Mavericks Faces a Wipe Out

This weekends beautiful weather is not good news for the organizers of the Mavericks Surf Contest.  The window of opportunity for the contest in Half Moon Bay is about to close and its not looking good.

Monday is the last day possible that the contest could be held and the forecast is calling for calm seas between now and then.

There is a small craft advisory Friday because of wind, but it isn't enough to bring the kind of waves needed for the best surfers in the world to compete.

Contest director Jeff Clark says ideal conditions would be waves around 30 to 40 feet.

"It's been a really bad year (for surfing)," Clark said. "The  water is colder."

Mavericks has typically the biggest waves along the entire California coastline.

The contest normally brings out thousands of spectators about a half-mile up from Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay.

Contestants have been on stand-by to fly to Half Moon Bay with just 24  hours' notice since the contest window opened Jan. 1.

It turns out more and more California-based surfers are having to travel the globe to find the big waves that earn the big prize money, according to a published report.

For years, the winners at the Billabong XXL Global big-wave awards have been from Hawaii or California, reported the San Diego Union-Tribune. The winners who found the biggest waves and rode them the previous year were often doing so in the North Pacific-- but not recently.

So where are the waves now? Surfers can still ride giants in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska, South Africa, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Chile, Tahiti, Ireland, Spain, France and the Canary Islands, the Billibong organizer told the paper. Eric Page contributed to this report

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