Big for me

I’m not sure if they were the biggest waves I’ve ever surfed. They were breaking over sand, it was a long period swell, it was sunny, what little wind there was was gently puffing offshore and the water was a balmy 25c, board shorts. But for some reason they were the scariest waves I’ve surfed.

Ex tropical cyclone Oswald had emptied it’s bladder on most of Queensland and an extended fetch of Easterly swell had come in behind it to add some punch.  Along with this were unfavourable onshore winds. Only the protected points were working and they were rammed. Sure I got some good ones amongst the flotsam, jetsam and pro’s home for the week but when Saturday came and brought with it the merest breath of an off shore I was all for hitting the open beaches. 

Brian had done the classic Noosa shuffle the day before, you know the one, trying to exit as the tide’s coming up, mind concentrating on mountain goats feet but still failing miserably and slipping on those pesky boulders. His little toe was at right angles to all the rest, it looked like it wanted to go left. He was game for a go though. He necked a couple of painkillers and strapped the errant toe to the next in the vain hope that the little piggy that had none would convince the neighbouring little piggy to go wee wee wee all the way home. 

We met up at our trusty ‘secret’ spot and hiked/limped through the bush only to discover the usual channel had been filled in in the previous days and there was no paddle out. Brian was pretty sure he’d seen a channel out front where he lives so we retreated and shot back to his local. There was a channel, the only problem was that where the channel was the waves that were passing through and over the gutter were unloading on the shore one after another, six foot faces breaking in waist deep water all on top of each other. I made it through, Brian wasn’t so lucky. 

Next thing I’m sat in the gutter in betwixt a pounding shore break and an off shore bank that was breaking a fair way out. I was praying for Brian to make it and join me for the final push across the outside bar. It didn’t happen. Fuck. I sat there and wondered and watched wave after perfect wave reel both left and right either side of the channel then went for it. I stopped paddling just short of Fiji and sat in the big blue getting my head around all this. The ocean surface was so smooth, the sun was still low and not yet scorching, boats further out where leaving blindingly white wakes against the steel blue and behind me perfect bombs were spending themselves on the bank. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that absolutely not another surfer was out. Just me. 

I moved in. I even tentatively paddled for a few, shit that’s a long way down. Then salvation arrived, salvations name was Mark. He wasn’t gonna come out but he saw me and thought fuck it. He actually got one before me and that was all the impetus I needed. The drop seemed to go on for ever; the fins were humming on my board. I flew, straight for the shoulder and over the back, dropping onto my board my arms whirring in paddle motion before I’d even connected. I was safe, I’d made it to the channel and there was nothing behind. My knees had become liquid. 

Mark took the first wave of the next set and in my astonishment at his drop and bottom turn I’d neglected to worry about the rest of the set. Suddenly my heart was in my throat, my arms have never dug so hard, I wished my hands to be the size of dinner plates and I streamlined myself as much as possible and paddled like a motherfucker for the rapidly growing horizon. I squeaked under all five of them by the skin of my teeth and found myself almost back at Fiji. Mark had sat out the set in the safety of the gutter and was soon back out convincing me to go some more, and I did and I had some blinding waves and I got the biggest barrel of my life and I came out and my knees are still shaking.

On reflection, it wasn’t the size, it was the perfection that did me. Flawless waves one after another reeling and spitting, every one. They were brutal in their beauty. Did I have a good surf? I’m still pondering this. I can say with some assurity that I didn’t really have fun but I’m glad I had a go.  Would I do it again? Probably. Dumbass. 

Here's a link to a photo taken about 2k's up the beach from where I was of an obviously much more competent surfer than me... I leave you to decide on a size.

                                           Sunshine Beach Photo





.

So sad...

Last week while surfing at Noosa I duck dived through a mass of jelly fish and got stung to bits. Everyone in the line up was saying how many more there are about at the moment. Another thing you see a lot of at Noosa are turtles. No suprise really, guess what they eat. The same week The Sunshine Coast Daily had this article 'Fears over large Tiger shark at Noosa' about a large, possibly Tiger shark that had been seen by sufers and swimmers at Noosa. No mention of aggression or 'monsters' or threatening behaviour. It turns out the shark seen was probably a mature female nearly 5m long and pregnant. Probably looking for food, they like turtles, notably not humans.

 I know this because a few days later a 4.72m female tiger shark was found hooked on a drum line off Yaroomba beach (15k South of Noosa). It was the biggest the Government contracted 'shark catcher' had ever seen. How did they know she was pregnant? They killed her and cut her open.

                                        'Swimmers frolic while Tiger caught' .

Not only is the act itself abhorrent, but the timbre of the article underlines the lengths 'journalists' will go to to try and sell copy. The Courier Mail ought to be ashamed of its self for its sensationalist gloating over a endangered species being slaughtered.

Work?!

The nice man at White Horses know as Gra Murdoch published this story in the current issue of the mag. It galls me a little to refer to it as a mag as it's unlike any other surfing publication on the newstands. It has minimal advertising (9 pages, 4 front 5 back, out of roughly 180. I say roughly because it has no page numbers and I just did a flick through which is a lazy mans count) and it comes out quarterly. But journal doesn't seem right either... What else is there? Oh well, the man in charge calls it a mag so who am I to argue.

Seeing that G&T has made me thirsty.

