Moon Barrel

The full moon sat high in the sky. It smiled down upon us in a benevolent, silvery sort of a way.

   We had gathered again for our monthly ritual of surfing by the light of the moon. The wind, swell and tide had conspired to produce first class waves for us to ride. I had arrived early, and had climbed the look-out by myself, for a sticky-beak. The quiet night-time bay stretched out endlessly in front of me, with long, straight and regular lines of swell rolling in from the wide ocean, pulsating in regular intervals. It looked very promising indeed.

   Five of us members of the crew, of the Brotherhood of Madmen, waded out through the shallows near the rocks and pushed out into the waves. First cab of the rank was The Pocket Rocket Grommet, pint-sized and possessed of never-failing good nature and an eternal smile and limitless kindness for everyone. Hard on his heels was myself, The Baboon, living evidence that primates left Africa millions of years ago and paddled over to Australia on the back of surfboards made of banana leaves and palm fronds. To this day their descendants, like myself, can be seen crouching Neanderthal-like over twenty-foot longboards with their knuckles dragging through the water. Following in quick succession were The Snake Catcher, of low tolerance to anyone displaying anti-social behaviour in the line-up, The Reefshark, known far and wide for his ability to look human-devouring ferocious reefbreaks in the Wild Pacific calmly in the eye and have them for breakfast, quite often while having his board violently smashed in half in the process, and The Cork, taciturn and reserved expert at bobbing up and down rudderlessly on the Great Ocean Of Life.

   The tide was low, resulting in sharp and steep take-offs, unfolding in the flash of an eye. Out at the very point where we sat, an area habitually referred to as Singapore, because of the battles that rage over possession of it on a crowded day, which is just about every day, the swell that had travelled across the mighty Pacific for thousands of miles crashed into the amalgam of rocks and sand that make up the point and rose up into walls of black water, curling over into perfect slopes for us to ride. If we could get on.

   I scored two good rides in quick succession, while, against all tradition, some of the others went headlong over the falls and got smashed. Usually it’s the other way around, and it’s me who spends a majority of the time in the washing machine, being taken on a guided tour of the underwater geography of the bay, and being introduced at close quarters to a fine array of rocks and sandbanks, coming away with a close and intimate acquaintance of their general geological composition, chemical content and physical hardness, as well as all the lumps, bumps, cuts and bruises to show for it.

   Because of the low tide the water moved very quickly, and there was a very fine line between being too far from the breaking action of the wave, and being too close to the revolving eye of its internal storm. Too far out the slope failed to form, was too fat and slow, and you couldn’t get on; too far in, and you got sucked into the vortex of the curling waterfall, and got used to mop up the sandy bottom. I sat back for a bit and watched the way the water moved. A wave would come in and bounce up against the rocks of Singapore, rise up majestically, unfurl itself sideways into a rideable slope, as expected, and then, unusually, and due no doubt to the low tide and shallow depth of the water, would perform a ninety degree u-turn, a switch-back of sorts, bending itself into the shape of a boomerang, with the far edge twisting itself back towards and into the curl of the wave. It created a kind of valley in the water, a bowl of sorts, not dissimilar to a high powder bowl in a snowy mountain. The trick was to position yourself exactly in the middle between the edge of the curl and the cusp of the bowl. In the dark, by the light of the moon. And, without being able to see where to or how fast the wave was moving, paddle into the hole and jump up in mid-air, hoping to land it on two feet and to be able to take off down the line at full speed.

   At times it worked, the landing panned out nicely and the ride that followed was wild and woolly. Other times it misfired and I went flying. One wave I had timed perfectly, jumped to my feet and rode it high on top, sitting right near the lip of the wave, the edge where it crumbles forwards and tumbles down its face in a torrent of whitewash. Thinking that I had to adjust my position or I would be left behind, sliding down the back side of the wave, I leaned forward hard, dropping deeper into the hole, expecting to perform a bottom turn and veer off to the right side. Only to glide down hard in a straight line, see the nose of my board bury itself under the water, and go flying high, arse over tit, cartwheeling through the air, followed hot on the heels by my board, having suddenly turned into a lethal human-seeking missile on a mission to decapitate me. I scrambled for the sand underneath, held my breath with my arms covering my head, and cautiously stuck my head out of the water, ready to dodge the oncoming bullet of my board. There have been times in the past when, in a similar situation, my board had come careering back at me and had fetched me a full-on blow in the ribs with the fin, resulting in six weeks of busted ribs and time out of the water. It pays to be careful when coming back up again.

   No two waves are ever the same. They never break in exactly the same spot and the same way twice. Part of the challenge of catching waves is being able to read the water, being able to learn from observing where the ideal spot is to catch a wave, AND being able to get there on time and in the right position. It’s not a given. The next wave broke slightly differently, due to a minute reduction in drive and power, and all of a sudden I found myself too far out on the downstream side of things, where the shoulder of the wave would, inevitably, become fat and round and offer no possibility of getting onto the rideable slope. So as a last minute effort I paddled frantically hard to the left, towards the curl, managed to just slide over the leading edge of the boomerang bowl in time, and jumped to my feet in mid-air. Only to land at the trough of the wave going left, facing into the curl instead of away from it, and heading for imminent disaster. I threw my weight around as best I could into a bottom turn that would have required almost a full 180 degree spin-around on an area the size of a fifty cent coin, and, predictably, the nose of my board buried itself again and I was catapulted up to the Milky Way once more, just for a change. Really, this was more like night-time flying than full-moon surfing.

   But there’s always one more.

   I waited patiently for my turn, watching my mates catch waves and disappear into the dark, at times getting skulldragged upside down a mere twenty metres away from us, other times vanishing into the darkness beyond where the eye could see, proud and upright beneath the stars, hooning it up.

