Rip Curl WSL Finals - Early Forecast
With the canning of the Tahiti Pro, the Woz moves onto the next, and final, stop of the 2021 Championship Tour: the Rip Curl Finals at Trestles. The first time the Woz has used a finals series to decide the world champion.
The contest will be a one-day affair, with a waiting period running from Thursday the 9th of September through to Friday the 17th.
Like the Salina Cruz coast, where the CT last stopped, Trestles relies on long-range southerly swell energy from the South Pacific Ocean. Any swells, unless huge, from the north-west to south-west are blocked by the Channel Islands, with swells from the south to south-southwest squeezing in the gap between San Clemente Island and the mainland.
Also similar to Mexico's outlook, with swell travel time in the vicinity of seven to ten days, and a good idea on the swell-generating systems firing up for the event over the coming fortnight, we already have a good gauge on what's in store for the whole waiting period.
Ideally, we want Southern Ocean storms to fire up east of New Zealand, though not too close, but also not so far east that they're off the Chilean coast. This allows swells to travel past the French Polynesian Island Chain, but also prevents them being primarily focussed into Central America and Mexico. The more south in the fetch once the storm is east of French Polynesia, the better aligned it is for California.
With this in mind we're looking at swell travel distances of 10,000km, resulting in slow, inconsistent, yet highly-groomed, sets when they push in. As the Woz only needs one day to run the event, this (theoretically) makes it a little easier to forecast the best swell-generating system.
So, looking across the South Pacific basin, there are a couple of swells due through the period, with one in particular standing out.
The first day of the waiting period looks to kick off with small, inconsistent levels of new S/SW groundswell, generated yesterday and today by a low firing up south-east of New Zealand (see image above). Now this is in Trestles' far, far swell window, with a patchy fetch of gales aimed northwards, producing infrequent 3ft+ sets for the first day of the waiting period, next Thursday.
This swell will fade with a couple of tiny days till what, at this juncture, looks like the best swell-producer for the event window. That being a flurry of strong polar frontal activity firing up south-east of New Zealand, before spreading further east.
This groundswell event which looks to last a few days will be generated by unfavourably aligned but strong, severe-gale W/NW winds stretching out along the polar shelf, south-east of New Zealand (see image below) later this week.
The elongated nature of the fetch will help prolong its lifespan, and we may see a trailing, better aligned fetch of severe-gale W/SW, winds forming on its tail, producing the most size. The models diverge slightly regarding this latter point so we'll have to keep an eye on it.
While not looking favourably aligned for California's swell window, the help of Great Circle paths and radial spread will see some good quality swell arriving from this source.
The initial pulse of S/SW groundswell emanating off the W/NW fetch should fill in on Sunday/Monday the 12/13th, providing infrequent 3-4ft sets across Trestles. Following this, the possible stronger pulse from the better aligned, W/SW fetch is due to arrive mid-late week, providing bigger 4ft+ sets.
Any storm activity that's due to follow the progression outlined above will form too late for any swell to arrive before the end of the forecast period.
Looking at the local conditions and, though a long way out, it looks like we're due to see local, offshore land breezes in the morning and fresh NE sea breezes, adding bumps but not writing off the surf completely. This will more than likely see competitors turn to the air into the afternoon. We'll sharpen up the wind forecast as the date approaches.
Similarly, for running updates on the timing and size of the expected swells, keep an eye on the comments below.
Comments
So the grand final in slow 3-4 feet and onshore!?
About that! Not quite Pipe eh :/
What's the biggest Trestles can handle?
Not sure on that but looking at videos and the bathymetry it looks like it only gets to about 6ft. Can't locate any images or footage of it bigger than 4-5ft.
"twas always going to be.
Anti climatic finish to an anti climatic season.
Chances of a Brazilian launching an air they routinely pull during free surfs and then claiming as though they’re the first human to create fire?
High
yeah not pipe, but im sure it will be worth a watch as the brazzos go for broke in the air ............woz has done pretty good this year considering .......hope it finishes with a bang not a wimper......
Maybe. The judging criteria at Mexico had clearly changed dramatically since the beginning of the season, with airs no longer scoring anywhere nearly as high. Earlier in the season, the Brazzos were scoring heat winning scores by catching any shitty small closeout and landing an air. In Mexico, an air had to be on a big set wave, and executed with spectacular height and perfect results to get even a decent score. Let's hope that stays for Trestles, but who knows.
Geez the WSL is getting boring.
We need a massive shakeup.
Here's my 2c worth - the world champion should be decided by who is the most consistent across all areas of the sport. I'd like to see airs at a beachie, tubes at a pointbreak, massive takeoffs and barrels on a ledgey freakshow and finally quadruple overhead paddle ins at Mavs or Jaws. Short sweet and best waterman is the world champ. Fuck all the wickwack bulshit.
