Winter had
come. It had been two weeks since the WCT road show had rolled out of town,
shaking its head at the travesty of a Brazilian small wave specialist running
away with Spanish gold. Two days since I first awoke to numb ears and the sight
of my own breath inside my van.
For those
patient ones without prior engagement, the reward for waiting out a long, flat
summer and autumn popped up on the charts. Wednesday promised blue sky,
offshore winds and a 16’ swell, all synchronising nicely with a lunchtime low
tide.
By 11am the
party was in full swing. A high proportion of Burgundy neoprene announced a
Basque majority in the 80-strong lineup, naturally. The old guard leisurely
descended the harbour steps armed with an assortment of seasoned rhino-chasers.
The youngsters threw their sleek white Pukas semi guns off the harbour wall and
dived in after them. All were soon in the grip of the current that took them,
willingly but surely with some trepidation, quickly out to the head of the lineup.
Was someone humming Highway To The Danger Zone? Probably not.
And then
comes the heckling, hassling, laughing and jostling as the pack asserts itself,
always with a beady eye on the horizon. And then comes the next set.
The wise
and the skittish paddle out further, others turn and go for it. Sometimes they
catch it, make the drop and steer cagily through the mass of bodies littering
their path, ducking below an overhang of body and surfboards itching to fill
their spot, most pulling off at the last moment, others dropping in regardless,
patience and protocol dissolved in adrenaline. Those that back off the wave
turn quickly towards the horizon, knowing that the next will be bigger, the one
after that bigger still. Those that make it either race down the line, or
deliberately stall to pull into the kind of barrels most of us only dream of
telling our mates/kids/grandkids about. Those that gambled and lost, the ones
that fudged the drop or got burned, fumble for their board (or the remains of
their board) or simply bob there in the wash, wondering what just hit them.
Then they prepare themselves for the gruelling ordeal of getting out of the
impact zone and back into the lineup, with three more monsters yet to come.
Others, caught bang-to-rights on the inside, surrender to the irresistible
frothing energy that mashes them into the estuary, where a lengthy paddle to
gain the channel awaits them, past the clicking, hooting crowd lining the way.
Those with boards and limbs intact remain in the channel to have another crack
at it. Those with damaged boards, body parts or spirit scrabble for the safety
of the harbour, and the dry land beyond. Meanwhile, out back, the waves keep
getting bigger, meaner and browner, dredging sand upwards and hurling humans downward.
As the
decapitated boards pile up, the tide drops, the waves become hollower, the
swell grows still further, and so does the pack. One local young gun runs
dripping back to his van with half a board, and, looking distraught, fishes out
a fresh one. I tell him that his nose section with his friends over there,
whereupon he swims like an otter across the harbour to retrieve it: “I need the
sticker” he gasps, peeling it free with numb fingers and hastily re-applying it
to the borrowed board before returning once more to the lineup, happy to be
back in the arena with a correctly decaled board, at low tide, on the best day
of the year.
