump left over from the previous days, but if the south-easterlies turn up early and blow like their supposed to, lunchtime could see genuinely good conditions for finals day.
Beach scenes.
What else is on?
Boardmasters recently unveiled Oceana as their official environmental partner for 2024 and beyond. To celebrate the collaboration, they will be hosting a special Q&A with surf legends Greg Long and Laura Crane plus environmental stalwart Hugo Tagholm and Boardmasters’ own Andrew Topham. The event will take place on Wednesday from 6:00PM until 8:00PM in the Boardmasters beach bar tent at Fistral. You can find out everything that’s happening down there via the Boardmasters App.
On Thursday evening House of Glass is throwing a warm-up party at their cafe in town featuring Mexican infusion street food and live music! Get yourself down to Cribbar Yard on Bank Street from 6:00PM until late.
Keep your eye on our Instagram for any news of further events and we’ll see you at the beach.
