Off to the Gold Coast

Waiting period for the Quiksilver Pro - Gold Coast begins on Friday, so a perfect time for us to highlight the breaks that the Top 45 will be calling home for the next couple of weeks. From the forecasts D'bah may have more to offer than Snapper, but here's our breakdown of both waves for you anyway.

"Snapper Rocks: The start point of the longest right-hand barrel machine on earth. The Snapper section gets more swell than Kirra, often delivering a hard-breaking take-off, leading to a makeable section and race-track. Can link up across Rainbow and Greenmount for record breaking shack time. Current is mad so get a wave quick and walk back up the beach. Advanced. Crowds? Ah Yeah!"

"Duranbah: Consistent, peaky L & R beach breaks up and down the beach due to sand deposited out of Tweed River mouth. Quite powerful and punchy with some shore dump. Best in 3-6ft SE swells. Very crowded with a heavy local scene. All standards. Consistent. If it's huge, you may see the Tweed Bar from here, outside rights and lefts way off-shore."

Click here for more surf spots around Australia.

Competing Theories

The 2010 pro surf season is well under way, with a good half dozen WQS events completed. Both CJ Hobgood and Taj Burrow have already won and are looking in good shape for the start of the Dream Tour this Saturday with the Quiksilver Pro at Snapper on Oz's Gold Coast. We thought this would be a perfect time to break out some pearls of wisdom from old & current pro's on heat preparation & competition.

Luke Egan on preparation: "Eliminate everything from your mind except what you need to zero in on. Your board, food, heat time, leashes, wetsuit, girlfriend and personal issues should all be taken care of way early. When your heat comes you just need to focus on strategy and conditions."

Occy on staying in a groove: "Competition will make you superstitious. Every athlete in every sport does little things to give himself what he thinks is an edge. I'll start out with a routine, with a certain pair of boardshorts, a way of putting everything in place. And if I win, I just keep doing the same thing; I won't change my boardshorts or tee shirt colour, I'll stay with that same routine, the same board. And I'll change it all up if I'm off. People won't usually talk about it, but they all have something they use to get in the zone. If it works, use it. And keep winning."

Taj Burrow on winning: "Here's a key thing I've learned - you only need to win 6 heats to win the contest. One thing you don't want to do is look at the whole pack. I get to a contest and see the top 44 and it can psyche me out. I look at everyone's form and it's intimidating. They are all so good, it's easy to get down on yourself if you aren't surfing in perfect form. The secret: just surf your heat. I've had victories when I wasn't the best guy in the contest. I just concentrated on beating six guys, not 44. That's all it takes."

Kindly taken from Jim Kempton's "Surfing The Manual: Advanced"

Mavericks Is On

Not wanting to miss out on this winter's XXL wave action, the contest at Mavericks was finally called "On" and will be firing it up at 8am PST on Saturday ... that's 4pm UK time. This wave has a storied history and has provided some classic pics & vids over the years. Winner of the last Mavericks contest was Greg Long, who also won the "Eddie" in December, and he's in Heat 3 along with the likes of Carlos Burle, Brock Little and Kenny "Skindog" Collins.

All 24 riders know the wave well, but for those of you who don't here's our take on it.

"Mavericks: Hairy paddle out from south side of Pillar Point. Current sucks you south of the peak and you have to scrabble. Some go by boat from the harbour.

Way out to sea, Mavericks bowls up almost cartoon-like over a deep ledge reef in a minimum 10ft of swell. It forms impossibly steep, concave drops, and for this reason really needs to be surfed on the glassiest, cleanest of days. It does fade into a channel, but controlling the drop well enough to set a rail and get there is why experts / total hell-men only need apply. 10-35ft. Tight crew of tough guys. Fall / Winter. Supreme danger. Spectators only."

Click here for more info on surf spots around the US & Hawaii

Porthleven Firing

The expected swell arrived down in the UK's south west over the weekend and conditions at many spots were awesome. Porthleven is known to be one of the UK's best spots, and it was absolutely pumping on Saturday ... click here for pics, vid clip is at the end.

Here's our brief take on Cornwall's finest:

"Fickle, splendid wave. Known for its hollow rights over a flat rock shelf, it gets sucky at low to mid tide, when pretty square barrels are possible. Higher tides are OK too but dead high is often rippy, back-washed and flat. Needs very big west, or solid / big southwest swell. 3-10ft plus. Advanced! Crowded if it ever gets on in summer. Can get awesome."

Click here for more info on surf spots around the UK & Ireland.

Weekend in Cornwall Anyone?

Everyone's excited about a nice big winter swell that's heading for the UK this weekend and into next week. Charts on Magicseaweed are predicting a 16.5ft swell hitting Fistral on Saturday morning, and if the winds play ball even The Cribber might show up. The UK surf mags Carve & Wavelength are hyping it up and will no doubt be keeping us all updated with reports, pics and clips.

So, when the swell hits, where's the best spot to head out to? For somewhere easy to get to and with plenty of parking we'd be off to Newquay's Fistral Beach, the most well known spot in the area:

"Signs all through the town of Newquay, huge carpark on the beach.

The most famous surfing beach in England. Whilst reef breaks and some coves may get better waves, the probability of getting good waves on any given day of the year is higher here than just about anywhere.

South Fistral works through all tides, with good lefts and some rights. It's a bit more protected on bigger days with a southwest wind. North Fistral is often bigger, and gets hollow at low tide, especially off the rocks at the top end, where there's usually one of the best left and right peaks. Little Fistral, right around the corner, and almost swallowed up at high tide, can have great shape too on low to mid. Autumn swells from NW-W are best but it is consistent all year round. 1-8ft, intermediate +. Crowds in the summer and plenty of room in the winter.

The Cribber, out the back of Towan Head off Cribber Rock, is a fickle off-shore reef for hell-men, although it rarely breaks in a rideable way. It needs a very big groundswell in the 8-12ft range to show, and perfect south-east offshore breeze to hold shape. In these conditions it'll hold any size."

Click here for more info on surf spots around the UK & Ireland.