Jayce Robinson- Between Heats

The Thurso Surf Festival at the back end of 2016 saw big swells and changing winds for days resulting in a pretty epic event with pumping waves at Thurso and Sandside. Despite making the final, Jayce Robinson still found time to search the north coast of Scotland for tubes. So with an abundance of swell, favourable winds, and perfect, heavy, slabbing reefs around every corner, here’s what happened Between Heats… and a few Qs with JR and filmmaker Mr B.

There seems to be a lot of different spots on this video, how long were you there?
Jayce: Yeah we were lucky, we stayed were there for a week and managed to score all those epic little slabs and also a few other waves that didn’t feature in the clip. Whilst Mr.B was shooting the Juniors in the contest there were a couple of other cheeky sessions at secret spots (as seen in the current issue of the mag).

Some of those waves look fairly shallow, any heavy wipeouts, close calls, bumps or bruises?
Jayce: They are all very shallow, I had a few falls which I thought for sure i’m going to hurt myself, but as fate has it we all came away with no broken bones or even bruises. It does help having all that rubber on mind, if I were surfing in board shorts I think it would be a different story .

What’s your favourite thing about surfing in Scotland?
Jayce: I still never know what to expect from Scotland, every time I go there i find myself surprised with how changeable the waves can be on different swell directions etc. Theres also a loads of spots that I haven’t surfed up there yet, so it adds to the excitement factor of surfing new waves.

There’s a lot of water footage in this clip – any reason?
Mr B: The waves are perfect for shooting water and I pretty much jump in whatever chance I can. Plus you can’t beat Scottish Winter light, the sun’s always quite low in the sky making great colours in the water (when it’s out that is!).

What was the funniest, scariest and most annoying moment of the trip?
Mr B: Funniest may have been the morning we got there, we drove through the night to get in the water at dawn, the sun was just getting up, they were paddled out just before me as I got my housing ready, then the car locked itself with the key in there! Luckily I had all my wetsuit and cam gear out, so swam out to shoot, but had to tell Jayce I’d just locked us all out of the car! After a couple hours surfing it took us about 45 minutes to break back into the car!
Scariest was possibly on a small day at a shallow little slab, there’s one clip in the film where Jayce gets taken out by a bit of a thick lip, I was stood in about ankle deep water and had to run and dive through the back of the wave, nothing too bad but wasn’t sure how bad Jayce had been hit cos he copped it to the head and went down awkward, was also pretty funny.
Annoying moment – probably when the waves are pumping and the sun sets and you know it’s still pumping all night!

See more on this trip in the current issue of Carve.
Video Mr B. Stills Sharpy.

Follow Jayce on IG at @jaycerobinson
Mr B: @mrbphotouk