AUGUST, "Starting with the right foot."

  And the month of August arrived and for the stoke of the crew the beggining was on a right foot... on the 5th the swell started with 4 feet and by lunch time Uluwatu had sets of solid 10 feet at the Bommies and Outside Corner.

  At the same time Padang-padang had sets of 5 to 6 feet inconsistent and the same happened at Impossibles, Bingin and Dreamland and by what i heard only at Balangan there was solid sets of a good size; Again the swell arrived with a lot of south influence that made Padang and the spots at Bingin area miss the bigger sets that were going straight from Uluwatu to Balangan.

  At Uluwatu very few were the takers but the show was great... at the Bommies and Outside Corner the waves were breaking with a lot of power under the influence of a strong offshore wind that made the waves break top to bottom regardless of their size making some big barrels specially at the lowest tide of the day...it was kind of heavy...

  Amongst those that faced the beasts were: Uluwatu local Made Lana, the residents Bruce Hansell from Hawaii, Cacho from Puero Rico/Hawaii, Myself, Andy Campbell from Tasmania, Michael Rommelse, and those who were fortunate to be at Uluwatu on such a good day like my friends Rainos Hayes from Hawaii and Michael from San Diego (again dropping many on his 5'9 toy) besides few others.

  Some boards were broken and good stories of sets on the head were taken as memories.

  On mid afternoon after finishing a long wave from the Bommies to the Outside Peak i saw Made Lana and Rainos not far at the line up at the Outside Corner...i paddle to were they were and we started talikg about the waves; they were curious to know how was the Bommie that looked a bit bigger than the Outside Corner...suddenly, while we were talking the biggest set of the day showed up in front of us out of nowhere...a long wall of ate least 10 feet solid was marching towards us on an absurd speed....we paddled hard and made it duckdiving on the limit thru the first one with Rainos a bit further out while me and Lana were a little behind and to top it of i was depper than anyone...The bomb that came behind was bigger and there was no way to duckdive on that one...we paddled as fast as we could but at about 5 meters from the wave what i saw was a heavy and thick lip that was falling making a heavy barrel of at least 10 feet solid that was about to explode on my head and Lana's while Rainos was making it on the limit again...what happened next was a session of getting smashed hard, visit to the dark room, a good time on the laundry machine and finally a climb on the leash (after a few frustrated tries when the rip would pull me back down for some more rounds of pounding) to get to the surface just in time to see the third one landing on my head again...one more visit to the dark room but this time the beating was something i haven't felt in a long time...maybe because i was caught on the surface and not diving, the violence of this one was just animal...i didn't have time to take a deep breath but thanks God i had time to take a mini breath before the next one landed on me, otherwise i'm not sure...i was down for what seemed to be an eternity while Rainos said a prayer for me (he later told me that when he saw that i didn't come up after the second wave and saw the lip of the third landing right where the nose of my board was sticking out of the water showing that things were ugly down there, he sat on his board and saied a prayer for me, thanks brudda,
appreciatted!!)

  Thanks God the others behind this one were smaller and i had time to climb the leash and catch my breath and coff some water out before they arrived...My 8'2 was history and snapped in half same as Bruce's 8'1 that had snapped half hour earlier copping some sets on the head at Outside Peak.

  I went back home quickly and took my 7'2 wich was the biggest board i had left and ran back to the Bommie to make up for a bit of the lost i had...the barrels were still breaking and Rainos couldn't believe when he saw me back there again...the end of the day was all time and we suirfed some solid 10 feet waves am,ongst a group of half a dozen friends... even Rainos said that the power on some of the waves were similar to Waymea.

  And thats how another day of great waves ended up on the island of the Gods with that feeling of mission acomplished.

  On Sunday the swell dropped to 8 feet and the Outside Corner was just "INTERNATIONAL", again we scored...at night Rainos invited me to go as his guide on a trip to Desert Point and we ended up going me, him and my friend "Potato" but that is another story that will be told on the next column...have a good surf, WELCOME AUGUST!!!

Rodrigo "Digone"