Hurricane Irene, Catching Some Surf on the SeaLion!

Called it for Thursday afternoon at Coquina Beach, just north of Oregon Inlet, and yep, the swell from Hurricane Irene rolled in and provided some FUN wave rides! The wind was a little light, but the direction was right and with the AHD SeaLion I was able to easily get out and catch it! Conditions were building through the sesh with solid waist to chest/head high set peaks that were super clean and breaking right in extremely long lines. The critical sections were top to bottom and hollow, and would have been better suited for the Tempo 92 (regular wave kit); however, the SeaLion held up nicely and I even caught my first wave aerial on the Lion, though took a soup rinse on landing (unfortunately not captured in the images).  I was solo for the sesh..., too bad others did not make up to join me, though it was a SeaLion or other aggressive wave oriented SUP feast!

UPDATE:   WindAlert has launched a Hurricane Irene tracking application that ties into their network of LIVE weather stations monitoring wind velocity around the forecast impact areas.  Very nice tool!

All in all, one of my top pure wave riding sessions for the year, though not the perfection of Hurricane Bill in 2009.

Here are some images Yana shot of the sesh from Coquina yesterday!
photographer:  Yana Bagdasaryan (click any image to open gallery)