JJF wins every year for as long as he wants to
Debatable! Italo and Gabriel are just as good as JJF. All three are phenomenal! Filipe is a league above the best Aussie.
Aussies are somewhere back in the "also ran" field. Maybe Morgs is in there, but not threatening these guys.
Gabby and Italo seem to be able to ride big waves and small, left or right, whatever! Amazing surfers, and they haven't shown any injuries that JJF has shown.
Hard to beat!!!
I'm a fully patriotic Aussie, but I reckon the Brazos have us covered.
Yeah I’m just going off the requirements to be world champion posted above by Maddog.
Still to see Gabe and Italo at Jaws and Mavs.
But yeah they are neck and neck in all other conditions with JJF. Probably better.
I’d much rather have florences style though, he’s got that low arms kinda flowing skate style, Brazzos a bit more erratic and jerky.
But yeah all amazing to watch
JJF won the world title and the Eddi in the same year. That puts him in a league above anyone else imo.
Also the waves of JJF at the outer reefs [30ft] in Hawaii last year are not anything I have seen from Gabs or Italo, or anyone for that matter.
If you compare competitive surfing they are all on par. If you compare ALL that surfing is, then JJF is out in front by a mile.
Absolutely spot on. Completely different.
They are not the watermen JJF is. Filppy has issues when it gets chunky, Italo has shark issues and needs to straighten out a bit, and Gabes is only interested in contests.
Agree with Troppo's comment
The planets have aligned for *FT to *win the *world title in the *season.
Trestles is a great wave…
Hope it pumps …
Better than watching The Block ….
Debatable.
no way keithy would ever paddle out at trestles. dan maby
Is this where I complain about the DBah cam ?
Cant we have 2 that don't move so can watch the sets roll in rather than pan back and forth arggh . Thats my $6 worth . Oh and what about some decent Vicco cams .
I hope the air show at Trestles is at least progressive, like full barrel roll out onto the flats !
You see the Tweed Bar cam? Expand that to widescreen, shows everything nicely.
No replay . Cant watch my barrel when I get home .
Ahh, but if a camera didn’t capture it, did you really, truly get barreled?
hahaha Gold Ben!
I enjoyed watching some keen punters out very early on the left ( tweed bar )a few days ago , some getting good barrels .
all bases are already covered in vic if you cant guess what the surfs going to be doing at this point give up.
I 2nd, 3rd and 4th that comment!
Double that.
Well I just wanna watch the surf. I'm 2000 kms away . Lorne point is fun but its no shark island. A cam at Bird rock or Winki isn't going make a difference to the crowd.
Yeah, can someone clean the Woolamai cam, it's almost useless?
I've never seen a Google earth of that area.. I'm guessing they get waves on those islands? They obviously block a lot of swell
Yeah they do. I had a mate who lived on a boat in San Diego and would go sailing out to the islands and surfing. It's also where CI surfboards gets its name from.
Check out Crystal Voyger
Haha - awesome
I just watched Crystal Voyager the other day - the whole thing is on Youtube.
I didnt really think about where George went when he took off in the boat. Thats good to know - ta
Then there is the Pink Floyd bit with Greenough doing Go Pro decades before Go Pro.
Read 'Ghost Wave' by Chris Dixon about Cortes Bank, which as an undersea mount is part of the CI chain.
More than a surf book, an epic outdoors tale.
Fantastic book in my collection Craig, first published in 2011, 10 years. I still pull it of the shelf and read a chapter or two again in total awe
Apologies Stu :)
One of the best ocean real life tales i've ever read.
This world title will only marginally have more credibility than CJ Hobgood’s.
C'mon!
CJ was the real deal. Small waves OK but more importantly big, heaving slabby things as well as perfect big tubes like Pipe & Cloudbreak.
No criticism of CJ at all...highly respect his surfing... I just don’t consider his 9/11 shortened year a valid world title.
Amazing that second fetch produces swell in SoCal, I would have said it looks headed for Antarctica. The great circle path and radial spread eh, I learn a lot from you Craig. As for Trestles at size, I remember seeing a local saying it never closes out and holds 10 ft, but I guess that's Californian scale.
definently California style anything over 6ft starts to become burgery, the pros all say it runs with the best shape around 3-4ft
Yep, 3-4ft is the ideal size.
Thanks Adam, yeah amazing isn't it eh. Victoria and other southern states sees lots of swells from these sources. There's one such due late tomorrow afternoon in South Australia and Victoria.
