The Cutting Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Righto, let’s have a look at what’s shaping up for The Cutting over the next couple of weeks. I’ll tell ya straight up – this spot gets hammered by some serious size, and for the first week or so, it’s just too much for a normal paddle. We’ve got a massive run of strong south-west groundswells rolling in, and the energy numbers are telling the story – we're seeing combined swell energy values like 8583, 9468, even a monster 37568 early on. That’s serious, heavy water. The water temp here is sitting at 15° which is pretty normal for this time of year, nothing weird going on there.

The main window of opportunity – the stuff worth getting out of bed for – is Saturday the 18th and Sunday the 19th. Saturday morning drops to a more manageable 7 ft of SW swell with a clean 13-second period, and a light offshore breeze from the north. That’s gentle offshore and clean, perfect for the experienced crew. Saturday afternoon stays sweet at 6 ft with light offshores. Sunday the 19th morning sees 5 ft from the WSW, moderate offshore wind, still clean, but then Sunday afternoon the swell drops to 4 ft with a very long 18-second period – still offshore but the period’s so long it might make for tricky, walled-up waves at a beach break like this. Still, that Saturday and Sunday morning are your pick.

Now before that, from Sunday the 12th all the way through to Friday the 17th, it’s all oversized – 18 ft, 21 ft, 16 ft – just too big and mostly with strong, messy winds. That’s only for the brave or the stupid, and even then, the conditions are poor. Tuesday the 14th and Wednesday the 15th start to ease a bit but are still too big for most, and the wind is cross or cross-on, so it’s choppy.

After that good spell on the 18th and 19th, we hit another rough patch. Monday the 20th through to Thursday the 24th is a mix of marginal surf and questionable conditions – the swell is back up to 8 ft to 10 ft, sometimes with cross-off winds but also some rain showers and lumpy chop. Not great. Friday the 24th afternoon does see a spike in energy (3974) with 8 ft from the SW and a very long 19-second period, but it’s blowing a strong cross-off 25 mph – think clean but wild.

Then we get another big pulse on Saturday the 25th – 12 ft of SW swell, massive energy (6246), but again, it’s too big for this break and the wind turns messy. Sunday the 26th and Monday the 27th are still solid, but the wind is fresh and the swell is too big or the quality is marginal. Monday afternoon the 27th has a 10 ft SW swell with a strong offshore 25 mph wind – clean but hard to paddle into and only for experts.

So the standout in this 16-day run is the morning of Saturday the 18th and the morning of Sunday the 19th – that’s your window. The rest is either too big, too messy, or just not worth the effort. If you’re a kiter, the whole run from the 12th to the 17th looks more interesting for you than for a surfer.

Rusty.

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