Shooting Gallery Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, Rusty here. Let's get into it.

Well, to be honest, looking at Shooting Gallery over the next couple of weeks, it's a pretty bleak picture. The first recommendation I can see is from right now, Thursday the 30th of July, but it's a write-off.

The overall pattern is persistent cross-onshore winds that just won't let up. We've got a bit of energy in the water, with combined swell energy readings starting around 163 and climbing, but the quality is just not there. The wind is going to be blowing from the NNE most of the time, making a mess of things. The water temperature anomaly is not noted, so I'd say it's just about average for this time of year, nothing special.

So, for the first week, from Thursday the 30th right through to about Wednesday the 5th of August, it's all poor. The swell is small, mostly around 2 ft to 4 ft, with short periods of 6 or 7 seconds. The wind is either cross-on or onshore, and the reports all say "poor surf conditions." There's a brief window on Saturday the 1st of August where the wind swings NW and goes cross-shore, but that only drops the swell to 2.3 ft, so it's not much to get excited about. Don't bother paddling out this week.

Then we get a bit of a spell from Thursday the 6th of August through to the end of the forecast. The swell gets a little shifty, coming from the WNW with a slightly better period of 8 to 10 seconds, and the energy bumps up a bit, like 209 on the 6th morning. But the wind remains stubbornly cross-onshore from the NNW and N. The swell height is small, between 1.6 ft and 2.6 ft, so the waves will be weak and messy.

The best you can hope for is the middle of the second week. Around Monday the 11th of August, the swell starts to build, hitting 5 ft from the north, and the combined energy gets up to 228. By Wednesday the 12th, it's 5.6 ft (302 energy) and 5.2 ft (260 energy) from the north. But here's the killer: the wind is still a moderate to fresh cross-onshore from the north. At 5 ft to 5.6 ft, this is getting into intermediate/expert territory with the size, but with the wind on it, it's not going to be clean. It will be choppy and lumpy. For a spot like Shooting Gallery, a reef break that's fairly exposed, this set-up looks far more interesting for kite surfing than paddle surfing. There's no standout session here, nothing that I'd call a true highlight.

In short, there are two solid weeks of "don't even bother" at Shooting Gallery. The forecast can always change, but as it stands, you're better off finding something else to do.

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