Of all the many waves that litter Western Australia’s coastline, a few really stand out. The Box is one of them. It stands out because it’s a wave that’ll take your head off just as easily as it will give you a ride you’ll never forget. Italo Ferreira can attest. It was just a few years ago that he managed to snag a wave there that blew everyone’s minds… and he did it without ever having surfed the place before. He’d never surfed there in a contest, in a free surf, not at any time at all. It was his very first wave, and it was insane.
“Surfing the Box can be tricky,” Sheldon Simkus told Red Bull. “It’s one of those waves where it can be surfed in a few different swell directions and winds, but is a whole lot easier to surf when the conditions are near perfect. SW or W swell with NE Winds and a rising tide is pretty close to perfect for surfing the Box – or close to it anyway.”
As you likely know, the box is across the bay from Margaret River’s Main Break. It’s fickle, fast, and very, very dangerous. Short and sweet, as they say, and if you make it out of one of those tubes, it’s the sweetest of them all.
Since the World Surf League is in town for its Australian leg, it’s likely that many of the surfers’ eyes were on The Box. Fingers were crossed and breaths were bated in hopes that the fickle wave would turn on. Their prayers were answered recently. John John Florence, Conner Coffin, Griffin Colapinto, Seth Moniz, Jordy Smith, Leo Fioravanti and a few locals paddled out as Mother Nature hit the on switch. And Alasdair Evans, a man whose work we know and love here at The Inertia, was there to capture it on camera.
See more from Alasdair Evans on YouTube and Instagram, and keep your eye on the World Surf League’s Margaret River event on WorldSurfLeague.com
