Mutant Slab

After spending the first lockdown on the shoreline instead of in the water, exploring new beaches and looking for new potential waves, I soon discovered that under certain tides and swell conditions Cornwall has many outer reef surf breaks. Looking through the binoculars at this one particular spot the wave looked amazing for a split second and then disappeared completely as the swell drops back into deep water.
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nThe only way to really know what it was like was to paddle out there and see it firsthand. This was a pretty daunting thing to do, given strong offshore winds and a larger than normal swell, this was going to go well beyond what I was used to doing on my paddle board. After a 45 minute paddle and a few miles off the coast, the first thing you notice when you get close to this wave is the sound, it’s so much louder than the waves on the shoreline, it just vibrates and echoes through your body. With the swell energy moving faster in deep water then abruptly hitting this huge shallow rock shelf all that energy goes straight up into the lip of the wave. This makes it a really heavy and intense, majestic wave to witness and photograph. It’s the most amazing place to explore and push the boundaries of wave photography. I plan to spend a lot of time out at this place in the future. Mike Lacey