It was the perfect mix of size, direction, and wind at one of Sydney's most infamous slabs.
But that doesn't mean it was perfect. Far from it. Every entry was a loaded proposition as steps and lips appeared at random.
There's as many falls as makes in this vid, but big props to everyone who paddled into a wave.
"That board felt like the starting point for a new life."
The inner mechanics of Russell's mind.
Sniffing out the bounty on land and at sea.
From a day with a low wave count yet high consequence.
Like a hundred social media clips joined together but not on social media.
Seeking darkness on a sunny day.
And Matahi lifts the bar yet again.
Bite size humans in king size waves.
Comments
fantastic
I wonder how they stay afloat out there with the weight of their massive balls.
Look forward to watching.
Was looking at the Manly cam on dusk yesterday, clean as a whistle. One loan warrior patiently waiting. Saw him paddle then get cleaned up by wave after wave. Managed to somehow get back out only to paddle a straight hander and get washed in.
Felt his pain.
I feel their stoke/pain! Divinyls: it's a fine line between Pleasure & Pain, this line says it all!
what a hoot ....had a good cackle at others misfortune who are way braver than me.....gutsy effort boys.
That last one :-0
A session at the chiropractor might in order for a few of the unforthunate fails?
oof, gnarly!
Fucking hell that is so good. Absolute chargers. That’s genuine big wave surfing I can watch all day, not Nazare tow-in shoulder hopping that’s boring within 30 seconds. Hats off to all who paddled out
A proper Nazare tow wave is still 4 times bigger than this. I have full respect for the guys and gals paddling and towing it at size. Getting caught inside at Nazare must be a thousand nightmares. No joke.
Full respect to the crew charging yesterday. Balls to the wall.
yeah the scale of Nazare is on another level, big tubes are more fun to watch though for me.
Yep I don’t doubt the dangerous of it and by no means would I ever get out at Nazare, but as a spectacle the deadman’s footage is far more interesting to watch, and what to me seems more like proper charging
The wave which clipped old mates head looked like the best barrel of the lot, spewing!
Wow. Such a low percentage of waves made, good on the crew giving it a dig.
So radical ... especially when they run into that shelf for the final frame
Nuts!
How bad are the wipeouts on that shelf? It seems people escape serious harm. Maybe it's flat, and the rip flushes you north to safety, but it looks fcuked up.
Tom Salveson from a few years ago:
Thanks, Stu.
Yeah, that's not a happy place - yikes!
Life threatening situation right there.....lucky to get away with that.
Wow, that last one is brutal.
Hats off to everyone giving it a crack. Balls of steel!
No guts no carnage.
Great efforts!
The unforgiving g string of death
Amazing what people will do for their 15 seconds of fame ….
If that’s not a tow wave like many others on the globe what is …
But admire the Houdini approach…..
Great TV …
I doubt they are doing it for their 15 seconds of fame warddy.
A lot of goofyfooters having a go. That would seem especially challenging.
Hats off to these thrill seekers and espec the goofy chick in the banner photo - reckon I'd put her in the Pipe event ahead of most of the 'specialists'. PS sticky wax on front of board/booties required!
That was brutal. I hate to think how that bloke on that last one got flogged. And how the bodyboarder didn't snap a vertebrae on the first one I'll never know.
One of the best clips of the year for sure.
Spoke to mate this arvo who reckons there were waves coming over the headland at Tathra yesterday. That's seriously big surf.
Some good Drone footage
https://www.instagram.com/skymonkey5/
A finer crew of surfers you’d never see … anywhere
Epic footage, I watched a lot of those rides from Winki where we were getting 10 foot wash throughs that were nearly taking everyone out. I saw 3 dudes make it all the way through to Bower, but so many smashings. To anyone that's never seen it live, it breaks directly in front of cliffs with littered with massive square sandstone boulders. Mate of mine broke vertebrea in his back in the last giant swell a couple of years back.
