Masters of the surf

Navy surfers ruled the waves at the 2006 Tri-Service Surfing Championships held at Bendalong Beach, north of Ulladulla, during March 28-30.

Navy surfers wiped out their rivals from Army and Air Force, winning the overall title with 224 points, ahead of Army on 186 and RAAF 114.

AB Jordan Dank claimed the men’s shortboard title, AB Tricia Muller won the women’s equivalent and LCDR Steve Johnson was first in the men’s longboard competition.
AB Dank, an ATV at 723 SQN at HMAS Albatross (CAPT G.I. Ferguson), blitzed his rivals with flashy re-entries and off-the-lip board-manoeuvres.

“I’m pretty happy with the win because I have been surfing for 15 years and only gave up competing professionally when I entered the Navy in 2001,” he told Navy News.
AB Dank said he has seen almost every surfing movie ever made, including surf scenes in Apocalypse Now, and jokingly attributed his victory to the fact that “Diggers don’t surf!”

The carnival, noted for some controversy and mid-water spectators, was held in solid two-to-three-metre waves at Bendalong Beach.

Cyclonic conditions in the north generated a powerful swell for the first two days of competition, resulting in some difficult surfing conditions, extending heats to 25 minutes and testing the fitness of surfers.

The longboarders were fortunate that the swell was large enough to get into the Bendalong boat ramp, which rarely breaks.

The ramp provided perfect two-to-three-foot right-handers that peeled up to 75 metres offshore, a stark contrast to the beach on the southern side of the headland where the shortboarders were battling it in very random conditions.

After catching a wave, the shortboard surfers were forced to run all the way back up the beach and paddle out off the point.