Surf Search & Photos – The Wairarapa, New Zealand – The Art of Night

Surf Search & Photos – The Wairarapa, New Zealand

A lot of the time, good waves around Wellington in New Zealand are hard to come by. But if you are prepared to hit the road & do a little searching, you can certainly score some great waves.

I began watching the swell forecast earlier in the week, & things were looking promising with a fairly intense low heading north off the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Earlier forecasts were for 3-4m swells, but by the time the weekend came around the forecast was downgraded to 2.5m swells. The decision was to either stay in Wellington & hope for waves at Lyall Bay, or head on over to the Wairarapa & try & score much bigger & better surf.

Saturday morning came, & after a early morning check of Lyall, it was clear that I’d be better off heading over the hill to the Wairarapa. I packed the car ready for anything, & started off on the drive that would take just over 2 hours to the first surf break I was going to check out. The wind was blowing quite strongly from the NW when I got there, so I shot some photos & then headed on to the east coast where I knew it would be more protected. As I arrived on the east coast, I knew I had made the right decision. There were a only handful of guys out, & the waves on the point were pretty clean & a good 4 foot plus on the sets.

I ended up surfing a few breaks around that area over the two days, & I shot a heap of photos & some video too. Below is a slide show of just 28 of the photos I shot. You can watch the slide show & click on the photos to be taken to a larger version of it, of you can click here to go to the gallery. I’ll be definitely heading back that way next time there’s swell…

Surf Search Wairarapa | 3-4th July 2010 – Images by Mark Gee