Cronulla’s competitive surfers had a big weekend with the running of the 2018 Spring Classic and the Carve Dunny Bowl.
The average weather and poor surf conditions on Saturday didn't deter the Mal riders. The Southside Malibu Club had two heats up and running at North Cronulla before the ‘Dunnies’ had even put up a tent.
The finals ran on the low tide peak but all the competitors made the most of their waves with Matt Mulder and Samantha Oaks winning the M/F open eight-foot Mal, Grant Fereguson the open nine-foot, evergreen Michael Cottier the over-60s, Tim Vanderlaan the over-55s, Paul Detmold the over-35s and John Skinner the handicap division.
The Carve Dunny Bowl, Elouera Boardriders Club’s premier club contest running for the sixth time, ran through a day of heats up the beach before culminating in the inaugural EBC Charity Plunge.
The well-supported tag team event raised almost $10,000 for Headspace Miranda. Thanks to all who supported this local surfing initiative.
It was taken out by the red hot Gromsquad Team led by pro Stu Kennedy and had Jarvis Earle, Maxime Rayor, Blake Sawtell and Jay Brown doing the hard work. This team also won the award for highest fundraisers.
The Sunday finals were held in small but clean offshore waves where CT surfer Kennedy showed his experience taking out the super competitive open final.
Kathryn Ward won the open women's division, Jarvis continued on his way taking out the juniors and Finbar O’Leary made a comeback winning the Masters.
The inaugural Surf Ranch Pro presented by Hurley has run in Lemoore, California with the world’s best surfers taking on inland California’s man-made wave, the Surf Ranch.
Surfing in a format new to the Championship Tour, the qualifying rounds saw each athlete surf six waves (three lefts and three rights) over three runs (made up of one left and one right consecutively). The best scoring right and the best scoring left are added together to create each athlete’s total score.
After the first day Cronulla surfer Connor O’Leary was sitting in seventh position on 13.56 behind Kelly Slater, the wave’s co-creator and 11-time WSL Champion, but his 5.83 points on his best left were never going to be big enough to kick him into the final.
A 6.4 on his final wave kept him in the hunt but it was still a good result for O’Leary finishing in 13th place and keeping him in touch with the World Tour leaderboard.
It was won by Hawaiian Carissa Moore in the womens and Gabriel Medina (BRA) on the men's side.
The victory is the first of the season for Moore and sees the three-time WSL Champion take home 10,000 points and move up one place to World No. 4 on the Jeep Leaderboard with two events remaining in the women’s CT season.
Runner up Steph Gilmore will retain the yellow Jeep Leader Jersey and has increased her lead over Peterson heading into the Roxy Pro France.
Medina takes home his second CT win of 2018 with victory at the Surf Ranch Pro, now earning back-to-back wins against the world’s best. The 2014 WSL Champion narrowed the gap between him and Jeep Rankings Leader Filipe Toledo (BRA) with his 11th career CT win.
It's been an average week for Cronulla surfers ,with onshores and a small intermittent swell that started from the south and moved around to the north with the new nor'easter thats been blowing.
Seasons are changing with some 2ft north swell today but the water temp is still hovering around the 15 mark making it hard work for the early.
The forecast shows this 1-2 ft east tending swell is all we have this week until later,with some early morning offshores before the dreaded onshore does its business, all we can hope is that this swell builds some banks on the beach before a new 2-4ft south swell turns up on Sunday.
