Riding With the Wind

Before I learned to surf I was a kayaker. I worked as a seakayak guide, taking paying customers, usually tourists, out on the ocean to find, observe and interact with marine wildlife, like turtles, dolphins, whales, and, occasionally and unintentionally, sharks. Before that I worked as a guide on whitewater rivers, running kayaks through rapids. For years I led multi-day kayaking trips on creeks, rivers and lakes in remote and wilderness areas for a living. My first forays out into the world of catching waves on the ocean were done in kayaks. I’d use a small, short kayak with a lot of rocker, a lot of curve in the bottom shape, and I would drop down into holes and race away along towering green walls while paddling like mad. The first barrel I ever got myself into was in a kayak. There’s drawbacks to that. You can get in there all right. You just don’t get out in one piece. The shape and size of a kayak is ill-suited to the confines of a barrel, and there’s no room to swing a paddle around. You just get smashed.

   So I spent a fair while getting smashed, until I decided I wanted to learn to stand up and surf properly. I’d never learned how to surf, since where I came from the water was dead flat and full of crocodiles. You try and surf in that you’ve got a better than average chance of also ending up dead, if not flat. So at some stage I got myself a board, applied myself with due diligence bordering on, some would say, fanaticism and obsessive compulsive behaviour, and I learned how to surf.

   Just the other day a few of us crew were in a quiet far away isolated spot, on a beautiful bay with a pointbreak that often has nice peelers rolling off on demand. This time however the waves were less than impressive, ranging in size from tidy, little longboard waves to ripples not visible to the naked eye. It was all right for us mob on longboards, although never exactly breath-taking, but for one of our number, the Pocket Rocket Grommet, it was particularly challenging. One of a very few shortboarders in our crew, he just wasn’t getting anywhere. There was no power in the waves, no lift and fall, bugger all push and thrust. So he flailed around helplessly for a fair while while the rest of us caught little waves, and, while he wasn’t getting frustrated because he has got the world’s most gentle nature and is made of pure golden patience, he certainly wasn’t getting any waves, and for all intents and purposes was wasting his time.

   When an old fella in a goatboat, i.e. a wave ski, very similar to a kayak, turned up alongside of us and amiably shot the breeze, I got a sudden flash of inspiration. I gave my longboard to the Pocket Rocket Grommet, ran down the beach with his featherlight toothpick of a fish under my arm, and got my old kayak out, which I had just happened to bring along with a view to doing a bit of sedate creek paddling. For the first time in many years I paddled out into the surf in my kayak, and while the Pocket Rocket Grommet was styling it on the longboard, hanging fives and tens and cutting drop-knee turns like the true born natural that he is, at the grand old age of fifteen, I dragged the paddle through the water, dropped over ledges, leaned back, and rode the swell in the kayak like I used to.

   It was enjoyable enough. I caught a few nice rides, and, having paddle power to rely on, was able to get onto a few asthmatic and lacklustre wavelets even longboards struggled to get on to. At one point we ventured out of the bay into a river mouth, something we’d always wanted to do but had never yet had the chance to, and, as luck would have it, there was a bit more of a wave to be found there, breaking sharply and steeply onto the sandbar and running out cleanly. It was entertaining and fun, and it wasn’t until later that it occurred to me that it was a right hander, as opposed to our usual left hander in our home break. I hadn’t realised it, because when you’re sitting down in a kayak you’re facing forwards, not side-on, and going left or right doesn’t make any difference. It highlights how the experience is perceived differently from the vantage point of different craft.

   A few days later we were back in our home break. The wind was howling from all the wrong corners, the water was boiling, and the waves were wild and woolly. As is our wont we paddled out in the dark, trying to take advantage of a half-moon mostly obscured by clouds. The swell rolled in, choppy and fragmented because of the wind-action over the water, and we scrambled to get on to rides that were rocky and unpredictable.

   The set wave turned up in front of me, so I spun around and paddled by unthinking instinct developed through many years now of surfing by braille. One eye fixed on the water heaving next to me, at what I judged to be the exact right moment I dropped down and rose up at the same time, in that pin-point precision synergy between wave, board and body that is irreplicable in any other way, shape or form, and, the wind whistling around my head, I felt the glorious, heart-stopping sensation of dropping down into a hole in the water in perfect balance and harmony with the universe.

   And as I flew away, riding with the wind, blowing into the dark of the starless night, the realisation hit me like a well-aimed brick between the piggy eyes: I love surfing. I love it whole-heartedly and passionately, without the slightest hint of reservation, with every fibre of my being. It is love of the strongest, most full-on kind, a heart-lifting brain-exploding complete envelopment and immersion. A total and utter loss of self in the glory of the moment, the tiniest, briefest flash of ecstasy. For that split-second spark of joy nothing else in the world existed outside of myself, the board and the wave, moving, rising and falling in perfect unison and unfettered, boundless freedom.

   There is nothing else like it.

   The goatboat doesn’t even come close.

   I paddled back up again, sat next to my mates on my board, watched the beautiful, warm sun rise, and laughed and laughed and laughed at nothing, for the sheer joy of being alive.