GWITHIAN GAMBLE

After pitching battle trying to call the shots on the forecast for Cornwall, John Carter and Timo Mullen eventually struck liquid gold at Gwithian with all the elements aligning. However, the trip packed a punch in more ways than one...

- John Carter

CONUNDRUM

Sitting outside A&E at Newquay Hospital was not quite how I had planned this last-minute mission down to Cornwall panning out, but that is the way it can roll when you take on big waves and gusty winds at Gwithian.

ON THE FENCE

Rewind about sixteen hours and I was happily sat at home sipping on a mug of tea watching Saturday night TV when the phone pings with a message from Timo Mullen... 'Headed to Cornwall at 5am, should be big!'. Now that might seem a normal text to most folk, but this message was coming from Ireland where Timo had just been sailing huge waves for the past few days. He was somewhere between the west coast of Ireland and Dublin Airport and still hungry for more. Surely he must have had his fix by now? But we are talking about Timo Mullen here meaning that even at the slightest sniff of wind and quality wave sailing - he's on it. What puzzled me was that the forecast didn't look that special on paper.

The swell was 1.9m at 14 seconds, slowly dropping throughout the day, along with gusty southerly winds blowing anywhere between 15-30 knots. Plus the forecast I was looking at was saying it was going to be overcast, while the chap on BBC Weather also mentioned that a cloud of Sahara dust was also bound for the UK due to some unusual circumstances. Hmmm, this was a tough call, and the evidence was looking weak to me that Cornwall was going to be epic. There would be waves for sure, but possibly just head high with cloudy weather, so I wasn't totally convinced, to say the least!

LEAP OF FAITH