Over Labour weekend The Maori Nationals were on in Taranaki. I arrived up there 2am on Saturday after an event at church on friday night, and was up at 7am to hear the call of where the comp was. The comp was held at Rocky lefts which is down the west coast from New Plymouth, luckily they were holding the open shortboards and juniors all day Saturday which meant I had a free day to go surfing.

The longboards were held on Sunday, again the comp was a t Rocky Lefts whcih was pumping!! Epic 3-5ft surf with a strong offshore on it. I won my semi final and was through to the final. I had a shocker of a final ay, first of all I dropped in on Jamie Andrews (but pulled off before I obstructed his wave), then I caught an epic wave from out the back… not knowing my tail pad had been ripped off by a wave or something, and when I went to turn I slipped off and my board hit Jason Mathews in the head.. So as you can imagine it was hectec!! I ended up getting a good wave which put me in 2nd for most of the heat but towards the end the other two surfers caught good waves and knocked me back into 4th. So I placed 4th in the Open Mens Longboard division of the Maori Nationals, not my best result but was a fun comp.

After the contest I surfed one of my fav. waves up there and had my best surf of the year. Waves were perfect triple over head on the take off, then they walled up and barrelled. You could do like 10 cut backs or hits on each wave it was amazing! They are so spoilt in Tara’s ay!!

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