Harry Steele from Sandon Point taking off at 1:40 - over the step and handling it...just.
When Harry's mum sees him go done on one and get flogged
She's says thats the closest he will ever get to a Washing Machine..
Udo. Very funny, great play on words, almost choked on my lunch laughing.
We can all picture it, young son, always dumps his clothes on the floor, Australian mother’s whinge about getting no help around the house, always picking up after them, ultimately caves in and ends up in the ‘washing machine’ because they love their boys, ultimately mum is chuffed because she feels special, ah, us Australians , classic, don’t ever change Mrs Steele.
Harry killed it, never surfed and got 3 crackers in a row. Bummer none really barrelled hard.
Did you get cleaned up by any sets Craig ?
I'm very calculated so no. Had to paddle over a couple.
Tempted to have a crack one day Craig?
Never, the more I see it, and from the water, the more I want nothing to do with it haha. Like if it were just 6ft and playful maybe but it's nor true Deads then.
And you get an idea of the size from the cliff, but from the water, there's soo much more volume and it's thick throwing so wide! It's incredible, better than a Grand Final!
Mind over matter Craig. You would have the ability but maybe not the confidence. In your mind you've already failed. Those guys that seriously paddle it think they're gonna make it every time. I reckon you could throw yourself over that ledge and have a 50/50 chance of making it. Pretty good odds.
(says old has-been)
You say that because the crows lost.
Haha!
Haha fair enough. It’s a heavy looking beast.
Watching it from the water must be insane.
More footage in the silky late arvo light:
Heard 'could of made it' a few times from one guy. Then get out there!
Filthy..wishing Torren was out there ...and hoping to see some surfboard Go Pro footage from the Day.
Whoa...
That Instagram footage brought back some great memories of the early seventies when my best mate and I used to surf it a lot with a regular great kneeboard crew…not quite that big though although we had a few big challenging days. My mate and I hung out there all the time ….it was our little kingdom and we were the kings….until it got serious anyway and I remember watching the bit older guys like terry fitz up in the car park swigging on bourbon ….a few shots of liquid courage ha ha….or maybe it made em more rubbery …we’re fun days alright …lots of barrels and a lot of sea urchins dug from the body….one day I saw the biggest blue bottle in the world out there…must have been a man o war proper…a bubble much bigger than a 2 litre milk bottle and thick tentacles at least 20 ft long….probably liked eating turds as there were plenty floating out there back then…got out quick smart and watched it from the cliff. Would have been nice to have the boards we have now there as ours were crap….the only good thing was they paddled in really good but it was all dodgy after that.
were the kneelos simon farrer and michael novakov? absolute rippers!
I think there's really good footage of them surfing deadmans in the late 80s in "water slaughter". but a I couldn't find the footage in a quick flick through it.
Can't believe how many takers on that evil chunk of ocean! Great viewing from my comfy office! ;)
Is there a Wax issue at Manly?
Water was still very turbid and would have made things a bit more slippery than normal.
True, Heavy stuff. Just taking the piss and power to them getting stuck in..
More raw footage, and well worth clicking to see what may have been at the 3:00 min mark.
The biggest wave ever caught in Sydney?
Big! (But from memory Lachie Rombouts at Avalon, Black NE 2016, bigger.)
Yeah, I think you might be right there.
Could well be completely wrong, Stu. But that one was seared into my memory.
stu i rode a 14m swell a few years back., outside island phantoms , i have a feeling it was a tiny bit bigger. the waves big, but not the biggest ridden in sydney
Do you have any idea what the dates were of that swell? as far as i know the biggest east coast swells ive seen on paper are around 7-8 metres.
