It Looks Like Cape Fear Will Run On Tuesday

The Cape Fear event, this year is set to live up to the intensity of its name. Right now, Australia’s East Coast is being hammered by storms. And the event at Ours will be well, simply put pretty dangerous. Mark Mathews, the gent who puts on the event says it’ll likely run on Tuesday. “Monday at Cape Fear is going to be a shit ton more dangerous than the Jaws event,” Mr Mathews told Stab. You’ll recall Mark paddling into what was coined the “biggest wave ever paddled” before Aaron Gold usurped that title the following swell. On that wave at Pe’ahi, he rode it out before the white wash took him and as a bonus separated his shoulder. “Ours is probably twice as dangerous. On Monday there will ten foot closeouts breaking on the cliff face.”

Red Bull’s Cape Fear consists of 16 surfers and eight head-to-head battles. At any given time four surfers are in the water. Two paddling while the other two tow. The contestants are scored with a four wave total: two paddle, two tow. This year the top scoring surfers meet in the final to determine the absolute winner.

“It’s going to make for a spectacle,” said Mark. “I’d say this is a one-in-ten-year swell judging by the way the charts are reading. But since I did my shoulder, there’s been about four, one-in-ten-year swells,” he joked. However, we know it pains him to miss out on some of the largest surf in years. When we spoke to Mark on Friday night the buoys were reading 22-30 feet at 13 seconds. “That’s a gnarly swell,” he said. “Have you ever seen a reading like that in Sydney in your life? I’ve never seen anything like it.” However, the swell’s been downgraded slightly and predicting swell and weather in Oz is not as cut and dry as predicting when Jaws is gonna go XXL.

This is the mods to last years event. This year, there will be one winner.

“Tuesday’s looking to be ten foot bomb sets easy,” he continued. “We’re going to paddle it to the max, but if guys can’t get into waves, we’ll just tow. In conditions like this I’d say the best bet to win are either Hippo (Ryan Hipwood) or Koby (Abberton). Koby’s so good at reading the wave and getting deep.”

“I always think worst case scenario it’ll be flat,” Mr Mathews told us. “If people end up calling it Cape Cute again, I might lose my sponsor,” he laughed.