Cloudbreak Rears its Glorious Head

The allure of Restaurants is too good to pass up, but at the end of the day the real show is at Cloudbreak. It's big, burly and challenging. In many ways it's scary, but in so many more it's just a beauty. Taj Burrow and Tiago Pires had the best sparring match of the event so far in the second to last heat of the day. Tiago struck first with a 9.6, following Taj's opening 7.0. But, under Tiago's priority Tb snuck an inside runner that turned out to be a 10.0, leaving Taj with 17.00 and a ticket to round 4. Possibly eclipsing Taj's 10 in today's news was Occy's heat win over Kai Otton, setting up an Occy/Kelly match up in round 3. Huntington Beach's Tim Reyes is still in form from 2006, as he advanced through two heats today utilizing a fierce combination of turns and barrels to find himself into round 4, matched up with Taj. There's some good looking match ups in the remainder of round 3, including Hawaiians Andy Irons and Freddy P, CJ Hobgood and Kieren Perrow and of course the soon to be legendary clash of Mark Occhilupo and Kelly Slater. The forecast is calling for a drop in the swell tomorrow, showing probably 4-6 ft sets at Cloudbreak. Maybe the odd bigger one, at times. A call will be made a 6:30am local time, for a possible 7:30am start. The plan is to run through the remainder of round 3 and then consider running into round 4. Should be good, so log on. The webcast is up and waiting for you.