Spring 2006

Secluded Portuguese bay, hidden behind scrub and sand hills, the road snakes over and around. Our battered little bus, top heavy with an assortment of surfing sticks, white grey and ensconced in its own self generated sandstorm. We lurch perilously at sheer drops and sharp turns, we instinctively lean forward as one on the steep uphills, we sit back in relief and roll swiftly down the other side.

On this desert road we can’t even smell the sea. It seems so removed from this alien world. A uniform blue sheet sky houses the spring heat of the harsh sun. The baked hard hillsides look like they have never tasted water. We go up and over and around, seeking an inconceivable ocean. An inconceivable ocean and an unbelievable break.

The desert landscape draws back like stage curtains as we chug through a narrow valley and out into a world where blue horizons touch. Sandy white and empty. If Eden were a beach it would be this one. Similar sentiments must pass through the minds of all surfers finding rumoured, mythical, local breaks, but today this West facing Atlantian cove is my perfection newly discovered.

Taken totally by surprise the driver has unconsciously drifted us to a halt on the dirt road. His awe-opened eyes stare at the movement of the Ocean below. We all lean forward for a better look out his window. The swell is huge at the back and breaking to the left in a long crisp motion. It curls enough that we must each be picturing sneaking a short, crouched ride through the barrel. Early morning sun twinkles like treasure over the virgin surf. Our driver suddenly bursts with enthusiasm and jolts forward, eager to get wet. Eager to deflower this beautiful wave. No one complains at being slammed back in our seats, we all share his eagerness.

Standing in the soft sands the walls of water rolling in look huge. Monstrous. An overhead height, crisp clean barrel on European shores. I almost gasp. The spring swell has met the geology of the bay and their love has given birth to this wave. It is daunting. The power. The weight. It looks enormous from standing, how massive it will be paddling face first in on my belly. I grin and relish the fear. I breathe deep of the salted air and quell the animal panic wriggling into my gut.

The wave that broke my ribs wasn’t this big. The one that nearly drowned me as I tumbled in its washing machine grasp, battered by its might, by my board, by my own flailing limbs. I resurfaced gasping and clawing and unable to breathe through the agony of cracked ribs. As I pulled some painful air into my lungs the unforgiving wall of water fell on me again.

That was the backside of an American hurricane last Autumn. This is the biggest wave I’ve looked at since. The fear is right, it teaches me respect for the power I play over. Panic is a mistake. It clouds my reactions and diminishes my ability to do what needs to be done.

I did not panic when that second wave hit. If I had I would be dead now. I would have inhaled ocean, I would have fought against a force much too great to challenge and it would have broke me. Instead I went with it. I put my arms over my head and tucked my chin into my chest, brought my knees up into a foetal position and let the ocean have me. She spun me around for a long time, too long, then eventually spat me out, ragged and choking, in the shallows. Some of the other surfers were already slooshing towards me, their boards abandoned in the waist high water. Strong arms pulled my floppy carcass to safety. My leash dragged the broken third of my board that remained. The other two thirds missing somewhere out in the fray.

It takes a long time for ribs to heal and its remarkable how quickly condition goes. I might just be as fit now as I was then, but only just. I stare down this monster of a wave, a semi-psychotic grin plastered on my face. Fear and respect, but never panic. No hesitation. I drop my shiny white new board, its first coat of wax smelling like candy. I drop it into the clear gurgling water at my knees and begin to walk it out. The monster wave roars ahead of me, calling me, challenging me. I drop to the sticky, scented fibreglass plank. My belly becomes one with the board, through it I feel the ocean’s movement. We breathe against each others chests, like lovers in an embrace. Like warriors locked in combat. I savour this moment, then I begin to paddle out into the monster’s maw.