The Point
There are only three sports in the world, bull fighting, mountain climbing and motor racing, the rest being mere pastimes: according to Hemmingway. Think what you will of Hemmingway, and his opinions viewed now from a different age may seem full of machismo and bombast, but he had a point. The difference for him between a sport and a pastime is obvious – risk.
Each of his sports required skill, flair, and most of all, courage. For Hemmingway, if your life was not in danger, than it was not sport. Bull fighting, where is the risk in that, I hear you say? Yes, the bull loses every time, but often so too did the matador, gored by the horns of an unruly beast.
Is surfing a sport?
It is as possible to paddle onto a small fat wave with little risk to oneself at it is to walk up a small hill in the afternoon before tea. Walking a hill is a pleasant way to pass the time, and is as far from mountaineering as riding a little tickler onto the beach is from wondering if your fins will catch on the rocks you see beneath your board as a growling wave chases you from behind.
Reefs and rocks are what elevate surfing to a sport. Hereabouts it is the rocks that create the risk, jutting into the sea, breaking the tedium of the sandy beaches and catching the passing swell: these are The Points, one of which I shall ride today.
In these parts there is a point known as ‘No Toes’ and another simply as ‘Guillotines’. To watch the riders at Guillotines is to see sport as Hemmingway imagined it.
Every wave caught at Guillotines is an achievement, a prize. To catch a wave you start with your board facing directly at the rocks barely several board lengths off the rocks. A stroke or three all that is needed before you are sucked up the face of the wave that barely existed a few moments before. The transition to standing occurs with the board in air, not in water, more vertical than horizontal as it falls down the face of the wave, the rider desperately trying to stay in contact.
The landing must be nailed, there being no opportunity for adjustment else you are caught in the breaking wave as it smashes onto the rocks. The landing nailed you must hold the tuck to stay in the barrel that forms immediately.
There is no escaping the barrel. If a rider were to stand square on their board with their left hand outstretched, the fingers would be floating above dry rock, the fingers of their right hand would be deep in the wall of the wave that is breaking and crashing over them.
An error, of timing, judgement or nerve, and the Guillotine awaits. Your nerve holding and timing right, but select a wave whose barrel is too small and you will be dragged across the rocks for 30m.
The Point I walk to now can either be sporting, or merely an exhilarating place to pass the time.
The sight of waves rearing up and crashing onto The Point evokes images of a stomping jaw of a large hungry animal. There is no avoiding the gnashing of the teeth: entry is effected by jumping over an incoming wave as it crashes onto the rocks.
A breaking wave takes a different shape at each beach, the combination of the angle to the sea and the underwater topography create a shape distinctive for each beach, each shape requiring an adjustment to a surfer’s technique. The Point is different again.
There is no gentle introduction when surfing at The Point. Unlike a beach, there is no possibility of sitting in and sampling the shape on smaller waves to make the necessary refinements to technique. You cannot start easy, and then step up. No matter the size of the waves there is only one take-off position – over the rocks.
A grey sky and broiling sea combine to make it difficult to detect the swells that will shape to catchable waves, and those that can be allowed to roll past. The lead time to assess and react considerably shorter than encountered at a typical beach.
Sitting out the back at a beach break can be peaceful, the sound from the uncaught wave breaking in front of you a relaxing murmur. Sitting on The Point, the waves rumble as they form and break next to you, the constant noise and bounce of the back wash creating a sense of action, urgency.
Wipeout!
When you get it wrong, and you will, everyone does, the wave hauls you along the edge of the rocks. There is a feeling of sport when you stand in waist deep water at the end of such a ride, madly trying to retrieve the board and paddle away from the next foaming wall of water.
Up!
The instinctiveness of muscle memory brings me to my feet, and then must be consciously overcome to avoid my tendency of being slow to make the first bottom turn as the wave angles towards the rocks as it bends around The Point. Do not ask me the difference in speed, angle, or steepness of this wave to the dozen I had attempted to paddle onto before it, but each failed attempt became an opportunity to adjust the technique.
Hemmingway might be right, maybe there are only three sports, but I tell you one thing, catching waves at The Point is a helluva way to pass the time.
