Brian Toth, Middles, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico can get hot. Real hot. Just ask photog Ryan Miller, who described the temperature during a recent two-day trip down there as “Like, 100, 000 degrees”. Ryan, Brian Toth and Peter Mendia punched down there hoping to catch a slice of Hurricane Igor’s swell, scoring some pretty solid waves with not many out. The trip was last minute. As Ryan says: “I was at home, and bought a ticket about two hours before I left. We came down here for two days real quick on a red-eye flight, got in at three o’clock in the morning and went to the beach at five a.m. We didn’t surf the spot we’d wanted to surf – the wind was a bit weird.” They ended up surfing ‘Middles’, which according to Ryan is “A rippable right – kind of a runner wave. You can do about three turns – it’s kind of like Lowers, but on reef. There’s also a left that comes off it. There’s one quick-hit air section.” The spot will also be the main site of the Rip Curl Search contest, being held in October. Ryan says that although the photos don’t really show it, the guys were having a hard time paddling out through the pounding hurricane swell. This backside turn from Brian Toth is at 10 a.m., five hours into the session. If the Search contest scores swell like this, it could be one of the events of the year. – Elliot Struck