This past week New River Academy traveled to a town called Raglan on the North Island in New Zealand. The drive from Go Huge’s last destination was about three hours. New River Academy pulled into the long windy roads in Raglan town and the students were excited to see a huge trashy left hand point break. NRA reached their camping destination called Solscape, which is a self-sustaining campsite that is on Maori land. After NRA got unpacked at the beautiful jungle-like campsite we headed straight to the point-break to surf the ten-foot left hand break. The waves were perfect. Most of them did not barrel, and each one offered a lot of bounce and huge air. The best part about a point break is the formation of the waves. The Manui Bay (the bay where the group paddled) is shaped like a U. NRA paddled on the top of the U where the waves started to form so the waves rolled into shore for about a hundred yards. There are no waves in the middle of the bay so a person could paddle around each of the waves. This made it a lot easier for the group to get many surfs.

    The second day the group surfed on the bottom part of the Manui bay. In the middle of the bay there is a large sandbar. This makes the waves break very far out from shore. The waves were not nearly as good as the point break that was surfed the day before, but because of tides the point break was not breaking the same way as yesterday. The waves in the middle of Manui were about 5 feet tall and were smooth breaking waves that offered a variety of wave tricks and sometimes beat downs. In all, this day offered a lot of opportunities to have a great time.


Stephen Forster is on the 5 am dawn surf patrol.

The third day in Raglan involved NRA’s departure. In the morning a group led by Tino, consisting of Michael Jorgenson, Keegan Grady, Stephen Forster, and Jason Craig left the campsite at 5:00 am to get on the water for a morning session of surfing and big waves. The small group headed out and left Manui Bay to take on the famous Raglan waves that are known in many surfing magazines. As the group paddled over to the 14-foot Raglan waves they were in awe as breaks of ten waves in a row crashed into shallow rocks. Many surfers were here at the early hours, but they were surprisingly friendly, even though they are known to be immoral. The waves were large and offered feet of air on every wave that the small group surfed. Overall NRA’s Raglan experience was positive.