The Starfish Manoeuvre
We congregated in the night at the edge of the water. We stared into the inscrutinable darkness of the sea in front of us. We found it, not surprisingly, inscrutinable. Deciding we had nothing to lose and that it was better to try and to fail than not to try at all, we waxed up, stuck our boards under our arms, and climbed down the track to the beach below us. Striking out towards the Far East, the end of the bay, there where the easy waters of the bay become a lot less cosy and comfortable, we picked our way through the rocks and boulders haphazardly strewn across the sand, carefully placing feet and cunningly timing on-rushing waves to be able to cross areas where the sand was thin over the rocks without mangling our feet. The stars above us cast a weak, cold light upon our heads, ghostly white in the pre-dawn dusk. All around was quiet. If it hadn’t been for the quiet sloshing around, the rushing in and rushing out of the sea to our side, we could have been in a remote, dried ...