8th Street Jetty Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G'day, Rusty here, and I gotta be straight with ya – the 16-day outlook for our patch is a tough one. We're looking at a long, dry spell with barely a wave worth paddling for. The best advice I can give is to keep the board in the shed and the wax in the wrapper for a while.

Let's start with the only spot we've got on the list, 8th Street Jetty. It's an advanced break, fairly exposed to the swell, and it's known to be very consistent, but there's a problem: the ocean just isn't playing ball. The water's sitting at a warm 76.1°, which is a touch warmer than normal for this time of year, but that's about the only good news.

Right from the start on Friday, 17th July, it's flat. The morning is dead calm with a pathetic 0.3ft of swell from the east. The combined energy is a measly 7 (weak energy). It's a total write-off. The afternoon isn't any better – a tiny 1.3ft of short-period junk from the SSE with a cross-shore breeze. It's poor.

Saturday the 18th is a bit of a tease. The morning is a washout with a storm risk and onshore winds. The afternoon shows a glimmer: a 3.9ft swell from the south, but it's got a short period of just 5 seconds. The combined energy is only 83 (weak energy). The wind goes glassy, so it'll look clean, but the waves themselves will be ordinary and weak. It's surfable, but only just, and I wouldn't get excited.

From Sunday the 19th right through the rest of July and into the start of August, the story is the same. The swell drops to almost nothing – 0.3ft, 1.3ft, 2.0ft – with most of the combined energy readings sitting in the weak range (under 100). There are a few mornings with clean, offshore winds from the NNW, like on Sunday the 19th and Thursday the 23rd, but with no swell to work with, it's just a glassy lake. The wind might be perfect, but you can't surf a ripple.

The strongest energy we see comes on the 24th of July, with a combined energy of 63 (still weak energy) for a 2.3ft, 8-second swell from the SSE, but it's accompanied by an onshore wind. It's a poor setup. Later in the run, we get a bit of a cross-off shore breeze on the 28th and 29th, but again, the swell is tiny and the energy is weak.

The bottom line, mates, is that there is no standout session. Nothing even comes close to being good. This is a true flat spell. For an area that's usually very consistent, this is a frustrating blank run. Even the surfable moments on the 18th are so weak they're barely worth a mention. Don't bother. Keep the board bagged.

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