FIRST LIGHT…NITON FIRES AT DAWN!
FIRST LIGHT…NITON FIRES AT DAWN!
FIRST LIGHT…NITON FIRES AT DAWN!
ROSS WILLIAMS
With a nuking north-westerly and a modest groundswell on the charts, this session at Niton on the Isle of Wight was always going to come down to timing. Get it right, and you’d score clean lines. Get it wrong and you could be left staring at a howling mess. John Carter looks back on a dawn session at Niton yesterday, where Ross Williams called it perfectly!
Photos: John Carter…Click and shot to enlarge and scroll.
THE CALL
When you get a message at 6.03 am on a windy day you know its most likely going to be a call to duty. Looking at the forecast it was going to be wild and windy with a stiff 25-30 knot northwest breeze and a small period 1.5m swell on the cards. Nothing epic, but definitely enough to justify getting out of a warm bed… just about.
Through barley functioning eyes, which were even blurrier without my glasses, I could just about make out the message was from Ross Williams… ‘Headed down to Niton…could be firing!’
Hmmm, a quick cup of tea later, brewed at maximum strength and I was packed an in the trusty Polo within fifteen minutes. Not bad speed for that early in the morning! I was still barely awake mind you…and not entirely convinced this early kick off was going to be worth it.
The Polo rasped into life…dam it I had hardly any fuel either, With the latest Trump shenanigans it was going to cost me an arm and a leg to top up with diesel. I soldiered on!
Halfway to the beach, the next message pinged through saying that it was small, but Ross was going to give it a try. I made it down the bumpy track at Niton just in time to see Ross Launching from the little harbour at the bottom of the track. The Trusty Polo trundled down the track at Niton and I was just in time to see Ross launching from the little harbour.
By now it was 6:45am, and the sun was just starting to break through, lighting everything with a perfect golden glow. Even though it was freezing, that warm light made me feel it was worth the early wake up call.
FULL CHAOS, CLEAN LINES
The wind, on the other hand, had skipped the warm-up entirely and gone straight to full chaos mode but at least the wind was a decent direction.
NW at Niton does one thing very well clean lines. And despite the chaos in the air, the waves were stacking up nicely into the bay.
From behind the lens, it looked borderline epic. Fair play to Ross for the motivation, most sane people would still be negotiating with their snooze alarms at that hour. But Ross is well known to be an early riser and 6am was a walk in the park for him although today was pretty chilly with the NW wind.
NW is actually a cracking direction at Niton as the waves are super clean. The wind can be a bit gusty on the inside but today where it was howling windy, so it was not a problem for Ross to navigate in and out through the break.
THE WINDOW CLOSES
By 8:30, some lazy clouds drifted in and the waves started to ease off, signalling the end of the session. Ross made his way back up the slipway looking pleased which, if you know Ross, is the real important message here. He’s usually his own harshest critic, so if he reckons, he got a few decent turns in, you can safely assume it was a solid session.
ROUND TWO
By 2pm, Ross was back on the phone (clearly not tired enough) and we headed to Niton again. Same spot. Same wind. Completely different story.
The tide had filled in, the waves had lost their shape and whatever magic the morning had delivered was long gone. Still windy… absurdly so…but without anything to aim at, it felt more like punishment than payoff.
Safe to say we’d already scored the best of it before most people had even finished their first coffee. As they say…the early bird catches the worm!
Ross was riding the 88L TABOU DA CURVE
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