Phileas Fogg

Swell: 3.9ft
Wind: SE 7 kts veering SSW
Period: 7-8 secs
Tide: Low at 6.33am, 2.8m
Sea Temp: 8.5c

5.45am start...the two man VW bus convoy headed out of Cardiff to a Gower reef break. Conditions were pretty perfect and expectations were high after yesterday poor surf.

As Rattz and I wandered down the fields past the stinky sewage farm, to the break a lovely 4ft+ set came through, ruler edged lines following the length of the reef and light offshore. At that point we though we were in for a special morning.

As we paddled out I spied one lone surfer also paddling out. I caught my first wave which turned out to be my best, a nice fast 3-4ft walling right, made the hollow section and flew at warp speed onto the face to blast 2 nice off the tops, cutback hard inside and kicked out to find myself in knee deep water on dry reef.

Paddled out thinking...it's not often you get a wave that good as your first one of the session! Sadly there weren't any more.

I got chatting to the other surfer who turned out to be the one and only 'crofty cowboy' from the OTL surfing message board. Good to put a face to the name at last :)

And then it came...the FOG
The blue skies turned to grey. The sun disappeared and a thick blanket of fog rolled in from the ocean.

By now we couldn't see anything, waves were appearing quite randomly around us and we struggled to find a good peak or even the peak we started off on.

There were no landmarks on the shore to line up with so we were flying blind.

Ratter picked off a few including a nice rolly polly straight off the end of his board and 'crofty' caught the odd one further in but it was a pretty average session considering the conditions on paper.

I graded the session: a 1 out of 5 and it only scored a 1 due to the fog being something out of the ordinary!

After a frustrating couple of hours we called it a day and paddled in where I proceeded to get sucked over onto the dry reef inside.

What a day.

Things must pick up soon. That's two crap surfs in a row now...