(This feature originally appeared in the August 2013  issue of Windsurf Magazine. Print and digital subscriptions for readers worldwide are available HERE. Jamie Hancock also produced a clip shot at this spot.)

Dr Neal Gent can be coy about telling tales on how good the wavesailing on his IOW home ground can get. But slipping away silently for sly weekends has left people suspicious, so we finally got him in an arm lock and got him to spill the beans on this secretive stretch of shoreline. 

Story Neal Gent  Photos John CarterI’ve been living off the island for 15 years now, with West Wittering as my local beach, but whenever possible I try and get back to some ‘proper’ wave sailing! It’s only a couple of hours from Wittering via the Portsmouth ferry, but somehow I can rarely persuade people to come over …

TICKET TO RIDE
I don’t think the crossing prices helped on this particular weekend. For a start the Saturday forecast looked pretty average, but it started looking like a really good groundswell would arrive on the Sunday with a good westerly wind, which is perfect for Niton, near the southernmost tip of the island.

It turned out Dan Macaulay had been ringing around to get people involved to come over, as he and the Hunt brothers had it on their radars, plus I’d already been touch with the island locals, among whom Scott Gardner and Tom Buggy were all over it as always!

Everyone booted it across the island and pretty much arrived in the car park at once – discovering it was super high tide and a pretty good size! We all took one look at the 3 foot of white water slamming down the channel and decided it might be time for a quick cuppa at the Buddle Inn at the top of the hill down to the beach!

They were a little surprised to find all of us camped outside waiting for them to open and even more surprised to hear we were about to go windsurfing! As always they made us welcome and even trusted the boys with the task of lighting up the fire in the big stone fireplace! I won’t name and shame, but I definitely wasn’t one of the committee of ‘men’ who were having to admit to the landlady ten minutes later that they had failed to make a fire with about 10 kilos of dry wood and all the previous days papers! The tea was good though!

We headed back down the track and a wander quickly became a run as now Niton had woken up! The dropping tide and arrival of the groundswell had some logo-to-mast-high bombs reeling down the reef from the lighthouse – plus it looked windy! The other thing about Niton is the rigging game!

Standing on the grass it ALWAYS looks lighter than it is. You basically need to rig the smallest sail that will get you out, ‘cos once you’re in the current it’s always windier, so a slightly bigger board helps. I only have an 84L RRD Hardcore wave, which gets me out but still turns really well. The non-locals outweighed us though and fooled us all into 5.0s. Half the sailors were sensibly waiting for the tide to drop a little more, but after a few more cranking sets rolled through Jack and Scott decided to brave the channel.

DRY HAIR STYLE
Anyone still on the beach was not reassured to see Scott get mashed by a set breaking through the channel, but then Jack tried next from the next slipway downwind (which we had never even thought to try!) and drifted straight out to the wind line and raced out to sea with dry hair! Everyone followed his example, before discovering our original sail size choice sucked. Two runs with too much power to bottom turn and I came in for a 4.2. With Jack’s new route out suddenly I was on the sail I actually wanted for riding! (N.B. that downwind slipway will NOT work at lower tides as you’ll be swimming over rocks!)

Now everyone was out in the good stuff, and we pretty much fell into two camps. Just off the slipway is a great jumping wave with limited riding that the boys were all over. Buggy was going for some of his trademark huge backies, whilst Jack was showing off his new table-top pushies courtesy of a recent trip to Oz. Upwind, in front of the rocks, is where the riding is insane though, and this is what we come here for so Scott, Paul and I were straight up into the peak. Now you do have to be a little respectful of the surfers here, ‘cos to take the biggest ones your first top turn is essentially their take off point, but as long as no one is going too close, or nicking all the set waves they don’t get too shitty! Most of these surfers have known Scott, myself and the Williams brothers for a long time so know we won’t get close to the point of putting them in trouble, but please do respect the fact that if they don’t know you they might be a little more nervous about you dropping down a set right in front of them, not knowing if you have the skills to pull it off without killing anyone!

