The World Surf League (known as WSL) hosted the 2025 surfing finals at Cloud Break, Fiji. Lucky for us we happened to be 6nm away from this prestigious and monumental event!
The athletes stayed at the exclusive and private island resort of Tavarua which is conveniently located near the famous surf spot, Cloud Break. Rumor has it that clients of Tavarua Resort not only have to be very wealthy but they have to commit to surfing in order to stay here.
We are not allowed to land on the island at all. We tried to “walk the beach” and were promptly shooed away by security.
World Surf League (WSL) Finals
There many famous surf spots in the world including Teahupoʻo in French Polynesia, Pipeline in Hawaii, and Cloud Break in Fiji.
Do you remember when I had the opportunity to watch the WSL competition in Teahupo’o, French Polynesia?
Fijians built is a permanent judge’s stand into the reef many years ago. They add the banners to the stand each year and remove immediately after the event.
In the swarm of spectators there is a boat with the announcers. The announcers let the surfers and their coaches know who has wave priority, what the scores are, and what is needed to move on to the next round.
The popular floating bar, Cloud 9 donates their transport boat for the competitors. The locals wrapped the competitor boat in advertisement and outfitted it to comfortably house all 10 competitors and their teams.
The Spectators
Between 25-35 boats anchored near the reef to support and witness this great event. In addition, there were dozens of dinghies, long boats, tourist boats, surf boats that came out to the “line” to witness the WSL competition and be part of the mayhem.
We took Sweetie, our dinghy out which was 6 nautical miles away from our anchorage. That is a long way to take your dinghy! We met up with our friends Chris and Sarah on Seaglub and Chris and Michelle on Beleza.
WSL Competitors
The WSL competitors have spent 7 months surfing all over the world in 11 competitions. During the finals the top 5 men and the top 5 women compete to be world champion.
Michelle on Beleza shared some of her photos since I don’t have my phone (it died many months ago).
The waves started out slow but by mid-morning they filled in and provided a beautiful landscape for the athletes.
The wave curls around so we were only able to see about half of the surfable wave. But still very impressive.
At times we had a 3meter swell pushing all of the boats and dinghies up and over.
Cover photo by Ed Sloane, World Surf League
Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual live events. We enjoyed the WSL on 2 September 2025.
In our last blog post, we finally fix the last part of our standing rigging by replacing the furler and foils on our forestay.