Craig, would you mind explaining how great circle path works?
Here's an article Stu did.. https://www.swellnet.com/news/swellnet-analysis/2016/11/08/secret-life-…
Basically on a spherical object, the shortest path between two points isn't a straight line but curved and that's why say NW fetches in the Indian Ocean can produce swell for the South Pacific.
This is also the easiest way to debunk Flat Earth theory..
They look weird on a map because they're basically an artefact of mapping a globe onto a flat surface. Make perfect sense when plotting out paths as a string line on a scale globe though.
Yep!
That's awesome and something I had never before considered. Thanks Craig.
How do you go factoring that into your models? It must make it tricky.
For a recent comparison.
That's got the twinnie written all over it.. surely?
Same swell, but this is much more entertaining to watch than Teahupoo
I reckon Mick F. is on the first wave!
Thats pretty much as good as it gets, mehhh. It'll be smaller than that too.
Toledo will take it is my pick. A very soft world title whoever takes it though.
Fark it'd be good if Morgs produced the upset of all upsets though. Or Conner.
Bookies have Gabbie at $1.67, Italo $3.50, Toledo $6. Pretty good on those last two.
...there's that blob 'ee bit from NZ again.
Part of me wants to say I'm sick of seeing brazzo gymnastics and not surfing but my goodness Italo and Medina are pure surfers too. The talent of some of the boys is unbelievable and I just hope the waves are good for the decider. Would Cloudbreak not be the better all round venue of them all - turns, slabs, barrels, fear and stamina?
Out of the 14 cloudbreak events held it was won by goofies 9x (7 surfers).
The 5 times by naturals was Kelly 4x and Andy 1x
Then the runners ups - 11 goofies and 3 naturals
Seen as most of the tour are naturals and Kelly and AI are freaks and Kelly also had an almost unfair familiarity with the wave over others, I think it's safe to say it's too much of an advantage for the goofers.
I can’t see this going anywhere but Brazeeeeel.
I was pro Medina early on, seemed a good kid, then he turned into an unlikeable robot, then he chilled a bit and was relatable. Italo more consistent. Good on em.
Round 1: Morgs beats Conner,
Round 2: Swell pulses to 4ft+ Morgs beats Toledo as Toledo sits out the back to scared to catch a wave
Round 3: Italo drinks 18 cups of coffee and 12 redbulls and is rushed to the hospital due to a caffeine overdose, Morgs wins by default
Round 4: Gabs stops a huge twirly bird on his first wave then pulls his back muscle out doing a shitty claim. Withdraws from the remainder of competition
Morgs is world champ, the first rookie in history to take home the title. Merewether surfhouse is open bar, I'm running through the streets naked. Newy celebrates harder than the Knights 97 NRL GF win. I dont see it going any other way
Getting a tattoo of him on my ass if he wins
Nailed it.
Is Trestles a wave for massive high airs? Seems kinda low speed and slopey.
Fin first landings we all can do them
Maybe the left is more punchy.
On the open face Morgs has a prodigious carve,
Front side Fil releases a fin
but working it through to the beach never scores.
Medina goes left for the win.
I got $20 on Morgs doing a Bradbury.
I find it so hard to fathom that a WNW fetch will send 4ft waves to Trestles. Amazing!
be interesting to see how that fetch does perform.
they would have been hoping for something more like that storm-force/severe gale fetch aimed straight into the swell window like the one above.
if that only produced 4-6ft surf.....
anyhow, inconsistency is going to be the biggest factor for the day.
Yep, but remember this fetch is only generating the first swell of the episode. The secondary trailing polar low looks the one, generating this fetch and a better aligned groundswell..
So expect them to run at the end of the waiting period when this swell arrives.
for sure.
anyhow, I don't think its a classic Trestles fetch, and there have been a few lately in that corridor that have been heaps better.
incon 3ft I reckon.
which will make things v. interesting and probably reduce the number of airs.
Favours Morgs with trad power surfing.
Nah not classic, but if it plays out as forecast, I'd expect 3-4ft+ waves off that. Wait and see how it evolves.
Just to confirm... We're talking about radial spread from this WNW fetch aren't we? (not great circle). The southern tip of NZ to Trestles looks pretty direct
Yep, mostly radial spread rather than GC for the WNW fetch.
Looks like the trailing part of this progression is on track to still generate the best pulse of swell. Comment coming below.
the key factor will be how many waves in a set and how many sets in a 30 minute heat.
Geez, that’s a burger! 15ft Teahupoo, 3-4ft Trestles.
