A very influential man in Surfing once told me that he thought Telescopes was the best wave in Indo. He has seen it hundreds of times and on some of the biggest swells in decades, when it turns into a whole different kind of beast. To me, its one of my favorite lefts and its perfection allows a pretty accurate description of it.

Its one wave in the Mentawai`s that has a current, the bigger the tides, the stronger the current. This makes a big difference to how you surf the wave.

The biggest tides we have coincide with the new and full moons and a few days each side. Both those scenarios have high tides around sunrise and sunset at their peaks, so with the boat trips, we are anchored at the wave 30 minutes before dawn, and you can see which way the boat is being pulled to show you the current, and on those big tides, we are being pulled out, with water rushing past the boat, its a strong current, and a weak paddler would really struggle to paddle against it. On these occasions, don’t get into the tender to get dropped out, jump overboard and drift paddle out to the end of the end bowl, suss out how fast your moving, warm up the shoulders and start at the end of the lineup.

The outgoing current pulls up the end bowl and means a lot of waves break, when its really ripping out, you want to just be catching everything you can, use it as a conveyor belt/taxi. the end bowl, the dunny bowl, the curry bowl, monkeys corner, that last section can be longer than you think and with it ending in deep water, its safe and can barrel and is bending back at you, so rippable.

On a good day, when i kick out down the end, I’ll look south across the reef, way down towards the Scarecrows area (Diablos originally, and Franklins after that, before the early exposers online turned it into Scarecrows) if you see waves down there, there’s a set on the way, and I’ll then look out to the west and where I’m headed and sprint paddle out, to be ready for the incoming set, but if theres not much looking south, and the tide is ripping out, I’ll just take a breath and cruise, drift out.

As the Sun get higher above Sipora on a bigger tide, there will be a bit more of a pack out the back, with the unknowledgeable and greedy getting dropped out the back, waking out the inside bowl and frantically paddling AT the person sitting furthest outside, not even looking at where the empty waves are or how the water is moving. It pisses me off and I often blame the surf guide and his tender driver for being ignorant, and not teaching people to respect the lineup.

But it means more waves for me and those who can read the ocean. 5 minutes after these people are sprint paddling towards the top of the line, they are already paddling back, against the current, as they realise the take off is 80 metres back from where they are.

You may get a screamer from up there, and often the first wave of the set will peak higher up the line and allow you to travel about half way, before the second wave is a great wall of china and is standing up much further wide, with 3 more waves stacking up behind that and each going slightly wider.

At this point, if your way up there, its nearly better to catch the white water in and start the process of surfing with the current and using my tips above.

If you do want to sit out the back and try to snag one of those great walls, its a thing of joy, its your best chance of a longer barrel, especially when its big. Extra paddles will help you everywhere, and EVERYONE at some stage on my boat will hear me tell them, “extra paddles” its counter intuitive, but with the swells moving faster than your home and with you hopefully being in a position for a potential barrel or a long fast wall, you don’t want to stop paddling too early and not be properly down and in the wave. If you do this, you will get sucked up to the top of the wave and either get pitched, or have to take a tippytoes drop straight down to the bottom, and have no chance or taking a diagonal, or even horizontal take off, and that’s what you want, you want to have felt the wave start to lift you up, then you want to keep paddling, and angle your board and body at a diagonal, to take off with the direction of the wave, no bottom turn straight away, and as you progress thru this, you can add a couple more paddles as the wave gets even steeper and then you are in a position to pull straight in, staying high and basically surfing horizontal to the lip.

Whatever you do, you want to be taking off towards the shoulder, not towards the bottom of the wave.

If its not a barrel, you are up and weaving and can see where it slows down enough to give you a whack or a carve, or to potentially pull in, and then you go to the lower quarter of the wave to set that up, with all the speed you have, by staying high and dropping as you see the upcoming section ahead.

Telescopes gives you multiple chances to do this, its not shallow enough to mean many cuts, its very rare anyone gets cut here, getting caught inside at worst just washes you into the deep water, and the way the wave wraps around that incredibly well designed point of reef means the boats can be anchored in a position to watch all this happening from your bean bag or deck chair.

As the outgoing tide slackens, things change quite rapidly and there’s less opportunity on the end bowl and there’s usually more people that haven’t been sucked too deep.

And then as the tide starts pushing in, then it can actually mean you have to paddle way way way outside to spread the crowd out a bit, as there are waves you can make from a long long way out, as Tom Carroll who named the wave said “its telescoping” on that first epic swell they got there. bigger tubes outside, into a middle size tube, into a smaller tube as it telescopes down the line.

The incoming tide means that there isn’t that outgoing pull of water out of the Mapaddegat bay lifting the waves up on the end bowl as much. So you have more chance to make it from further out, and as the lazy paddlers and the talkers have got drifted down into the end bowl zone, you need to paddle right out, to spread the crowd, and wake people up to the fact that you can now sit way out there without getting sucked out.

Outgoing tide can bring stingers here some days, it seems less often now, sea life, jellyfish can get pulled out of the bay some days. ive been there on EPIC days when we had to get out of the water, it was just too brutal for a hour or so. You will notice the little tiger like fish on the surface feasting on those stingers at that time.

I’ve also had one time, nearly 30 years ago, and the only time ive ever seen it, when we had a school? Not sure the word for a group of sea snakes, but approximately 50 plus sea snakes all get drifted thru the lineup in what i can only imagine was mating, they were intertwined and wrapped around each other and i actually ended up hitting one paddling at one stage, they were gone within 30-40 minutes, but it was an amazing and creepy sight.

Telescopes really is an epic wave, its in Monkeys top 2 lefts in Sumatra and probably mine too. Its a very popular surf school now when its small. Its forgiving, and it gets destroyed for days and days on end by the wrong winds.

Rifles can be triple overhead and telescopes not even knee high on the biggest waves, yet it can be just about the opposite on a different swell direction.

Theres a few more tips ill keep for when you come on the boat!