As the front-edge of Hurricane Sandy started bearing down on New York and newscasters were talking about, “Idiot surfers risking their lives”, I was one of those idiots. Sorry. I had a camera to test.
I paddled out at Rockaway Beach, New York, with three cameras strapped to the nose of my 76-inch board. It looked stupid. Very stupid. Once out in the water, I got my arse thoroughly handed to me by the ocean for a good solid 90 minutes before I finally nabbed the wave I wanted. The wave you see above.
The waves were in the 1.65m range with the occasional 2.5m set coming through (and detonating on my head). There was lots of wind rushing up the wave faces, and it would blind you and push you out the back as you were trying to stroke into one. The wave in the video was probably 1.5m or 1.6m tall, and my arms were jello by the time it came through. I gave it a few extra strokes, popped up and immediately put all of my weight on my back foot to keep from sinking the nose. I made the drop and managed to stay with the face for a little while before the whitewater consumed me. Really fun.
This footage was shot with the new GoPro Hero 3 Black edition. It was capturing 720p at 120 frames per second. I then used Cinema Tools to slow it down to a standard 24fps, which gives it that very smooth 5x slow-mo effect.
Now, before you start yelling at me (mum), there were other people out, and we’re generally pretty good about looking after each other. The swell wasn’t too crazy yet, though there was the occasional clean-up set, and plenty of wind. Truth be told, I’d have been out there even if I weren’t testing cameras, but man am I excited to have gotten this clip. We’ll have a full review of the Hero 3 soon, so stay tuned.