Hurricanes Bring Out Soup Bowl’s Scary Side

Barbados produces more than just Rihanna. 

In his latest edit, “Unseen Session”, Josh Burke and friends experience the more ferocious side of Soup Bowl, stirred up by the hurricanes that have been slamming the region. 

The waves in the second half of this edit are not dissimilar to what we saw in The Best Surfing I’ve Ever Seen with Taylor Steele. In 2005 — a month before Kelly began his would-be 7th World Title season — Taylor filmed a run of swell at Soup Bowl so good that it made Kelly exclaim, “If I could repeat this day for the rest of my life I would.” 

Cell phones get bigger, skinny jeans die, sea levels rise, but Soup Bowl’s underwater bathymetry remains the same. It’s still a near-perfect righthander, with just enough flaws to make it genuinely entertaining to watch.

So, if the wave is that good, why hasn’t there been a World Tour event at Soup Bowl? Well, the region is plagued by steady bouts of onshore flow. Think of North Shore wind, but instead of side-offshore, it’s 15 knots side-onshore 350 days a year.

Nonetheless, I’d wager that most World Tour surfers (even Goofies) would rather deal with the wind and exchange slabby barrels for hacks than take turns wiggling their way to the Surf Ranch cement in 105° heat. Food for thought.