Crystal Cylinders
Matt Wilkinson (Byron Bay) and Stuart Kennedy (Lennox Head) will need to regroup at Bells Beach after some poor performances at the Margaret River Drug Aware Pro which saw them both bow out with equal 25th finishes.
They started badly in the first round at North Point in extremely inconsistent conditions. For round two the event moved back to Main Break.
‘Wilko’ was up against WSL Wildcard Nat Young. The battle of the goofy footers went Young’s way after Wilkinson failed to back up his earlier good wave score during the back half of the heat.
Kennedy was defeated by Miquel Pupo, as he appeared to have trouble adapting to riding a longer board in the lumpy, bigger conditions, catching rails on a couple of critical rides.
The WSL may be looking at some big changes to the World Tour for 2018, one of which is to cut the Margaret River Drug Aware Pro from the Championship Tour. If cut the event would most likely still run as a QS10000 competition.
One of the other changes being proposed is cutting the number of surfers on the circuit to 16 or 24, to take better advantage of swell opportunities, by completing an event in approximately two days.
Beware of the brown water
Surfers should beware of the dirty brown water caused by recent rain and flooding at local surf breaks.
Unfortunately the dirty water is likely to stick around over most of this week at least.
The overloaded sewer systems and flood run off waters are carrying debris along with dangerous bacteria that can cause ear, throat and eye infections and the real possibility of hepatitis.
Authorities say keep out of the water for up to three days after it rains as there is very little dilution of pollutants within the surf zone. During this period waves act to concentrate contaminants along the shore and consequently coliform concentrations are often highest in the surf zone.
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