   The Earth turned, the moon blinked, the stars winked, and the next wave was mine. I had timed it perfectly right, just so, paddled hard, pulled into the boomerang bowl and jumped to my feet in mid-air, landing it exactly in the right spot. I slid down the slope of the wave with that heart-lifting gut-churning butterfly feeling, that rush of adrenaline that has got to be one of the main reasons why we do this, and dropped down into a low crouch. I have found that the lower I go the more stable I am, no surprise there, and I have been working for a long time on maintaining a low stance where my back foot is in a firm position to steer, and my front foot can be used to apply pressure forwards to speed up, or move back to ease off a bit.

   As is so often the case, time slowed down.

   Crouching low I looked straight down the line, out towards the long curve of the rising wave unfolding itself in front of me. The stars high above me were reflected as hazy out-of-focus blurred dimples in the water below my feet, and the light of the moon spilled down the slope of the wave in front of me, cascading in slow motion, glistening and flashing in eternally shifting and changing shapes like hard silver diamonds in the black water. I shifted my gaze away from the distant shore across the bay, and locked it onto the wall of black quicksilver water right in front of me. I am often mesmerised by the wave itself, by its curve and pitch and thickness before my eyes, by the breathtaking way the light falls on it, plays in it, and is refracted through it. It is mindbogglingly beautiful, and, as if hypnotised, I can stare into its depths forever and never want to wake up.

   So, instinctively, and without thinking about it, I lifted up my right hand and slowly, caressingly, stuck it into the shiny crystal slope of the wave. Not for any other reason than just to feel its warmth, feel its silky saltiness, just to touch it and feel it, savour its life. And as I did so, I crouched down lower and leaned sideways, bending into the wall like inclining into a lover’s embrace.

   For a few seconds all I could see was the shimmering pearly slope of the wave next to me, touching me. Then I felt water breaking on my head, I leaned too far to the side, lost my hold on the wave and slipped sideways and fell, getting swiped by a mighty crash of white water on my head.

   I stuck my head back out of the water with no thought in mind but the black crystal beauty of the wave I had been on, and with regret that I had fallen off. I pushed the hair out of my eyes, and saw a dark shape in the water in front of me, paddling towards me.

   ‘Hey, who’s that in there? Who was in that barrel?’

   Barrel? What barrel? I looked over my shoulder, stupidly and instinctively, to see who this person was talking to. I turned back to the speaker, which turned out to be the Snake Catcher.

   ‘Baboon, is that you?’ said the Snake Catcher.

   ‘Uh ... yeah, I think so,’ I replied cautiously. You never know, after all. I could be someone else.

   ‘Was that you in that barrel?’ exclaimed the Snake Catcher, clearly not expecting me to be in a barrel anymore than I was.

   ‘What barrel?’ I asked dumbly, obviously not quite up to speed with events.

   ‘You were in that barrel, mate! I saw you, I saw the whole thing, I was thinking “who’s that in there”, and I was hoping you wouldn’t stack it!’ exclaimed the Snake Catcher. ‘And then you stacked it.’

   ‘Yeah ...’ That sounded about right. I had definitely stacked it, anyway. That part of it I had no trouble believing.

   ‘Are you kidding me? Was I in a barrel? I had no idea!’ I offered, confused, not quite knowing whether I should be elated that I had finally made it into a barrel, or pissed off that I had stacked it and failed to ride it out.

...'Yeah mate, for sure, no doubt about it, the water was closing in over your head and you were crouching low, it was perfect!’ enthused the Snake Catcher.

...'All right, if you say so. Bloody hell. I didn’t see it!’

   Triumph fought with uncertainty in my mind. Triumph triumphed, not surprisingly. Given a choice between a possible positive or a definitive negative I will go with the positive any day of the week. I am naturally possessed of near-terminal amounts of optimism, to the point where, if someone points a gun at my head, I am convinced with a rock-hard unwavering certainty that it is that one faulty blank cartridge in a million that’s sitting in the barrel, and it’ll misfire, or, failing that, that I will be able to bullshit my way out of anything, which is both closer to the truth and a less suicidal way of looking at the world.

   We turned and paddled back up again, and while the Snake Catcher announced to the rest of the crew that I had gotten a barrel, I sat back and accepted their congratulations with all the modesty becoming of someone who may well, by all accounts, have done something worthwhile, but had no idea he was doing it, had no intention of doing so, and, moreover, doesn’t have a clue in hell about how it was supposed to have happened.

   Getting barrelled is the ultimate top-notch experience in the world of surfing. It is keenly pursued and rarely achieved, at least by us here on our mellow break. I have by now been surfing for almost five years, regularly and consistently, and have spent the vast majority of my time, although not by any means all of it, on a pointbreak with long, luxurious mellow waves suitable for cruising on longboards, and not particularly conducive to getting into any barrels.

   So, it looks like I may well have gotten barrelled. I will accept it, since there is impartial outside witness evidence, the one die-hard criterion by which all feats of surfing are judged: if there was no one there to see you do it, it didn’t happen, and stiff shit. So therefore, it must have happened. Looking back, I can understand that having stuck my hand in the side of the wave would have slowed me down and caused me to slide back into the barrel. It is, after all, the standard way of doing so, tried and proven and time-tested. I am aware of the fact that this is so, but, when I was doing it, I had no thought of anything related to barrels: I just wanted to feel the softness and warmth of the water, shimmering silvery in the light of the moon.

   But, accidental or not, the fact stands up: I got my first barrel.

   It’s a bit like having sex for the first time.

   And, just like after having sex for the first time, I can’t wait to do it again.

   Bring it on. The moon is on the rise.