Sanur’s Fickle Side Shows up for Round 3 of Rusty Rumble in Da Jungle

Saturday 3 May 2008- Bangsal Beach, Sanur: After watching the glorious bombing sets of yesterday, arriving at the beach to be greeted by the inconsistent and lumpy 2-foot surf creeping over the coral reef this morning was akin to waking up in another dimension. Was this really the same place? But a the sight of a 3-foot set on the horizon and a surfer getting pitted off the drop gave hope for more to come and so started Round 3 action today on Day Two of the Rusty Rumble in Da Jungle

But the optimism slowly began to fade as the few heats saw slim pickins for any ride longer than a few turns. In Heat 1 Garut somehow managed to find two waves to tee off on for a combined score of 12 to win the heat, while Made Awan took second with an amazingly low total score of 6.83.

Though it looked very meager at times, and most of these guys are used to surfing in much better conditions, when you’re in Round Three and want to make it through our heat, pray for some luck and that you don’t blow your chance to score, if and when it comes.
Heat 2 saw young Kadek Murtika from Canggu take advantage of the small conditions to tear the tops off of whatever came his way, whereas Tipi Jabrik was in last place until he found two 5+ waves with only a few minutes left to take second spot. I guess he was praying harder than the other guys eh?

In Heat 3 it wasn’t a surprise that local Agus Purnawan found the best scoring waves, knowing this break like he does, scoring a 6 and a 4 to win. Second spot went to Moh Yunus, whose highest scoring wave was a 3.7. Made Lapur needs some juice to work with, and he couldn’t a wave with much of that unfortunately.

By Heat 4 the wind starting to turn onshore a bit, and still there were long waits between good scoring opportunities, but at least the wave faces were still glassy and the sun was out. Mega (Ketut Yoga Semadhi) was all over the place, racking up wave after wave but nothing over about 3 points, leaving him in last place for most of the heat. Raditya Rondi started out with a high 4 pointer to jump to the lead, but in the last 5 minutes Mega popped a 4 and a 5.5 to push him down to second spot. Kopling and Suarez, being the larger guys, had a tough time making something from very little and took 3rd and 4th respectively.

Heat 5 saw a bit of an increase in wave count and size, and gave Rizal some of the best waves so far in the day’s action. He picked off a couple nice ones to take the lead over Joey Barrel and Wayan Budiasa with a combined score of 11.6. Joey ended up getting a 6.5, the highest score of the heat, but couldn’t get another to match it and had to settle for 2nd place. Wayan couldn’t find a wave that would let him get more than a 2.5, so placed third.

Betet’s first wave got him into the lead in Heat 6, and he followed it up by a couple more in the 4+ range, but a determined Koming blasted a 6 pointer that when combined with his 3 pointer, beat out Betet for the heat win by .03 points. Made Artha and Komang Alit seemed to have nothing but small closeouts come their way so didn’t make it through.

In Heat 7, Dede Suryana’s luck from the day before seemed to have deserted him, as he just didn’t pull off a couple of big maneuvers and it left him behind, which when surfing against Pepen Hendrik is not where you want to be. Pepen slotted into a barrel, then almost pulled of a sick air on his next wave, and shredded another long wave to get the lead and keep it. Devis also stepped up and nailed a couple, ending up just a little more than 1 point behind Pepen. Dede and Soma each had wave counts of 6, whereas Pepen and Devis did it with 3 waves each.
At the start of Heat 8 Prayit and Dedy Santoso looked to be gunning for the heat win, but as seemed to be the trend a high wave count signaled doom in the end. Young Putra Hermawan picked apart each wave seriously and methodically, while Gobleg just barely got past a charging Prayit to advance to the next round. By the time the horn blew, the wind had really picked up and Contest Director and Rusty GM Kane Faint called for an hour break to see if conditions would change.

After the sizeable surf the day before, it was a bit surprising that the swell dropped so fast, and the thought was that a bit of time to let the tide back on out might do some good. But a few minutes later it became pretty obvious that nothing better was going to happen so it was announced that it was over for the day and to stand by for the next bump in the swell, which looks to be Tuesday morning for Round 4’s man-on-man action.
Cross your fingers…and pray for huge Sanur on Tuesday! Check out the attached heat draw for the Round 4 match ups.