May 11th, 2023

Somewhere in Nicaragua

This bodyboarder got a perfect square barrel here. I bet he was stoked that he got this one. He didn’t even need to pump to generate speed through the barrel. All he had to do was bottom turn to the middle of the face and sit tight. Nice one!

This was the first proper set wave I saw upon arriving at the beach this morning. After seeing this, I got my hopes up that we would be seeing waves like this roll through non-stop the rest of today. However, with the longer swell interval these gems were still few and far between.

This fella right here nabbed the wave of the morning in my opinion. I’ll share some more photos from this sequence. Our hero traveled far through this beauty, but she ended up running too hot in the end. Still he absolutely nailed the drop of the wave and weaved through it for a considerable period of time, at least 5 seconds. Another thing to notice in this shot is how late he is dropping in. The lip is already pitching out over top of his body as he is popping up. It takes a truly skilled and experienced surfer to stick this late of a takeoff.

Here he is post bottom turn locked on a good line pointing straight out of the barrel. He’s compressed here, so that he can extend to generate some more speed in the hopes of racing out of this beauty.

The view looking from inside-out of this barrel must’ve been incredible. The water had that beautiful turquoise color today, so long as the wave was one of the first few in the set. I know many of the other guys in the water wished they could’ve traded places with our surfer in white on this one!

You’ll see he manages to work in a few more mini-pumps while holding the mid-face line in this one. I bet he thought he had this barrel in the bag 🙂

After this shot, the section ahead of him ran really fast. Unfortunately, this was the last time we saw him on this wave. Still wave of the day in my opinion, especially after accounting for the under-the-lip drop.

Wow! Look at this beauty here! Usually the first or second wave of the set is best here at Colorados when it gets big, as the rip messes with the faces of waves 3, 4, etc, in the set. However, the last wave of this set ended up being EVEN BETTER than the one our gentleman in white caught. I’m planning on going out for some waves later today and am sure hoping some like this roll through!

This guy in black was also crushing it out there this morning! I saw him dart through a couple backside barrels, as seen above, and later in the report he will be seen throwing more spray than Shamu at SeaWorld!

This was one of the last proper set waves this morning. Nicely done to our shirtless shredder for nabbing one of the last gems of that mid-morning window. One thing I found interesting today was that the best rights were almost exclusively breaking in front of Casa Colorados, one of the beach front homes here, on arrival. But you’ll notice from the change of photo angle later in the report that the better waves started hitting the sandbar even further to the north as time elapsed while I was at the beach.

There are a bunch of groms visiting here at the moment who have been putting on a clinic for us regulars in the days prior. Here we have the first couple of challengers hitting the waves.

As the saying goes, “The early bird gets the worm.” Well one of our first grommies succeeded in catching the worm! These kids are likely looking to pursue the sport professionally, so you can observe some good style and form on display as this little dude drops his back knee close to the surfboard deck.

Speaking of style and pro-skills, check out this carve! I don’t know if us older, and stiffer, folks could ever get this low on a surfboard haha. He used the perfect part of his surfboard’s rail to execute this turn and displaced so much water that it looks like he is throwing a cast-net.

This was the first really hollow insider that I saw break on the northern sandbar this morning. This marked the beginning of the shift away from the “middle” peak, and up to the north peak. Unfortunately this racey cylinder had no takers.

Luckily the surfers in the water were quick to adapt to the shift in peaks. This shirtless guy, the guy in the white short-sleeve rashie from earlier, and the guy with the black long-sleeve rashie are all staying at Casa Colorados (I think). It was basically like a team competition out there between them and the groms. I think the boys from Casa Colorados won today, but you’ll see later that the groms went down swinging. One thing that is unique about this shot is that if you look closely you can see the guy’s bare-skin back through the lip of the barrel. The water was just that clear today!

Here is another guy who shifted up north and found a small, crispy-clean drainer. Once again you can see how he drops his back knee to get nice and low to the deck of the surfboard. This is also a good position to then “extend” or “pump” from to generate speed.

Our boogie boarder from earlier managed to find an elusive left! The wind direction was perfectly grooming the waves that were running along the northern bar this morning.

More eye-candy for those of you viewing at home. Super clean little waves, but boy toward the end of the session you really had to get compact. I’m surprised this taller guy was able to squeeze into this one.

One of the smallest groms was sticking to the inside bar up north and he managed to make the small ones look head high! Maybe he was taking some tube riding notes from the Casa Colorados boys.

One of the latter groms to paddle out was slashing the occasional lefts to pieces. Textbook dropped-my-wallet layback here. The kids displayed greater precision in their turns than the adults did out there today!

A lot of dropped-wallets out there today! Maybe some of our local lifeguard crew should strap on some goggles and go treasure hunting haha. I can only imagine how hard these kids will be ripping when they are 18 or 20, when they are already executing turns like these!

It was pretty strange that barrels became more scarce this morning as the tide started to drain (pretty counterintuitive!). However, all the surfers were once again were quick to adapt to the changing conditions and started to whip out their finest rail game. This guy’s palm placement with his trailing hand is perfect, just hovering above or grazing the water’s surface.

Here is the aforementioned man-in-black’s backhand hammer. Perfect choice of maneuver for the section at hand. Grommie in red you better be taking notes!!!

Yuji and Koji, upcoming superstars here in Iguana, decided to get a warm up session in this morning. Apparently they had their keepers this afternoon in Round 2.

Although I didn’t see Yuji or Koji pack any barrels, Yuji managed to throw some buckets on this frontside snap. I’m amazed at how good their rail game is given how young they are. It’s good for them to show their best surfing to grom-squad that is visiting!

A couple of the guys in the water even managed to boost some airs! When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! I think everyone was counting on more tubes today, but that didn’t stop our talented lineup of surfers from putting on a show.

One guy was surfing in the rip current running through the middle of the beach today. At first he wasn’t catching much, but his patience was rewarded when he found this perfect launchpad section. Sometimes waiting in the less desirable peaks of the lineup pans out well when that good one comes your way.

Hit the breaks hard little buddy! Given that the swell wasn’t as massive as expected, it was a good day for the groms to get some reps in IF the swell shows up late, i.e. tomorrow. That’s what the word on the street is, so I hope to see y’all back again for tomorrow’s surf report. The question is will there be massive caverns awaiting us at dawn tomorrow? Or will you get to see the kids carve circles around everyone in the water again!