Surfing the Fear

“You paddling out to pick up one of the wide ones coming through?”

“Nah mate, I’m just trying to get out of other peoples’ way.”

Several days of strong winds had whipped up the waves and a big crowd had gathered to take advantage. As always with wind whipped surf, the sensations felt when sitting atop a board were more towards the manic end of the spectrum than the serene. Between each surfable wave came a series of choppy foaming impostors, luring the keenest to paddle for everything. The semi-orderly manner in which surfers self-select who will paddle for which wave was replaced by a dis-orderly frenzy of darting boards.

The waves we all wanted rose sharper, were steeper and moved faster than most could handle. Whether attempting to paddle onto a wave, or dodge out the way, the outcome was often the same, stumbling surfers with their boards flying into the air. Even worse were the stand-up paddlers, their wipe-outs resulting in their board being pushed along by the breaking wave, the board parallel to the wave and sitting on it’s edge, clearing out all before it like a big bulldozer.

Me? I freaked!

My response; paddle out of the zone, catch my breath, survey the scene and then call the session over before it had started. Not even the dolphin that had broken from its pod and swum under my board could convince me to stay, its presence in the turbid water merely adding to my apprehension.

I am not unaccustomed to feeling less than comfortable and not completely sure of myself during many of the activities I pursue, given the risk of injury that comes entwined with the pleasure of the activity. When combined with my predilection for story-telling this acute self-awareness results in an openness for revealing the full range of sensations experienced – including outright fear!

My way is not the surfing way, from what I can gleen. My impression, based on years of standing at the lookouts, arms crossed, checking out the morning surf, or sitting out the back chatting while waiting for the next set, is that surfers don’t talk about fear as much as they could.

There is enough in the sport to prompt nervousness, such as falling onto your own board and gashing your face, or being swept along beneath the water and slamming into rocks, or even the more common discomfort of being held under a breaking wave for longer than you can hold your breath; tick, tick and tick for me. Trepidation is easily encouraged by thoughts of being hit in the head by someone else’s board, or having your own board picked up and slammed onto you; more ticks for me.

But don’t sully the water with talk of your fears. Keep them to yourself, if you don’t mind.

Months Later

Two older boys walk through the carpark, one with a board under one arm, the other with a board under both arms, each with a wetsuit slung over a shoulder. The swell has picked up from the gentle rollers I’d been riding north of here a day or so ago, such that the beaches were now closing out. So where were they going? A point, and there is only one point you access from this carpark.

Surfing is synonymous with summer, sun and sandy beaches. For many surfers though it is the rocky headlands between the beaches known as points that grab their attention.

Waves off points are often formed over rocks rather than sand, requiring more commitment and skill. Then there are the points where the wave does not run alongside rocks onto a beach, but breaks and crashes directly onto the rocks, in what to untrained eyes appears to be a single heaving mess. And often it is, but when the swell hits those rocks at a slightly oblique angle the wave will break from one end to the other – opportunity!

One boy was already in by the time I made it to the rock slab that forms the point; a wipeout resulting in boy and board being thrown up in the air as the wave crashed against the rocks.

The next boy was about to join him, stepping down off the dry rock ledge we were both standing on, onto a slab of rock covered in sea grass and a mess of foaming white water from the waves that had crashed and broken on the edge of the slab. Standing there with his board under his arm only metres from the crashing waves, the force of the upwash from the next breaking wave almost knocking him off his feet, he waits for the largest of the waves in the set to arrive, before launching off the rock slab, onto the apron of water in front of the wave, diving through the lip of the wave as it curls to break.

The intersection of confidence and skill is always a joy to observe, becoming thrilling when the consequence of error is high. Finding myself unwilling to test my own limits, my admiration is tinged with envy.

Months Later

I stand patiently on the beach, in the zone where the wash of the waves runs over my feet and up to the dry sand, watching the incoming swell transform into heaving waves that crash in front of me, wondering if there’ll be a gap between sets long enough to let me through; ready for the test. There is no one frolicking in the surf today, or swimming out the back, the swell is too big and the crash zone too chaotic.

For me, being unable to duck dive, timing is everything, I enter the water so that I am paddling through the surf zone during a lull in the sets and with a frantic, almost manic effort push through to the deeper water where I can paddle up the waves without being rolled back.

There are two surfers sitting in close to the rock platform that marks the end of the beach, they catch their waves in the mix of the churning white water created as the waves slide along the edge of the platform; their rides were short, sharp, and theatrical.

Just off from the rock platform was the wave I’d spied and paddled out for, here the waves were less frequent but the swell formed bigger fatter waves that pushed all the way through to the beach. The take-off was above a slab of rock, where the rebounds off the rocky point met the next incoming wave creating a chopping heaving mess, the only signal a ridable wave was forming was a sudden drop in the water level and then the wave steepened quickly behind me; get up or get dumped.

Alone on this break, with the choice of waves open to me, the gaps between my rides slowly increased, driven by the need for recovery from each effort. With tiredness came the need to be more selective, more watchful and a greater awareness that my ability to get to my feet provided the only clean exit from the wash cycle of this machine.

Is fear only felt when idle?

Where earlier in the session each pulse of swell had generated exhilaration, now it was trepidation.

Wisdom is not the absence of emotion, rather it’s the ability to understand and interpret emotion.

I paddle back in, reminded that boundaries are set not just by fear, but by ability.

Months Later

Where there’s a will there’s a swell.

Strong sou’westerly winds were pushing the swell off-shore leaving only a ripple wrapping around the point and that was enough for one of the local old blokes, who with no competition caught wave after wave. I followed him in.

“Mate, give me one more good one and it’s all yours”

His request a conversation starter on the beauty of solo surf sessions, and then with the next decent wave he was gone.

As the session went on, the wind dropped, the wave size stepped up.

Today, the crowds are on the shore, watching, wondering – is it worth it; it’s always worth it.

The whales are cruising by off-shore, the dolphins are playing off the point, and between us I can see schools of fish swimming by. Are they bait fish, is that what sharks eat, I don’t know much about fish, but they look like bait fish; they jump, I jump. There is a grey nurse shark sanctuary a little north of here.

Another swell ripples in; I take it.