"I wasn’t ready. But I have a strong feeling that, in time, I’ll be getting other chances to get it right, and, eventually, I will." Photo: Byron Loker
For me that mission to Rockaway was a warm-up (notwithstanding the temperature of the water), and there were three subsequent on good swells. Warm-ups for what I hoped would soon materialize: epic big wave trips to Northern California and Mexico. Trips that were, however, never to be. I was soon to realize I was under-prepared and on unfamiliar ground, at least, that is, until my feet touched the sands of New York and Long Island’s beaches and tested their moderately sized swells. My big-wave credentials, however, were not in order.
I’d been getting there, I thought. The biggest I’d braved up until that point had been a session during the Cape Town, South Africa winter shortly before I left for the States – ten to twelve foot Crayfish Factory. As a buddy and I prepare our boards for the session (mine, a 7’2 shape that was too short, too narrow, and too thin for the conditions), I know something is on my mate’s mind because he is usually ahead of me in donning his suit, scrambling out into the line-up.
I know what it is. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to be stupid. I’ll just sit out wide and take stock. You’ve surfed this size before, if not bigger. You’ll be fine, right?’
There is a thoughtful pause before J replies. There often is. He’s been watching the sets breaking way out on the reef while I’ve been blustering into my wetsuit, waxing my board. ‘It’s serious out there, even at this size,’ he says. I’m not sure this is a good idea.’ I don’t want him not to paddle out on account of me, so I try to shrug it off.
‘I probably won’t stay out long,’ I say. ‘And I’ll keep out on the shoulder, and I’ll come in if it’s too hectic.’
‘It has a way of lulling you in,’ J says, and he points out the edge of a large bed of kelp inshore of where the heaviest white-water is boiling. ‘If you get caught inside, don’t try and come straight in. Always aim to keep outside of the kelp and to the left of it,’ he says, motioning towards the still water of the small bay alongside the lobster plant, now giving to decrepitude.
It’s a long but easy paddle out from the boat slipway. You can paddle well wide of where the waves are wreaking havoc on the reef. It’s only when I get out there, perhaps half a kilometer from shore, and see the scale of the waves, that my heart starts pounding fiercely. I am glad that I feel it – this fear. It sharpens me; brings survival instincts into play.
I do stay wide of where the waves are breaking, but it’s impossible to catch any from such a position. One has to line up closer to the reef, where there’s a small knot of surfers up to the challenge, among them Ian, a well-respected local charger. He’s riding a nine-foot-plus, orange pin-tail and is always in exactly the right place at the right moment, picking off the best of the set waves as they mow through the break.
I work myself into position three times to take off on waves that come my way, but I don’t. Twice there’s a guy paddling deeper than I, and I’m grateful for it, because it means I might not have to go. He pulls up both times, I could blame him for my not going, but, I’m not going to. On the third one I have no excuse at all.
Poised on the tops of those waves, paddled in, suspended for a second between standing up and dropping, I find I can’t bring myself to do it, so much is fear the predominating force, and there is nothing in the way of experience to counter it and enable the drop, the rapid alchemy to ecstasy.
I wasn’t ready then, and I’m not ready now, I realize, standing on the beach at Rockaway, thinking about Mavericks or Todos. I’m busking it, I realize, like that man on the A-train. I tried again some last winter, back in Cape Town, pushing a second-hand 8-foot Bushman out into the eight foot-plus range on three occasions. Broke it twice, and lost the tail-end, yet having negotiating a satisfactory drop down a double over-header.
I bought a cheapish water video camera and mounted it on a Gath helmet and paddled a big day at Outer Kom. Ask Andrew Marr about that one. Ever the gentleman, what he gave me was sympathy when what I might have expected and deserved was one of his beautiful, big laughs when the damn thing went swimming on the first wave I didn’t make.
I wasn’t ready. But I have a strong feeling that, in time, I’ll be getting other chances to get it right, and, eventually, I will.
