The video clip is pulled from hours of footage shot from the Milo by Fred Dickerson and Matt McNeil during their 4 week epic filming the ‘Alaskan Sessions‘. They are finishing up editing the video which will be at film festivals and available on dvd sometime in 2012. We’ll keep you posted.
Category: Alaskan Surf Trips
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Three Alaskan Waves
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Surf & SUP Exploring in Alaska
The m/v Milo arrived in Seward, Alaska yesterday evening after four non-stop days of surf and stand up paddle exploration in the Kenai Fiords National Park and Gulf of Alaska. The surf was better than we had expected and we are stoked after discovering three new spots on this trip so far.The photos in this post are from yesterday morning’s session which was clean and fun. The swell was a bit better the day before, but we were late finding it and only got a few good rides before a sideshore wind blew it out. There is a big storm brewing in the gulf early this week, and we are all set to make the most of it.
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Sleuthing an Alaskan Slab
This was our second trip with the m/v Milo out to the Gulf of Alaska from Homer. Swell was forecasted to be something between seven and fifteen feet. The first day was windy, the swell was strong but it took us a few hours to discover a break that was sheltered from the wind coming in off the Gulf.The first wave was a punchy head high left that did its best to lure us into the jagged rocks. Some of us fall for that pretty easy and spent our share of time floundering around in the rocks hoping we would get out with a one piece surfboard. The wave, yet to be named, provided some fun rides for about an hour before the incoming tide took away its juice. We paddled around the area for a while chasing the occasional beauty without much success. Plenty of waves breaking, but the wind was just not working with us. We found a nice spot to drop the Milo’s Anchor for the night and waited patiently for daylight to return. The stars came out and the wind settled down through the night.
At the first sign of light we were back on the hunt, prowling the coastline, binoculars scanning the horizon trying to decide what our best option was. The swell was varying between five and eight feet outside most of the breaks we checked. The decision was made to start out conservatively at a place we had surfed twice before and named Bullwinkles. It’s a pretty mellow break that offers both lefts and rights with an easy paddle out and the occasional barrel.A few miles up the coast we saw what we had been dreaming about the night before. Mike pulled the Milo up and I headed in for a close look on the SUP. Wow. Game on. A flat rock ledge was catching the full force of the south swell about 200 yards offshore. The swell easily doubled in height as it lurched over the rock. I paddled into one 12ft wave just to make sure it was everything it promised. . . knees shaking with adrenaline I paddled back to the Milo. We spent the next few hours learning how to surf this wave. The hard way. Mike led the experiments with wipeouts under the lip, getting sucked backwards through the falls, and underwater transportation under the froth. The results were favorable – while it might hold you down for a while, it’s no killer.
The biggest waves that came through (after the camera was put away) were about twenty feet on the face. The speed of the SUP helped me score some incredible rides. It was possible to paddle in on the right side of the peak and shoot right through the section that jacked up on the shoal.
Oh yeah, we named the new break ‘Pop-ups’.
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The Hunt Begins
In winter of 2010 the M/V Milo headed out for the “Alaskan Sessions” – a month long wave hunt along the isolated Alaskan North Pacific coastline between Sitka and Homer. The “Alaskan Sessions” began with 2 weeks of vessel preparations in Sitka. This was squeezed in between nearby exploration “sea trials” and surf sessions. Thanks to the numerous people, marine trades, and other service providers used in Sitka for their help and professional demeanor. By Mid-November the M/V Milo’s crew was all aboard, once again we fueled up, grubbed up and north we went.Highlights of the trip were darn near too many to list. A moonlight stop over at White Sulpher hot springs; Travel along Alaska’s Lost Coast; Thanksgiving day in Yakutat surfing seemingly an endless supply of sunny and glassy overhead waves;
Traveling the North Gulf Coast finding new breaks and riding cranking waves; spectacular vista’s, glaciers, wildlife….the list goes on and on! By the time we reached Homer, 25 surf sessions were tallied, 8 lingcod consumed, numerous rockfish grilled, 1 deer enjoyed, 87 shrimp devoured…..and many, many star fish returned to the sea.Now nestled in Homer the planned refit has begun coexisting with voyages to the outer coast in search of new unridden breaks to enjoy with future clientele. We’re happy to report both are progressing well! As in our earlier posting we hope to have the vessel ready to share, in at least a limited capacity, a bit later in 2011.
For more on the Alaska Sessions and other developments of the Alaskan surf scene, check out Surfalaska.net. Also, of further interest, due to be released summer of 2012, will be a documentary film of the “Alaska Sessions” segment of the voyage complements of Flash Films of Australia:
[vimeo id=”75685075″ width=”600″ height=”350″]