And speaking of how many sets, it reminds me of what a friend said about seemingly crowded west coast points: “it’s not how many are out, it’s how many unridden waves there are”
Like that IB
We've got model convergence (read: agreement between ECMWF and GFS) regarding the final stages of the polar frontal progression developing south-east of New Zealand, generating a strong S/SW groundswell for Monday/Tuesday the 13/14th.
While the pre-frontal W/NW gales will produce a less favourable but good swell for Saturday afternoon/Sunday, following this a much better aligned and strong low is due to form.
With it moving over an energised sea state and generating severe-gale to storm-force winds, we should see a good 3-5ft groundswell for Monday the 13th if my calculations are correct (peaking into the afternoon), similar in size Tuesday the 14th but easing. Fingers crossed winds play ball.
Sunday evening GFS..
Sunday evening ECMWF..
Woz is onto it.
"For starters, next week the esteemed WSL Final 5 will have plenty of waves to warm-up in as a shift in weather patterns in the South Pacific have ignited a string of swell-producing swell."
Nothing like a swell producing swell.
Love a bit of swell on swell action.
hahahahahaha
Anyhow 3-5ft, with a few waves in the set.
Adv: Medina.
I’m not trying to pick a winner, but Medina has never won a main tour event at Trestles. Toledo won the last WSL event held there and it is his local break.
I think Medina is more “clutch” (hate that term) and made for finals pressure
You're right, Toledo has the far better form record.
I was making a comparative call based on the f/cast.
Bigger and more consistent favours Medina relative to the rest of the field.
So Filipe will need to beat Conner or Morgan, which he will likely do, 1 heat.
Then beat Italo, 2nd heat, and a big ask.
And then surf up to 3 more heats to beat Medina.
So a maximum of 5 heats, versus Italo 4 and Medina 3. Doable :-)
I think the 4 & 5 ranked surfers have next to no hope, that includes Steph on the womens side.
Feels a bit like trying to win the AFL or NRL outside the top 4. Next to impossible and would wager this finals set up, much harder
What about the girls? Anyone got a stitch on Carissa?
I think Johanne has the calibre.
shame they couldn't have subbed MIck Fanning in as a wildcard at Trestles for the World Title.
I'd put a lazy 50 on him.
Put Jack Robbo to shame I thought. Robbo looked like a poor man’s Ethan Ewing, seemed very forced.
PS - why are these dudes (wade, Mick, Jack, etc) hanging out there? There’s only 10 surfers in the world who need to be at trestles.
There is no point them being in Australia at the moment.
Possibly for a bit of freedom ? Then slowly make their way to Hawaii ?
At least there's no risk of someone being overscored for a barrel.
Interesting vid Supafreak.
I'm sure if you were out in the water with them, fellas like Wade Carmichael and Shea Lopez would seem pretty solid but that footage shows them to be light years away from top-tier pros.
so does anyone know how the heats will work........?
Here ya go Simba..
Thanks Craig , so does that mean morgs will have to surf 4 ( if he keeps winning ) times to win the title ? And it’s all in one day yeah ?
the challenger has to take Gabs down in a best of 3
So morgs would have to surf 6 times ?
Yep! Or 5 if he wins the first two finals.
thanks Craig
Looks to be a big difference in performance potential depending on wave selection. I always thought it was a bit more mechanical than that.
5 or 6 times would be a nightmare at 10 ft Cloudbreak.
at 4ft Trestles, it's very doable.
depending on heat strategy, of course. Nailing 2 or 3 sets in a heat ala Fanning
so with the womens as well its still going to be a big day..........
How many heats in a row did Occy win at that famous Skins event at Bells?
You can do it Morgs!!!
Australia has faith in you!!!
Google answered my own question for me haha!!
Occ won 11 in a row. The year was 1997.
Come on Morgs - we are only asking for five in a row.
You can do it son!
Half hour heats x 5 or 6 .. should be no problem at all.. and they can refuel and relax in between.. when the surfs good , who wouldn’t surf at least that long..
Holy Toledo! With a forecast like that i can only see one winner.
Didn't even have to score a donut at Chopes to help elevate him to the top.
Bravo WSL!! Professional surfing has reached its loftiest of heights.
*does this year get an asterisk?
My head says Toledo, my heart says Italo, but my soul fears Gabe is going to bring it
Do I have enough bases covered?
FWIW I put $40 on Italo + Panthers at the start of the year for a $1200 pay day
Think I’ll sink it straight into airfares if it comes in
Gabe is so good at getting himself in the zone and squeezing any advantage he has. Not hard to imagine he will be on fire, especially with a full tank of gas.
I never thought I’d say this but I think I’ll feel like Gabes been hard done by if he loses. Doesn’t seem right that the world champ may not be the guy who dominated all year. (Unless it’s morgs!)