INCOMING!!!!!

[oldmansurfer]

I hope you are stocked up on beer. Category 5 is going to be devastating. I bet they will have to cancel the WSL contest because there won't be power and roads and places to stay. Hoping you will stay safe dude. Looking at a map it seems like the hurricane will decrease in force by the time it reaches the area where the WSL meet will be so maybe that will still go

[drowningbitbybit]

Damn thing has slowed down... not even here yet!
And apparently just getting stronger as it waits.

Fairly breezy at the moment, but it's the rain that's the main thing... about 100mm in the last few hours with another 24+ hrs to go...

Think we're gonna flood...


(Never really used the 'scared' emoticon before, so at least some good is coming out of this)

[oldmansurfer]

Let us know if you are ok and most importantly if your surfboards are ok

[drowningbitbybit]

Well, it made landfall as a category 5. Pretty bad a bit further north.

Down here, we've got a LOT of rain happening right now, even more happening tomorrow, and the remnants of the cyclone won't even hit us until tomorrow morning.

It's was a bit of an anti-climax this morning... we thought we'd be waking up to its full fury, but its moving much slower than originally thought. Unsure whether it'll fade out before it gets to us or whether we'll get battered on Saturday.

Rain though we have. Looking like flooding tomorrow.
Boards safely out of harms way, but within easy reach in case I need them to cross the street to the pub

[dtc]

Hope you didn't buy tickets to the cricket

Was bad up north and the islands. Scary but no one hurt I think. fingers crossed

[dtc]

snapper still looks, well, crowded. But tempting

[BaNZ]

wow... that photo looks crazy, I've never seen anything like this before. Not only is it crowded, but the line up is all over the place.

[jaffa1949]

Ah BaNz we have to get you to a real surf spot , when it is firing like that you can if you are good enough catch a wave from as far out as you see to well past what you see in the foreground.
THE SUPERBANK
You can also ride just a segment and other people down the line get a wave too.

You would can get thoroughly barrelysed, there is carnage too as a lot of learners and tourists attempt the wave.

[dtc]

wow... that photo looks crazy, I've never seen anything like this before. Not only is it crowded, but the line up is all over the place.

Actually it's not that crowded for that spot. I think the weather reports scared some people away...

[oldmansurfer]

good to hear you are all well ....and that the pub is right across the street.

[billie_morini]

Now how is it, Drowning? The media In the US routinely sensationalize news about storm severity. It's common to report the world will end.

[drowningbitbybit]

Survived Marcia!

Down in the south of QLD we dodged the worst of it, but further north got completely battered. Down here, there's been some flooding, and we've still got gales and torrential rain, but I think we're about over it now.

The world didn't end, but it's only the 5th time a Category 5 has made landfall in QLD, plus there was another completely separate cyclone in the Northern Territories, so it was reasonably sensational

Surf has been up and down (or rather up and very up), with brief moments of superb surf, but mostly just huge storm surf. The only guys out at my local have been using jetski assist, not so much to tow them onto the waves, but to put them back into position after each wave because the sweep along the coast is just impossible to paddle against. Not for me...

Now I'd quite like the wind and rain to stop, as I need to sort out the flooding in my studio and tidy up all the fallen branches in the garden.

[Jester]

Just love how that guy is going for a Sunday morning jog through the fourth wave on the right.. 'Mornin' chaps.. Carry on'

[dtc]

Survived Marcia! :

Good to hear, and good to hear that up north it was just property not people

A bit of anger over the use of jet skis in crowded breaks, I gather. Not surprising

[drowningbitbybit]

A bit of anger over the use of jet skis in crowded breaks, I gather. Not surprising

i saw some of that today and thought it was a bit odd. Big crowd down at snapper and kirra. Kirra in particular was huge with some world-class surfers getting double-overhead barrels... but there was half a dozen tow teams in and out of the line up as well

Surf was phenomenal - but the the cross-offshore wind (40+ km/h) and sheer volume of moving water meant that people were getting in at snapper, and then getting out again 10 minutes later on the far side of kirra whether they'd got a wave or not (most hadn't). There was a constant line of hundreds of surfers walking back along from kirra back to snapper to start again. It looked quite silly...

[oldmansurfer]

After the last hurricane, Iniki, I was so busy working on my business making sure it was all squared away that I didn't have time to go check on my house. I spent the duration of the hurricane at work and stayed there tiding up an securing stuff. But a friend of mine went to my house a couple days after the hurricane once we heard they had cleared the road to that area. My friend chain sawed a path to my house from the driveway and my wife and mother wen there to cleanup. Right before the hurricane I caught a 35 pound amberjack so my freezer was full of melted rotting fish. Turns out the fridge decided to take that opportunity to die so I had to go get another fridge which I ran on a generator since we didn't have power there for 6 weeks. The house, a rental, was still basically intact and still water proof which is amazing since it was a hundred year old plantation house. Two huge mango trees had fallen on it during the hurricane which I am sure is the only reason it didn't blow away. One tree fell on one side when the wind was blowing one way then the other tree fell on the other side after the eye passed and the wind was blowing the other way. But the damage that occurred got the insurance company to put in a new roof and floor. The only good thing about that house was it had gas water heater and stove so while we used a generator for electricity for over a month we still had hot water to shower in and a working stove.