The First Wave
Is there anything so joyous as catching your first wave after a long break from surfing. I am not talking about a few weeks away, but months and months. And what makes it even sweeter, is when it’s the first wave of the session you go for.
I doubt regular, seasoned surfers would know it. The poetry in motion that is surfing so ingrained through habit that I doubt they can appreciate the thrill experienced by the slightly unexpected take off and zip down the face on the first wave after a long break away.
Yesterday, unusually, there was no one out for much of the afternoon: insufficient swell the reason. This morning, normal service had resumed, the water packed with surfers as a result, scattered from inside the point to the beach.
No one is surfing from the point today, as the waves are not wrapping around the point but are being pushed in almost directly offshore. It is dead low tide and I could easily enter from anywhere along the shore and have a shorter paddle out, but instead I walk out along the rocky spine that is the usual get in spot, purely for the sake of it, a reminder that, I’m here, again.
Then paddle back to where the first cluster of surfers are sitting. I let the first few sizable waves pass, not wanting to appear greedy in front of those who have been sitting for some time waiting for a wave. I’ve always let the first surfable wave pass as a sacrifice to the surfer gods, with the hope my sacrifice is recognised and I am rewarded with a good session.
‘What’s that’, I hear behind me, and follow their gaze across the bay.
In the distance, small pods of dolphins jumping and diving. A few surfers paddle out to get a better look, and then stop and sit up not more than 50m from me. What stopped them appears above the surface – a whale, blowing water as it surfaces, and then glides along before slowly dropping back down.
Torn between waiting for a possible re-appearance and the incoming sets, I spin the board and paddle hard.
Up!
Pull the bottom turn, climb back up the face and then hold the rail. The board sliding and slithering across the wave. Imagine standing on a snake as it slithers quickly across the ground. This is how it feels to be on a board as you weave across the face of the unbroken wave.
The take-off was as far out as anyone is taking off – just inside the point. When the swell is more from the east than the south like it is today, there is a distinctive second peak, a separate spot to sit and catch waves. If you are lucky, and bag one of the big ones when you take off from near the point, it will hold it’s face to the second peak and then re-build again, as mine does now, allowing me to zip down the face again and pull a big arcing bottom turn.
Pure joy!
Where am I? I’m at Cresso. It’s somewhere on the NSW coast.