Where was I? Oh yeah 'Julian', I sent him a copy of the Mag without him having read the story previous to it's publication. We are going on a boat trip to the Mentawais in 53 days time and it'll be the first time we've hooked up for a year. He's told me he's bringing cement and that it's probably be a good idea if I didn't sleep. Wanker :)

Anyway here it is

We’ve always pissed each other off. He’s a fuckwit. He likes squaretails, I like round. He drinks lager, I drink beer. Even our skateys were opposite, he’d have the trucks done up so tight you couldn’t turn the bloody thing, mine was a carver. But we still hung out together. But we knew the symbiotic rewards of tolerance. He had a car, I had a house. He’d pick me up to head down the coast, I would chuck him petrol money. We’d raid his Mums kitchen then eat at my place after pulling a few cones sat in front of surf vids. He liked Sunny I liked Curren. It was a fine line between laughing our heads off and tearing eachother’s heads off. We crossed that line in Scotland.

A week off in the middle of summer, flights were too expensive so a road trip to Thurso it was. We packed up his ‘82 Ford escort wagon with essentials: enough mull to get the Caribbean stoned, enough cider to drown a festival, then popped round his Mum’s for the obligatory larder raid and we were off. It’s a friggin long way from the SW to Thurso, but with a bag of cassette tapes, a bong and the occasional apple juice, the miles disappeared in a hypnotic fug.

It’s been called the ‘cold water Nias’ and ‘Europe’s best right’, we just called it a hoax. Flat as. No surprise. Fortunately the locals were more upbeat than the swell, and back then visiting surfers were still a novelty especially visiting surfers that arrived driving a party on wheels. They took us under their wing and led us to a small industrial estate on the edge of town where the Pixies were blasting out of the rusty doors of an old barn. Inside was the ultimate flat day fun, a full sized halfpipe. After an afternoon of skating ourselves into a sweaty mess we invite everyone to our campsite for a party.

They started rocking up around six and were still rocking up at midnight. Every one with a least a carrier bag in each hand and every one with a bottle of whiskey in their pocket. Were there really this many young people in Thurso? Evidently so. Julian and I held court, propping our arses on the bonnet of the Ford, taking it in turns to tell tall stories in between trying to work out what the fuck the locals were saying. We were having a ball.

But the fucker kept leaning on me.

“Oi pack it in will ya?”

 “What?”

“Leaning on me.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

He stopped… for a minute, then carried on. Normally it wouldn’t have been a big deal but I was having enough trouble keeping myself upright.

“For fucks sake! .”

“What? .”

“Stop fucking leaning on me.”

“Fuck off, I’m not.”

It wasn’t long. He was back on me. I was over it. I stepped forward and the fucker went rapidly sideways and straight to the floor. He came up swinging like the drunken amateur pugilist he was. I dodged a couple, wore a couple, then tried to bear hug the mad twat.

I’m glad this was back before mobile phones and their requisite cameras. I’ve no doubt it would have been an internet sensation, tagged with words like ‘massive’ and ‘fail’. We grappled. He’ll tell you he landed one after another. I’ll tell you we flayed madly at each other and ended up in a classic wrestle trying to get one another on the floor. Then we fell off the cliff.

Early next morning we decamped without a word to eachother. We spent the next three days in frosty silence. We surfed tiny Brims’ Ness; we were attacked by arctic terns and mossies. We met a Kiwi and a Seppo, which meant we could at least talk to someone. On the fifth day we said goodbye to Thurso, thank you to the locals, and left the Yank and the Kiwi with enough hash to see them through till they went back to the rigs. And we still didn’t talk to each other. 

Eight hours later we were still in Scotland, behind a massive queue of slow moving traffic on a single carriageway. We were functioning normally in all other departments, rolling, drinking, smoking, just in silence. But the mutually imposed ostracism was definitely wearing us down.  As we crested the brow of the next hill we could see the extent of the traffic jam. As the road wend its way down the hill and through the valley we had full view of the almost mile-long snake of crawling vehicles, and there was absolutely nothing coming the other way.

Julian looked at me, I looked at him, and for the first time in almost a week, there was the merest hint of solidarity. He swung the car into the opposite lane and we cruised for a clear mile down the wrong side of the road, as dumbstruck faces watched incredulously from stationary driver’s windows.

We pulled back on to our side of the road in front of the culprit – a septuagenarian driving a car he got for his sixteenth birthday.

The road ahead was empty. We turned and grinned at each other. Without saying a word the silence was broken.

When we both got married twelve years later, he was my best man and I was his. Wanker.

And here he is!

 

Reasons to be cheerful (Pt 4)

Was out with Brian the other day in some pretty good waves when, in between sets, I saw a bee in the water obviously struggling. As I paddled toward it a wave started taking shape, I had a choice, paddle over the wave and help out the bee or turn and go. I turned and I went. The wave never amounted to anything, just backed off and wouldn’t let me in, so I headed back to where the bee was and gently scooped him up. He walked up my palm and onto the top of my thumb where he sat for a while having a breather. He opened and closed his wings and dried them out. 

Beyond the bee another wave was coming and this one was no way gonna back off. I looked at the bee and asked him ‘mate, you ready to go?’ No, really, I did. He turned into the wind, I raised my hand and off he went leaving me just enough time to spin and take a late drop straight into a head high backlit glassy right.

                                     Reasons to be cheerful (Pt 3)