From the equal-pay-for-equal-work dept: Will the WSL run the women at ten-foot Bells tomorrow?

"If the women are getting equal pay for an equal job, they can't say it's too big and rough," says Maurice Cole.

When I heard about the forceful forecast for the Bells contest, twenty feet and so on, I made a call to the shaper Maurice Cole, a Bells habitué for fifty years or thereabouts.

Maurice, who is sixty five, was standing on the stairs at Bells, wearing shorts despite the cold and staring at clean three-to-four-foot waves. He was greeted by every pro surfer, coach, administrator and fan who walked by.

Question: Is the forecast correct?

Is Bells going to be big?

Maurice paints me a little picture.

Two weeks earlier, it was eight foot on the back of a fifteen-second south swell. Maurice, who was riding an eight-foot long surfboard, sat fifty metres further out than the pack at Bells and still got cleaned up by a seven-wave set.

“I dived under the first one and I surfaced, gasping for air, just as the next wave was on top of me.”

That was a fifteen-second period swell.

Tomorrow it’s seventeen. And wrapped inside a forty-knot cross-onshore south-west wind.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a south swell at seventeen seconds,” says Maurice. “I’m a little bit hesitant to call it. But. It’ll be ten-for plus, twelve-foot sets, maybe. The biggest thing is the wind. I told Micro and Ace that it’s going to be that big and that far out to sea, you’re going to need to chip-shot into two of ’em. It’s a wave-catching contest when it’s that big.”

The big question, says Maurice, is what to do with the women.

Do you send ’em out when it’s ten-to-twelve-foot?

“There’s been a little bit of… ”

Maurice searches for the word…

“Energy… in saying, well, if the women are getting equal pay for an equal job, they can’t say it’s too big and rough. And it’s going to be big. The strength of the swell, I wouldn’t be surprised to see virtually non-stop sets. That’s what happens. In a south swell it just racks up. West swells are inconsistent.”

The women, therefore, will be the first heats on Friday morning before the joint gets out of control, climbing back into the ring when it drops to six-to-eight on Saturday.

Other notes: The water is an unseasonably warm 17.7 C, (64 degrees), Maurice has been employed to supply step-up boards for various pros and the contest will, likely, run at Bells ’cause of the difficult of using skis at Winkipop when it gets big.

“If you get in trouble on the takeoff at Winki, getting a ski in there is pretty tough.”

And, how does tomorrow’s predicted swell compare to the famous day in 1981 when Simon Anderson showed the worth of his novelty three-finned design in fifteen-foot surf?

The difference, says Maurice, is 1981 was clean.

“It’s not going to be like ’81 at all. It’s going to be a shitload harder. Ten times harder.”