JUMPFEST
I could see Buggy and Jack getting stuck into some serious jumping, but after they’d seen us kicking out of some of the bomb sets they started heading upwind to the riding section as well. Even from just downwind of the surfers you get two or three really good turns before you need to get off to avoid the rocks. After a couple of hours I had come back in for a rest along with nearly everyone else, and I was just putting my kit out of reach of the white water on the slipway when I noticed Jack body-dragging through the surf into the channel. As he got nearer his face revealed he wasn’t doing it for kicks!

YOU MUST BE  SNAPPED
Turns out he’d heard his ankle crack after a badly landed table-top push loop! He then realised very quickly that if he didn’t make the channel he would have to either sail back out or land on the rocks, so essentially he gritted his teeth and went for it! We all helped drag him out of the water, and it was pretty clear he needed hospital, although nothing was ‘sticking out’ it was pretty obvious he’d broken something.

Unfortunately for those sharing vans it was off to A&E in Pompey with Jack without any further sailing – and the nice afternoon lunch they’d bribed their other halves with in order to come over was out of the window as well! That left Scott and I with Niton to ourselves, well, and thirty surfers. It doesn’t seem fair but seriously it just got better and better as the tide dropped. The next bay upwind has another ledge, that on a really good day, connects all the way through to the channel and on this day the bomb sets started playing ball!

Surfers permitting you then get more like ten turns to each wave, which is just about as good as it gets! The wind was a little too south westerly that day and you can see the chop on the faces, which isn’t there on a westerly, but this was still pretty special. We had another couple of hours of quality riding before I was just too knackered to bottom turn anymore! We came in and headed back to the Buddle for a traditional après sail pint with JC. As always I sat there regretting not coming over for this more often!

Then it was back to the ferry, with the traditional phone calls to the Wittering boys who didn’t come over to compare notes! And this time JC made sure we had the photos to prove it! Don’t be put off by the high tide stories. This is an amazing place to sail when the water’s not making the launch heroic! If you’re based in the south, next time you’re thinking of a Cornwall wave trip just check the Niton forecast because it really should be on any wavesailor’s ‘been there done that’ list. The ferry can be pricy, but if a group of you cram into a car it’s not too bad and the day return rate isn’t as much as the petrol to the West Country! NG

NITON FACTS
For anyone learning to windsurf and then wave sail on the Isle of Wight, Niton is the mecca for ‘proper’ wavesailing,  rather than the bump and jump conditions found on the rest of the south coast. If you look on an internet satellite map of your choice focus in on the southern tip of the island, just east of the lighthouse on St Catherine’s point. If you use the photo mode you can see the beautifully lined up ledge of rocks that runs into the bay. Just south of that ledge the water drops away really quickly, setting up a perfect spot for channel swells to use all their power in one place.

The real beauty of Niton is that even in the summer if you get a few days of south westerly there will be enough of a wave to ride down the line and get some great jumping. And if you sail on a dropping tide the strong current takes you upwind as you sail back out! (obviously take note of the current on a pushing tide ‘cos if it isn’t windy it rips you downwind!) The little bay bends in under a small cliff, protecting the water from the worst of the wind chop, and you’ll nearly always find surfers sharing the peak with you as even in strong winds it’s still protected enough to surf here.

The ‘problem’ with Niton is the access. At the bottom of the path from the car park there’s a lovely grass area out of the wind, which makes for a perfect rigging and spectating spot, but it also show you how small the launch spot is. A little more than ten years ago they shored up all the sea defences here with some mighty big boulders, but left a dredged channel for the fishermen which is about 30-foot-wide. At low tide you can walk down this to the sand bar between the rocks and beach start straight into the action. You just reverse the process to come back in. As long as there’s a decent swell running this is the easiest time to sail, with loads of room and the waves are actually breaking on sand in front of the rocky ledges. There is even a small escape beach downwind to land on if you get into trouble, and this is really the only state of tide a couple of the island’s best kiters might come to share the waves.

The REALLY good time to sail is just after high tide though, as the waves are at their best, the current’s pulling in the right direction and Niton turns into one of the best down-the-line spots in the UK. Trouble is high tide brings ALL the rocks into play!! Suddenly you’re swimming out through breaking waves in the channel just to reach the wind and on the way back in you need to hit the channel or go around again! You can walk back over the rocks from further downwind but it’s a mission getting in with your kit intact!