Surfcore Hits the Sweet Spot
Every surfer knows the feeling. Despite charts that say the surf will be pumping, you arrive at the beach to find little more than knee-high chop. Your friends, who have relied on you because, foolishly, you have professed expertise in the art of chart-reading, eye you as if wondering whether to throw you over the nearest cliff. In vain, you protest, saying that the charts clearly indicated an open-ocean swell of at least five foot. “Then why are we looking two-foot onshore dribble?” say your friends. There is no answer. The charts, and you, have failed again.
One solution to this is the webcam, but often enough these are fallible, too. They are usually too far from the beach, and of such indifferent quality, to give a reliable indication of what the surf is really like. Of course, a degree of pain and frustration – of turning up only to have one’s hopes of a good session annihilated – is an essential part of the surfing ritual, functioning as an appetiser for the swell that finally hits at just the right time. But, rather as a lover can tantalise just a little too much, pleasure deferred too long becomes, well, irritating. Even surfers have schedules, commitments, jobs – and we need a solid source of near-shore info to ensure that a surf trip does not become simply a waste of time.
Help could be at hand with a new website, www.surfcore.co.uk. Set up in February by Aberystwyth surfer Sam Blackmore, surfcore bills itself as having “the most accurate surf forecasts for UK surf spots.” This site has a cool-grey sheen that nicely mirrors the experience of surfing in the UK, and Blackmore is adamant that it does what it says on the tin. Born in New Zealand, where he spent much of his surfing years, Blackmore has utilised experience gained during a degree in software engineering at the University of Aberystwyth to provide near-shore forecasts. As he puts it: “There can be a gap of 400 miles from an open-water buoy used for a swell reading to land. What might register in open-water as a five-foot swell has to travel over rocks, troughs and gullies before it hits land, and en route it will be susceptible to local currents and wind conditions. What we do is measure the swell near-shore, so that if we say the surf is three-foot and clean, that’s what it is.”
It sounds to be good to be true, but surfcore has a growing community of surfers who swear by it. A sure sign that Blackmore is onto something is also apparent when he tells me that he cannot, just yet, disclose on the record how he acquires his data. But what he tells me off the record sounds almost as reliable as the system deployed by my friends and I over 20 years ago, when we would be setting off from south Devon for a north Devon surf. We would call the Tiki surf shop in Braunton. Their word was gospel, unless it was really on, when they would become unaccountably prone to understatement - as when we decided to chance the 90 minute drive for surf described as “OK, about two-to-three foot, yeah, just about surfable, not bad I suppose,” to find immaculate lines of five-foot swell glistening in the sun, caressing the beach with barely anyone out.
Surf forecasting is a funny old business, but it looks like Sam Blackmore and surfcore may have got it wired.
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