Just curious and i could be wrong.
i have a screenshot of 6/6/2012 from an 8-14m swell i was testing a gps / wave measuring device.
unfortunately the data was corrupted/ deleted.
there have been others though, been a few swells in the last 10 years up in that range
Very good Marcus. The max wave height recorded on that swell was 13.8m. However the significant wave height was 5.3m @ 11s and 179 deg. Where as last Saturday's swell max wave height was 10.44m and significant wave height of around 5.5m @ 9.6s and about 160 deg (the buoy dropped out for a few hours very early morning). The max wave height could be the one in 10,000 wave, so not really a measure of what you might experience in a 2 hour session, significant wave height is a much better measure of a swell I reckon.
I heard a lad hit Bronte on his own, and ended up un Tamarama after a few waves.
I wonder if anyone tried German Bank, surely would have been the biggest waves in Sydney on that swell ? There was a couple of pics of queens cliff bombie floating around, but no one out at the time.
is that a girl taking the drop above ?
Sure is. Annie Dos Santos. 20-years old.
Interview coming tomorrow.
Good stuff .....looking forward to it
Too scary for me to even think about, great viewing though, I was captivated.
Throaty bugger
Brutal. Hats off to anyone who had a crack, looks particularly lethal backhand.
Looks like the heaviest wave on the northern beaches in my lack of knowledge of Sydney.
I know down south there's cape fear which seems more deadly but this wave seems to handle bigger.
Deadman compilation
Deadmans Enema
Hey Udo, can you embed that drone footage one?
That one is making me sign up to instagram to watch it, and hey, I’m over 40!
Embed.... shit ....Im on my Max capabilities now
Sign up to insta just use your mobile number no need to give any other Details.
Ha ha ha, you’re so far ahead of me I can’t see the dust your raising. :-)
Embed, like every other Insta post you do where we can click on it here and watch it, like you have done 3 or 4 other times on this thread alone.
Pretty sure I went to sign up for Insta ages ago and like Spotify you have to give them access to all your media for all time plus your firstborn. Fuck that.
Cheers.
Ahh me now aaa understando..i put link up to the Fellas whole insta page.
Did anyone surf Solander on the Saturday?
Hey Craig, I take back what I said above. Looking at todays mutant WOTD, no way on earth I'd want a piece of that even if I could wind back the clock to peak me.
Right! Ha.
Peak me. That was a while ago, hey zen. Can barely remember what ‘peak me’ was, or when.
Hey Craig, did you remember to put the batteries in the camera before paddling out this time?
The site who must not be named has some great photos from this swell too.
Pornhub?
Nice.
Is this Saturday and Sunday going to be a Replay of this Swell ?
Chook, I didn’t know the guys names except the Ware boys from friar tuck but their team guys and friends were always there as winki was a fav slab for them and my mate and I loved it too on our standups . We were regulars there until it got real big then the chargers like my cousin on his big twin pin and pro crew would come out and push deeper into what used to be called “Bluefish”…now deadman’s…I liked the design of the knee boards so much that I got the ware boys to make me a standup board with channels and adjustable single fin. It was much shorter than the boards of the day and went insane compared to the things I had been riding so thanks to the knee boarders eh…
What year you talking Optimist...like to hear more about the Big Twin Pin
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Full Screen this
Wow he did very well on that! Epic
Almost went too high. Inside rail held well when it readjusted.
Great effort.
Up the playback speed to 2.
Udo pretty sure he had that big red twin pin board about 1973 to 1976 from my faded memory…. I was 16 in 73 and stopped surfing there at 17 when I got the Morris major city escape machine. It was around the same time I nearly died out there getting caught by a 15 ft rogue. What you don’t see in pics is the waves are as thick as they are big and also you can think it’s one size and the rogues double. Something about the geography as I’ve never seen rogues as rogue anywhere else like that place.
Awesome, and bathymetry is the word.
Epic look at a rare break... salute udo & crew for raw bonus clips...good as it gets!
From Roadside pick up to this........unreal
Encore Tribute to swellnet crew...thanx for sharing.
Deadmans Vid collection dated Sat 2nd April