J-BAY OPEN: SURF ALERT Largest swell of season due to hit for Saturday's finals By Mike Cianciulli Photos by Alan van Gysen

Published: July 17, 2014

July 17, 2014 Views: 6,551







J-BAY OPEN: SURF ALERT Surfline's forecast update about Saturday's pumping swell to close out the J-Bay Open..





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Related The final day of the J-Bay Open is expected to go down in large, offshore surf on Saturday.

Surfline’s sea surface pressure chart of the South Atlantic shows a great looking high pressure (H)/low pressure (L) combination developing about 1500 miles away from J-Bay as of Thursday afternoon local time.

Surfline’s significant wave height chart displays 25- to 30-foot seas only a couple hundred miles offshore of J-Bay as of Friday evening local time.

The nearshore model for J-Bay shows the pumping SSW swell for Supertubes on Saturday along with breezy offshore/WSW wind.



By the looks of things, the Dream Tour may finally get a chance to live up to its name.



Jeffreys Bay will see the largest swell of the winter season, thus far, on Saturday the 19th from a great looking low pressure/high pressure combo that is currently located about 1500 miles away from the Eastern Cape of South Africa.



Following some uncertainty on the forecast models on the size, track and strength of the this storm earlier in the week, there is now good agreement that this high/low combo will take an excellent track toward J-Bay over the next 24-36 hours. Forecast charts indicate this storm will maintain seas of 25- to 30-feet within only a few hundred miles of J-Bay. All of that adds up to a smoking southwest swell over the weekend; building Friday evening, a peak in surf on Saturday, and easing surf on Sunday.



This is, of course, great news for the J-Bay Open, which needs just one final day to complete the event. Assuming the storm behaves as forecast in the next day or so, this swell will deliver the largest waves the ASP World Tour has seen in 2014 and one of the best J-Bay swells seen in competition in recent history.



This is a classic scenario for J-Bay: the approaching storm will set up northwest wind on Friday, with rain developing overnight Friday and into Saturday morning. Cool to cold temps prevail on Saturday with breezy west to west-southwest wind (offshore at J-Bay) and solid swell in the double overhead range, with sets pushing triple overhead (15-foot-plus faces) certainly not out of the question.



We still need to see this storm behave as forecast before we’re 100% confident in exact size and precise timing, but we can say this: we’re highly confident of a pumping swell with epic conditions at J-Bay on Saturday.

The return of Jeffreys Bay to the ASP schedule conjured up all sorts of fantasy-type scenarios when it was originally announced.And while the surf during the opening rounds has ranged from super-contestable to downright going off, there's yet to be one of those classic J-Bay days with blustery offshores and large-scale lines stacking as far as the eye can see.That is…until now. As Official Forecasters for the J-Bay Open, we had our ace storm-tracker Kevin Wallis give us the full details on what looks to be a climactic end to Jeffreys' return to center stage. Here's what he had to say: