There’s a QS on in Taiwan and it’s pumping

Words by Jed Smith

And, not the crispest photos, but perhaps enough to get you thinking…

Such is the nature of typhoon swells, that by the time we caught up with South Australian QS surfer Teale Vanner, the winds had already come up gale force and blown everything out for the time being. But not before he and his mates snagged a session at one of several Taiwanese points that flare during a typhoon.

Photo: @perth67

Stab: What’s the situation on the ground at the moment?
Teale: It’s gale force winds outside right now but we surfed that wave yesterday and it was pretty cooking. It was real protected from the winds. We found it using google earth. We worked out what way the wind was going down the coast and knew it would be protected.

What’s the setup? It’s your typical point break with an outside bit that we’ve been surfing. It’s pretty epic. We got a few barrels but it’s more a big, long, turny thing with another section that refracts on the inside but that’s where all the local guys and kooks sit. It’s super rippable. We surfed it for an hour yesterday at dead low and had it to ourselves. There’s a few more set ups but the comp started today so we can’t venture too far.

Are you surprised by what you’ve found over there? It’s hard to say because it’s been that windy the whole time. There’s a coastal road that runs the whole coast. You’ve got these huge mountains, the beach is on your right, and there’s set ups for days – reefs, slabs, beaches, river mouths, little points, and on the left side are mountains with crazy water falls coming down.
We travelled the coast road for an hour and it’s pretty sick, kinda like Hawaii but without that real groundswell, more just heaps of set-ups. With this wind it’s too hard to gauge how good they’d be.
Looking at the coast there’s heaps of left points on this side but to be honest we’ve had a pretty good search on google maps and that’s the best set up. Garret (Parkes) father has been here three or four times with all the kneeboarding and shaping he does, and Garrett’s been here a few times, and he reckons that’s one of the better waves here. If you got a clean offshore typhoon swell you wouldn’t know where to surf there’d be that many waves.

Photo: @perth67

What sort of rating are you giving it? Good for intermediate kind of crew because it’s a bit underground but you’re not gonna get life changing barrels. A kook might get a life changer at that point. From a budget point of view you can live here for a long time on an oily rag, but you’d get sick of this food. We’ve been eating a lot of rice and weird pickled veggies. They gave us fish with the guts still in it the other night – they deep fried it with the guts in it, and that was rough. I dry reached when we ate it.

Hear there’s a bit of shark action over there, too? The boys have seen heaps of sharks. They reckon at the comp site two days ago they saw a shark chasing fish around the water. And we saw a gnarly splash in the channel out near that point we were at but we were too preoccupied surfing to care too much (laughter).
One of the biggest Great Whites was caught in Taiwan. It was a long time ago but it was like 2500 pounds or something and seven or eight meters, which is kinda sick cos it keeps everyone in check. You’re not gonna come running here.

Get at Teale’s Instagram for Typhoon watch, here!