The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

  Early morning. The sun came up. It does this reliably.    We had paddled out into the dark, as is our want. This time of year the water is beautiful and warm. A fresh westerly blew across the sea, giving us a minor chill which disappeared immediately as soon as we got in the water. We had struck out into the night, and navigated our way forward to the point, there where the waves rolling in from the open ocean first meet the unwavering land, the obstacle that forces the water up onto its heels, causing it to rear up like a brumby, bend its head in a graceful arc, and bow, break and crash into perfect peelers that run the length of our bay.    There had been just four of us out, partners in crime, catching waves in companionable solitude. No one, it seems, is insane enough to surf when the only light to work by is the stars. Dunno why, I’m sure. Once the sun sticks up its head and brings warmth and light into the world, the second shift can be seen doin...

We have had a phenomenal amount of sand build up over the past year or so. With the usual ebb and flow of summer erosion and winter deposit we received a huge amount of sand around the point, and when winter came and went it just stayed there and got bigger and fatter. This is ironic, as not very far down the coast other beaches are battling with huge erosion issues, and buildings are about to topple into the surf.    Meanwhile, our point is almost silted up to the extent that, on a low tide, we can just about walk out all the way to First Rock. This does two things. For one, it makes it a lot easier to paddle out when it’s pumping, since all you’ve got to do is wade out till you’re knee deep, and then paddle hard for two seconds between sets. For another though, it makes the wave that breaks at the point lightning fast and borderline lethal. Especially at the dead low tide. Where once we hugged the rock and got up close and personal with it, using its sucking down-draught t...

  ‘Can you please take your mask off?’      I’m sitting leisurely stretched out on a bench in the afternoon sunshine when this voice comes drifting down from above me. I’m in town getting new tyres for my car, and have got time to waste, so I’m enjoying some rare downtime. Having wandered in and out of a few shops, without stealing hardly very much at all, I’m wearing the regulation Covid-mask required now for entering premises. In spite of the big signs on all the doors and shopfront windows, politely requesting all customers to be considerate, do the right thing and cover their faces, when lining up in the post office, of all places, I hadn’t failed to notice that at least one in every four or five people were not wearing a mask. Judging from the way they were greeted casually by their first names by the staff behind the counter, they appeared to be locals.      Beware the local yokel, because they will always be above the law. Tadati...

We meet in the morning and we paddle out. The surf is there, waiting for us, an eternal combination of exasperating challenge and generous but jealous lover. There is nothing that comes close to the salt water washing over your head, drenching you with the first rolling set you cop, chasing the cobwebs of sleep out of your mind and dragging you into the here and now without compromise.      We are the First People. We are here when the rest of the world is asleep. We strike out into the pitch-black night, floating out over water as dark as the sky, guided by starlight. When the moon is full and sitting high above our bay, we come out extra early, just for good measure, and snatch up magical hours well before dawn. The peace and quiet, the hush that lies over the ocean, is incomparable. It forges an invisible bond between us, the surfers, and the currents, swells and waves of the ocean. They pick us up and throw us around, like an neverending bareback bronc that chu...

  My mates and me have, over the long years, developed a predilection for surfing at night, in the dark. This curious and bizarre notion was born out of the twin desires to get away from a crowded day-time line-up with its attendant necessity of having to fight, hustle and hassle for every wave; and to step out of the ordinary of everyday humdrum life and our mundane existences by doing something different, something challenging, wild, unaccountable.      Some might say the appropriate term is “stupid”.      It started with surfing by the full moon. We scored magic rides over jet black rolling acres of water under a hard diamond moon, alone and unseen under the night sky. As we got more used to being out at night, we started pushing the envelope, because, well, that was the whole point to begin with. So little by little we surfed with increasingly less moon light, at more and more advanced stages of the waning moon, until, inevitably, we ...