The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

They say that every cloud has got a silver lining. It’s one of these gems of folk-wisdom, like “good things come to those who wait”, “the grass is always greener on the other side”, and “better the devil you know”, all designed to make people grit their teeth, dig their heels in and put up with whatever shit situation they’re in instead of actually trying to do something about it.    In this particular case the cloud was pretty toxic. It passed over the whole world, infected and wiped out people at an alarming rate, and forced economies to grind to a standstill. Borders closed, businesses shut down in the single biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and people lost their jobs by the hundreds of thousands.    And I was one of those.    I was making a living teaching surfing, among other things such as kayaking and rockclimbing. The official directives were handed down from above, no human contact was allowed between anyone ...

Surfing can be a highly individualistic thing to do. We focus on the wave we are going to ride, all our attention narrowly brought to bear on one thing only, the movement of the water, and how we are going to synchronise with it. The wind, the tide, the swell, the current, the shape, size and type of the board, all these things are important factors that contribute to our engagement with the living water of the ocean, but that engagement itself, that ultimate result of the harmonisation of all those contributing elements, happens between the ocean and one person only. As a broad general rule, not discounting such things as tow-ins. We might paddle out with our mates, and share time in between waves, and debrief afterwards; and, certainly, help each other pick up the pieces and deal with emergencies if and when required. But when push comes to shove, at the very heart of the matter, in the crux of the moment, by and large we are alone with the ocean, for the duration of that ride, howev...

A humpback whale blew out its last breath, rolled over in the surf, gave up the ghost and died. The waves picked it up and washed it up on shore, where it lay stranded, half in and half out of the water. Word spread around the shark universe like a bushfire under water, and within minutes they turned up in their dozens, swirling around the bits of whale still in the water, attacking, biting, ripping off pieces of flesh, chewing; tails flogging the water, the sea boiling and heaving, the surf running red with the whale’s blood.    It was a popular surf break. Immediately all beaches were closed ten kilometres north and south of the whale, while the local council scratched its head and set out working out a way to get rid of the carcass, and, hopefully, of the attendant sharks.    Twelve hours later and twenty kilometres further south the Cork and I met in the dark below the moon. We are creatures of the night and only ever venture out under cover of darkness, pref...

  There had been a cyclone somewhere far away, roaring ferociously over the wide expanse of the ocean, and it had whipped the water into a wild frenzy. The long-range groundswell had brought it over to us, and now all around us the water was boiling and churning, roiling and rolling to and fro between the open gap of the bay, and the claustrophobically close cliffs of our take-off zone. The water swirled and bubbled in dirty streaks of brown, and a case could well be made that, really, we shouldn’t be out here at all.    But that was never going to happen. Surfing is a pursuit of an opportunistic nature. When the swell is there, you’ve got to seize the opportunity and jump on it as hard and fast as you can, because there is no way of telling how long it will last, or when it will be turned on again by the Great Big Wind In The Sky, patron saint of surfers and people who like to eat a lot of baked beans.    So we bent our backs into the howling wind, put our ...

Baboons are interesting animals. They are best known for having huge pink arses, shitting in their hands and throwing it at people they don’t like, and dragging their knuckles over the ground while they walk. They have occasionally been known for their penchant for exhibitionist sex. Most bafflingly among their many intriguing attributes is their uncanny ability to be able to learn how to read, that is recognise words and distinguish them from others. They share this ability with humans, and, curiously, Columbian pigeons. It is unclear whether a diet of cocaine was involved in the development of the ability in the latter. Words baboons have in the past been proven to be able to recognise include the words “surf”, “wave”, “swell”, “drop-in” and “you bastard”. Under test conditions they have been shown to be able to acquire a vocabulary of up to 308 words, the vast majority of them swear words.    One ability baboons are emphatically not renowned for being able to master is th...

  The roaring, bone-crushing surf of the last few days and weeks had faded into a distant memory, or, some might suggest, a figment of our imagination.    We stood gloomily under the stars and stared out at the black water lapping sedately at the beach. Tiny ripples fanned out towards the night sky horizon.    ‘Right. We’re stuffed for a wave,’ said the Reefshark.    ‘Nah, look at it, look, there’s a set coming through right now,’ said I, the Baboon, enthusiastically, pointing at the water in front of us with one hand while resting the knuckles of the other one on the sand.    Three heads turned, very slowly, to the right. Even more slowly they swivelled back around to the left. A tiny crest of bubbling white water shimmered in the night, spluttered anaemically like an old two-stroke lawn mower on stale fuel, and laid down and died. Three heads turned back towards me.    ‘So ... you sure there’s nothing wrong with your vis...

  Our town of Eagle Bay in the southwest corner of WA can get pretty crowded with blow-ins from the big city up north, so we, in our desperate drive to be able to surf uncrowded waves, have cultivated the art of surfing at night.    Preferably by the light of the moon.   The moon comes up about 45 minutes later every day, so that a half moon, a gibbous moon, appears around lunch time and stays in the night sky for the first part of the night, setting around midnight, leaving the second half of the night moonless and dark. The moon times shift through the cycle until eventually the full moon comes up when the sun goes down. Therefore, by the same token, the moon goes down when the sun comes up the next day. If you time it right you get an abundant amount of light between the moon and the stars, and when the surf is cranking it is pure magic.    If you time it wrong you don’t.    Not satisfied with merely surfing by moonlight, we thought we’...