I spend most of my time doing just this: Storm Chasing over the West Coast of Ireland. Dream come true !

Personal Comment

The chase is on !!!!
On Monday I drove straight from the Belmullet Wave event towards the North Coast of Ireland, as the forecast looked like that would get the best wind for us, giving 45 knots from the NW. I made it half way and crashed out in Sligo for the night. Meanwhile Timo was en-route to his home in Lurgan to
collect equipment, and check the internet once again to track the latest conditions. The storm was raging all night and the next morning driving was proving very difficult- I very nearly wrote the van off avoiding a fallen tree on the main road at 5.30am. Thank god my Vito van has ABS brakes.

Anyway, en-route to our original location, I get a call from Timo, who said the conditions were changing rapidly, and we needed a new location. We re-routed to Malin Head, the most northerly point of Ireland, which should be getting cross shore as the wind swung to the North. When I arrived, it
was still onshore, about 3.3m weather and over mast-high shorebreak, with even bigger waves out the back - serious stuff!! but if Timo was up for it I would give it a go! I updated Timo, who was on the road behind me (picking
up John Carter from the airport). We checked the maps again, and as I had a little time, I scouted around for another beach while waiting for the film crew to catch up.

As expected the wind swung more cross-shore, which now made the first beach a good option, and again after searching the maps we found a way to access the most Northerly point of this beach, driving through farmyards and dirt tracks.
To say the conditions were stunning would be an understatement. The wind had dropped from storm force, but this in fact made the windsurfing better. The swell had stayed, the waves cleaned up a bit, and the sun was shining!
(This is Ireland remember). Upwind was a big workable point break (though as neither of us had sailed here we didn't know how the rocks looked underneath), and the whole way down the beach was reeling in at over mast high. Up on the headland, waves were crashing over the ruins of a castle, throwing spray high into the sky, while out to sea, HUGE waves were bashing off a reef beside an island offshore by 2 miles. Definitely something to explore on another adventure, but with so much water moving around, the first challenge would be sailing at the new location we had found thanks to the Storm Chase.
As usual, Timo was the water first, rigging in about 10 seconds flat! We sailed for the whole day, 2 video cameras shooting, I did some on board stuff with helmet cam and mastcam, and JC got all the shots. Timo was busting out sweet gouges on the face of wave after wave, while I just couldn't resist the lure of rocket air from these ramps. At one point I bailed from what could have been my biggest backkie ever, and while pulling the chute, I looked around and see Timo flying sky high from the same ramp. He held the backkie for most of theway, before he too had to let go. I was laughing so hard, just at the situation we found ourselves in: Crazy waves, crazy jumps, just the two of us out. I was grinning from ear to ear all day and didn't want to finish!

Yes it's true we didnt get to sail in crazy nuclear winds, but we did get sailing in very radical conditions - one that most windsurfers would only dream of! Thanks to the Storm Chase we found an awesome new location, which we both knew we would be returning to as soon as the conditions were firing again. Ireland's Coastline is littered with spots just like this one... just when you thought you have found them all, another Gem is handed to you.“