DOUGLAS RICHARDS won the open event at the Isle of Wight Surf Club’s second round of the Frost Bite Series of competitions on Saturday. The conditions were quite difficult with onshores but it was once again a great event.
Second was Chris Mannion, with Matt Harwood third and Joe Truman fourth.
Compton had very challenging conditions for the competition but once again there was a high standard of surfing. The onshore waves grew in size as the day went on and all the competitors had their strength and endurance tested as a lot of paddling was needed to get out through the waves and to get themselves to best place.
The Longboarders were up first with the majority of contestants heading to the outside to try to get the set waves. This may have been a mistake as they didn’t seem to be making it through to the inside and early on Matt Harwood seemed to see this, taking a few waves on the inside right through to the beach. It definitely looked very hard to find some good waves early on and a few very frustrated faces came up the beach after the first few heats.
When the Open started the waves had picked up and they were competing quite far out. There were some good size sets coming through but it still looked very hard to find the best spot to line up.
The Open saw four heats with the winners of each heat going through to the final. One of the heats saw Chris Mannion, Andrew Tyrrell and Alan Reed against each other. This was going to be a very closely contested heat and didn’t disappoint. Andrew and Al pushed Manni all the way but Chris held on to his lead.
The final was Douglas Richards, Matt Harwood, Chris Mannion and Joe Truman. Matt got straight into the final catching a few through to the inside but didn’t seem to be able to find any of the set waves.
Joe showed his style with some beautiful cutbacks while Dougie and Manni got the best of the set waves that came through putting in some big moves with Dougie coming out the winner.
