SUMBAWA

The northerly season is gonna drag out this Spring- I can feel it in my bones. The wife’s away with a close friend and I feel like an unleashed dog. In the back of my mind I saw this window comin up, so I put together a shorty that will handle some juice albeit an epoxy stringerless which is pretty dam light.

I still have my trusty Ments 6.6 Skinny Bullet for back up so I think I am right to go! But where? I made calls, checked weather maps, even got a lean on the numbers at various haunts, resulting in the Ments being crossed out early in the peace, closely followed by Nias. Bali was never in the equation with rumours of 200 guys out Keramas (can’t see how they would  fit) and other horror stories, and that’s even with the back to back swells they have been getting from late August. I got a 7 day window and do not want a trip scarred by travel – then the light bulb moment…

Lakey Peak- a one hour flight from Bali and the neap tides (early in this month) and hopefully a windless October; might just be the sly dog move.

It’s been well over 25 years since I surfed the place and have fond memories of the day we first discovered it. Come home with a hard dose of Malaria for my troubles, but will never forget that first day. It was overcast, not a breath of wind all day (early April), constant 6 foot swell and to top it off a full neep tide, so it stayed like that from dawn to dusk. We surfed if for well over 6 hours and still left the place kicking and screaming.

We named it Lakey Peak, after the name of the actual bay that it wove its magic in, but I think it is  pronounced somewhat different to what it is today; nonetheless I am back, if only for curiosity sake, and sort of half believing that it may well have fallen under the radar- sort of like G- Land has of late, and maybe, just maybe, there might be a few sets left for me for old times’ sake.