Surfing is an interesting thing, isn’t it? Getting to know a certain spot is often a life-long endeavor, and it’s one that you’ll likely never get fully dialed. Waves are affected by myriad things, and each one of those things is constantly changing. The direction could be identical to a previous swell, but the tide is higher. The tide might be identical to last week’s session, but the wind is blowing side shore. Kelly Slater is a man who likely knows Uluwatu better than most, but on October 11th, it wasn’t the perfect reeling left it’s so famous for. It was a chunkier version, fatter and windy. “It was a shifty, windswept lineup with plenty of closeouts over shallow reef,” wrote Surfers of Bali, “but the payoff was the odd one that funneled down the reef before an unforgiving end section.”
Kelly showed up later in the afternoon and kept busy. He took off on a bunch, but even the GOAT couldn’t navigate the weird lineup all that well. “All that well,” of course, is relative. He still managed to find himself inside a few barrels and bashed a few big turns. And as always, he put on a show.
Subscribe to Surfers of Bali here.
