Cocoa Beach Waveski Comp - Report

Using our special mantra 'Four foot and glassy', and with Snakebite Scovile behind the wheel, we knocked out the six hour drive to Cocoa Beach in no time. Roy Scafidi's event is always first class. The break, his shop and the hotel are all within 100 yards of each other and Roy has been making/shaping and competing with waveskiis for 30 years

Last month Roy's house burnt down so it was amazing that this contest was happening at all.

The wave ski crowd are a cool bunch of dedicated dudes from all over Florida mostly, many are stand up surfers. This year the event was opened up to kayaks so I thought I'd give it a shot and signed up for the 'Open'.

Four foot it was, but glassy it was not. A steady on shore wind was blowing early in the morning and continued to do so through-out the day. The swell period was short, maybe 4 secs. So, it was a six hour drive to surf a Tybee style break.

My first few heats I thought, started quite well, but I consistently scored low. My tactics were somewhat off for the Waveski crew. I'm used to dropping late, ripping fast, throwing a turn and getting off before everything goes white. But 'length of ride' was scoring high so I had to figure this into my new strategy. The conditions continued to build, which also aided this new change of tactic.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I continued to progress in heat after heat, made the final and came third overall in the Open section.

We had a great time and surfed our butts raw, but Georgia beckoned and we were back across the boarder before midnight.

Photos and video coming soon.