“Twenty-foot Waves” for Vans World Cup!

Waves soar to unimaginable heights at Sunset Beach!

Wave height is a helluva thing to call. One man’s four foot is another man’s six. Three in England is flat in Hawaii. And ten-foot Cloudbreak on Surfline is a world away from the four-foot the weary traveller finds when his boat drops anchor in the channel.

Remember the Eddie in February? Was it twenty-five or forty feet?

So you don’t want to to be too hard on a press release that calls six-to-eight Sunset Beach “20 feet” but ain’t it a little gassy to write:

The best heat of the Vans World Cup thus far took place today in Round Two and saw the finest 20-and-under surfers tame wave face heights of up to 20 feet at Sunset Beach.

Let’s agree that the waves were good, yeah, very good. Tahiti’s O’Neill Massin described it thus: “The conditions are very good. Couple barrels, offshore wind, some good size, perfect!” And tomoz is looking like another day of groomed eight-foot north-west lines. And round three is when the studs line up for a swing: Slater (a Triple Crown lunge), John John, Gabriel Medina.

But…twenty feet?

Watch the little clip below of the twenty-foot heat. How big you going to call?