Scored some great surf in the DR

This morning we got EPIC surf at Encuentro. Well overhead, glassy, barreling. You know, EPIC.

Before we get into the photos from today, a quick sidenote on yesterday. Yesterday was bigger. Considerably bigger. There were solid double overhead set waves yesterday. Burly, heaving, angry waves that scared nearly everyone else out of the water. We (Jesse, Cameron, Andre, and I) were the only ones out. There was a lot of water moving, and each one of us paid some serious dues. Andre got stuck inside for about 20 minutes, maybe more. Constantly paddling and duckdiving. He made up for it by catching some BOMBS on the outside and making it look easy. Jesse and I had a collision, and he got cut on his shin by my board. He then went on to have a magic session on his 5'6 quad (maxing it out of course) where it seemed every perfectly lined up set wave came right to him. He would calmly spin, do a late drop on a 12-15 foot face wave, bottom turn, then race down the line. Cameron showed us how it was done and always seemed to find the right wave that ran and ran and ran. As for me, I paid my dues in advance. My first two waves were disasters. Big, heaving lips that picked me up and threw me down like a pro wrestler does to his rookie opponent. I went straight to the bottom, got bounced off the reef, and came up with a whole new respect for winter swell in the Carribean. It is the real deal.

Today was bit smaller, but the conditions were incredibly clean. And since we had just surfed it huge yesterday, our nerves were calm and our confidence was up. This reduced unforced errors. Here I am on a clean barreling section, happy as can be:

Some of the set waves still had plenty of juice:

After stalling, I found a very short over the shoulder barrel section that was fun to accelerate out of:

Here was my last wave of the day. A big set rolled through on the outside, I passed on the first two waves and the third was just a massive A-Frame mound that made my mouth water. Full speed ahead:

Cutting back on that last wave:

Unridden wave showing the barrel section quite nicely. Look closely in the bottom right part of your screen. There was someone on that wave that could not make it. They are now 0.5 seconds away from the rug getting pulled out from under them and doing some time in the washing machine:

I had a pretty bad and weird wipeout today, where I bailed off of a wave, got launched pretty high in the air, and landed on my board. This isn't that uncommon and actually isn't that bad unless you land on your fins. I didn't land on my fins. What happened to me was I came down and took all the weight of the fall ON MY CHIN. Chin to board. I took two big chunks out of my tongue and my jaw muscles went into full clench. Incredibly painful. Still can't properly chew. Here I am rubbing my sore jaw while watching the surf at the end of the session:

Cambria paddled out on the longboard and got some great waves. She was stoked. Unfortunately, we did not get any shots of her on waves. I assure you, she was ripping. She has gotten some incredible waves so far in the DR, and has been catching plenty each session:

Happy after nearly 3 hours in the water:

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