2016 has been a pretty wild year for waves. A month and a half in and we’ve seen everything from flawless Pipe to Jaws and Mavs jostling to outdo each other. We’ve witnessed California’s El Nino season, freezing cold perfection in North Carolina and New York, and here on the east coast of Oz, what many are calling the best summer in years. It’s been a hell of a run, and if global weather patterns continue on and Huey keeps up the party, it’s one that could see us again watching the world’s best surfers in the world’s best conditions.
Snapper’s been unbelievable of late, let’s face it. With three distinct tropical cyclones forming in the south pacific within a couple of weeks, people have been getting shacked for whole street blocks. First there was Cyclone Vic with its dredging barrels and ruthless crowds, and Mick Fanning was dropping in on some bloke and getting tubed all the way to Greenmount, and now another run of cyclone swell’s been freighting down the points and word on the border is this one’s even better. Instagram and the like are alive at the moment with photos and clips from the famous Queensland stretch, and what we’re seeing is pretty damn impressive—seven barrels on one wave, ten-second tunnels, drone angles of the perfectly groomed sand and enough Mick Fanning footage to fill a 60 Minutes sequel. But the question starting to form on everybody’s lips is, what’s going to happen once the Quiky Pro comes to town?
If the last two years are anything to go by, not a lot. 2015’s event was chest-high at most and a long way from pumping. Toledo put on an astonishing small-wave performance, but aside from that, the highlight for most people was Freddy P destroying his board on a rock out of sheer frustration. And 2014 wasn’t much better. In fact, the waves have been pretty mediocre at the tour opener for a while now. We’ve seen some amazing surfing, and that smoking Kirra final between Joel and Kelly back in 2013, but it seems a long time since we’ve watched heat after heat go down in the kind of waves that earned the place a name like the Superbank.
Still, it definitely looks promising. Although we’re too far out to have any idea what conditions will be like come March 10, with the kind of sand currently on display and the year of surf we’ve had so far, it’s not a huge stretch to say 2016 could be the year the Quiksilver Pro comes back to life. And I don’t think any of us will be complaining, especially not those lucky few whose job it is to pull into barrels the rest of us could only dream of scoring to ourselves for thirty minutes.
Fingers crossed.
