Kandui Resort Surf Report – Late August 2009

Surf report provided from Kandui Resort

Our new group stepped off the plane into some good surf.  They were too tired after all the traveling to go out to Rifles with the hour and a half or so of light they had left, so they ended up surfing some clean, overhead 4 Bobs while three of us staff soloed empty Rifles.  Hey, someone had to do it!  The next day the swell was bigger and the wind was right for our Playgrounds area.  All the breaks were overhead and fun.  Rifles was a few feet overhead with good winds so there were some pretty epic barrels out there.  But some rain fell on the parade as our area had, by far, the best waves around here, and probably in the whole Mentawaiian chain, so a lot of boats showed up and our boys were a little disheartened at the amount of people around.  But, as so often happens, the next day the wind switched and the boats buggered off and we had uncrowded surf again.  We surfed Beng Beng all day one day, about as good as it gets, and some fun Nipusi, and some smallish, but very clean Kandui’s and, of course, fun 4 Bobs.  We even managed to get a couple of fun sessions in at Burgerworld the day before yesterday.  We took some of the best pictures I have ever seen of Burgerworld late that afternoon, but it will be hard to post any of them after the pictures we got yesterday when our latest swell showed up.  (OK, maybe one just to show the unbelievers just how good it can get out there!) 

We were expecting waves today so we were up early, but it was looking only a hair bigger than yesterday.  Good!  It gave us a chance to get a cup or two of coffee down.  Then sets started rolling in and whole Playgrounds area started lighting up.  There were two boats around, but the guys on them were super cool and it was just a feeding frenzy for all of us.  Karambat left, 4 Bobs, and John Candy’s were all good, all day.  And the chargers in our group got what they came for as well!  We sent a boat over to Kandui’s as soon as we saw the swell arriving.  It was clean there and building, well overhead and uncrowded and our charging guests got some sick ones before the tide dropped out.  Meanwhile, the light southeast winds that were blowing all but stopped as I was getting our second boat together and suddenly I started seeing double overhead bombs reeling down the reef at Rifles.  We scrambled for bigger boards and got out there asap!  There was nobody out but us and it was dead glass.  We managed to get a couple of nice ones before the tide got dangerously low, then headed back to the restaurant to refuel.  Anticipation was high as we waited for the tide to come back up, and we were not disappointed!  As we paddled out to the empty lineup just as we figured the tide was safe, we were greeted by a solid, double overhead plus set that peeled wide open down the entire reef!  And they kept coming!  Over and over all afternoon with even some bigger bombs, and there was only a minimal crew on it.  For those of you that are astonished at the low number we locals give on the 1-10 scale on those days you thought were so good, today would have been a 9 if we would have had an offshore wind on it.  As it was, it was still pretty sick!  Good barrels, good crowd, good day!  One for the memory book.