Photo: Screenshot//Youtube
Every local surf community has one thing in common, no matter where you go, no matter how difficult or easy it is to find world-class waves from that location. Without fail, they all share the belief that one premier wave in or around their hometown is as good as any other spot on the planet…on its best day(s). The scale isn’t dependent on how often those best days come. The theory is relative. Those “best days” can come multiple times every season, without fail. Those “best days” can come every El Niño winter, once in a decade, or once in a generation.
Nothing articulates this idea better than that old Step Into Liquid segment from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where a local freshwater surfer proudly proclaimed, “It’s legendary here on the Great Lakes. And on a good south day, it breaks just like Banzai Pipeline, North Shore of Oahu. We get barrels so big it’ll hide a Volkswagen.”
He was joking, of course. I think. But you get the idea.
One place where that claim isn’t a joke and those “best days” really are rare is Newport Point. It faces almost dead south in a nook of California’s sloping coast and is shielded to the west by Catalina Island, leaving a relatively narrow window for swells pushing up from the south and southeast. The best opportunities come with hurricane swells that have that bit of east in them, all creating a unique combination of conditions that A) light Newport Point up like a North Shore-looking Christmas tree, and B) are not guaranteed to come through every summer.
This past week’s run of waves along the West Coast had those unique conditions on offer and Newport Point did its thing in return. As you can see, days like this are worth storing in the memory banks so Orange County chargers can embellish their stories for years to come.
