The Cronulla beaches were home to both the long and short of it on the weekend with the running of the annual Southside Malibu Club's Spring Classic and the Elouera Boardriders' Carve Dunny Bowl, both supported by sponsor WillettJohnston Partners.
The surf conditions, which had been excellent for weeks, let competitors down with only a small swell on offer for both days.
The longboarders had the best bank on Saturday surfing at the North Cronulla Alley though the onshore wind didn't help surfers make the most of the small, crumbly waves.
Comeback king Brad Whittaker won the open 9' Mal edging out Grant Ferguson who also took the over-30s title. Samantha Walker beat her rivals in the open women's final, with Bruce Turnley the open 8ft champ.
Jayben Pay took the junior title and sponsor Grant Audsley the weight for age division. Paul Detmold won the over-50s division and evergreen John Skinner the over-60s.
At Elouera, the Carve Dunny Bowl was a big two-day event with 146 competitors ploughing through seven different surfing divisions and 50 heats before the finals on Sunday afternoon.
The waves showed more promise on the second day of competition picking up to three foot with clean offshore conditions before once again deteriorating with the combination of low tide and onshore winds making for a tough day at the office for surfers and judges.
Evie Fisher won the 10-years female final while Zai Brown took out the under-13 male final in a dominate display. As was the Masters final when former pro Ryan Alagich topped the score over Elouera's Scotty Baxter.
It got tougher as the afternoon progressed with Lily McDonald snatching the junior women's final from April Davey. In the most exciting finish top seed and favorite Jarvis Earle, who was behind for the entire heat, caught a wave with 20 seconds to go pulling off two turns before falling. But it was just enough to topple Cronulla Boardriders' surfers Oliver Watson and Dane Decoque for the winner's cheque.
It was a big day for Lily who, fresh off her victory in the junior female division, also took out the open women's final over Kiara Meredith and Rachel McKendrick.
The open men's was a nightmare for judges when the six surfers chose three different banks making it an almost impossible task to differentiate surfing comparisons. In the end Jared Hickel won with a score of 16.8 over Cronulla's Hayden Blair and former winner Drew Courtney.
Cronulla Girls Boardriders also held their club round on Sunday with victory to Sam Dewhurst over Jaz Turner in A Grade and Rochelle Smith winning the B final-Sam Babister won the U 16's and Sam also won the Malibu final over Georgia Morrow.
There hasn't been anything to write about so far this week for Cronulla surfers with a small session on Monday morning the pick until the southerly blew through leaving us with 3 days of onshore rain and wind chop.
The forecast also isn't pretty with a massive increase in the swell overnight with out of control 6-8 ft bombs rolling through all over the beach so today's surfing is probably out of the question.
As fast as the swell picked up its due to drop leaving us with 3-5 ft wind affected waves on Thursday and for the rest of the week finally going offshore on Sunday-just in time for the new week which cant be worse than the one we just had-good luck.
An Aloha Cup victory and valuable time together as a group, highlighted Team Australia's campaign at the 2019 ISA World Surfing Games presented by Vans where with a total of three medals across the Men's and Women's Division, Team Brazil emerged victorious.
With mixed results in the main individual draw, the six Australian teammates of Owen Wright, Julian Wilson, Ryan Callinan, Sally Fitzgibbons, Stephanie Gilmore, and Nikki Van Dijk showed great support for each other, backing each other's performances and following up with an exciting gold medal-winning team result in the Aloha Cup Final.
Sally Fitzgibbons was the best-placed Australian female surfer, only one heat away from making the final.
The Gold for Team Brazil is their first in 19 years, not having been crowned World Surfing Games Champion since the 2000 edition of the event.
Aside from Italo Ferreira's Gold medal , Brazil finished with two other individual medals. Gabriel Medina took the Bronze in the Men's Division and Silvana Lima took Silver in the Women's Division.
The Team Silver Medal went to USA, led by an individual Silver Medal performance from Kolohe Andino and a Copper Medal from Carissa Moore.
The 2018 Gold Medalist Team Japan earned the Bronze, while the Copper Medal went to Team Peru-Australia finished in SIXTH spot-its going to be a long Olympics.
