Photo: Cola Bros
I tell myself every season I should document swells and conditions right before Championship Tour event windows open. I just roll with a personal bias instead — one I know I’m not alone in — that at least five out of every three CT events are precluded by pumping surf, only for the ocean to shut down just in time for day one.
This is totally not true, by the way. Our minds play tricks on us as fans and the bias is just reinforced when we only see a glimpse of the week before a comp and what look like incredible freesurfs as athletes get reacquainted with a wave. We double down during the comp window by completely ignoring that of course there aren’t going to be 10-plus straight days of pumping swell. Even a solid two or three days of great surf anywhere in the world is filled with peaks and valleys, a couple of slow mornings, and tide changes that kill conditions or turn a place on.
All that stuff is logic though. And being a fan of any sport, whether it’s team-based or purely individual like surfing, means ditching the logic for whatever serves the outcome you think will happen.
Anyway, with all that in mind it’d be cool to have some real data on how good the waves are right before CT windows compared to the actual competition dates. The WSL has no way of controlling the whims of Mother Nature, so it’s not like this information would serve any functional value. I could track these things myself, but I won’t. Just being honest.
And true to form (or serving my whole point here), Punta Roca has been on fire this week ahead of the Surf City El Salvador Pro. The difference here is that the beginning of the comp window is looking promising.
“They are definitely going to have quality waves,” local surfer Bryan Perez, a CT wildcard, told the Spanish-language surf media outlet, Duke. “The swell won’t drop below six feet.”
Forecasts are calling for head-high surf to a little bit overhead as the event kicks off, followed by a couple of days where the winds might wreak some havoc. Either way, these freesurfs have been true to form with pumping waves right as CT surfers unpack their bags.
