Cornwall, UK
Nick Healey: The Cribbar
Popular wisdom maintains that before you paddle a spot at size, you should familiarize yourself with it on a small day. Nick Healey was probably a bit busy when that memo went out, for the first time he saw The Cribbar break, he was paddling out to it from an abandoned lifeboat slipway. As well as riding the biggest wave breaking in the UK that day, Nick also copped the heaviest wipe-out. Here he talks us through a spot that few have taken off on…
SUP: The Cribbar requires specific conditions for it to turn on, what were your indicators?
Nick: It was a low tide, massive swell, and the wind didn’t look to strong, er, that was it! I phoned Grishka Roberts (former 2x European surf champion) and he said it would be very entertaining for anyone watching, but he thought it would be doable.
When I was out there, the wind was coming up the face at over 20knots because of the speed of the wave. There were a couple of times when the wind got under the board when I had the board pointing down the wave, and it just lifted me up and over the back and I was gone. It was that windy with 10knots of actual wind, you really want single figure speeds at best.
