Around The World In 80 Waves

Like the Billabong Pro itself I am a bit stuffed by the lack of waves at the moment.

I am having fun in Rio regardless but there really are not much in the way of waves. This picture is one of the contest sites and you can see the huge lighting pylon that they use to illuminate the sea if things get a bit dark. 

The waves really weren’t anything to write home about and I didn’t take my camera out with me when I went body-surfing again in amongst the crowd of people trying to do the same, so I don’t have any exciting pictures to show you.

However I couldn’t pass up the opprtunity to surf one of the stops of the world tour, especially when the whole of the surf industry was in town.

Surfing here means I have actually bagged the Atlantic on my travels. It is an old friend even if we are used to playing together on the other side of the water.

I can claim surfing in Brazil too, although I have to say I was somewhat disappointed in the surf on offer. Nothing you can do about Mother Nature though. Surfing is just like that sometimes. Waves breaking all week long when you are in the office and then nothing at the weekend when you are free.

Global Wave Wednesday is a project that has been put together by the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage, which was created to protect UK waves.

Sewage, litter and offshore developments are threatening waves around the islands back home and SAS currently are collecting a petition of names to save them.

The aim of SAS’s Protect Our Waves petition is to highlight the value of surfing waves and locations to the UK government and encourage MPs to debate legislation in order to recognise the importance of waves as a cultural, social, economic and environmental asset to coastal communities.

SAS believes that waves and surf spots deserve to be seen as part of UK heritage and should be afforded greater recognition and protection through debate and legislation. Regardless of where you live in the world please get involved here:

www.protectourwaves.org.uk

We drove the 100km to a beach where the surf is supposed to be ok and I had been told by a surfer I had bumped into in the city that there was a surf shop.

Upon arrival at Playa Malibu, which does not resemble its USA namesake at all, we found all the locals huddled under whatever shelter was available on the beach. All the cabanas were taken. 

Sadly the steeply shelving sand meant that what little waves there were at the beach largely just reared up and dumped on the sand.

Although it looks flat in this picture the sets would roll through and at least one wave would result in the entire cast you see here getting swept off their feet. This would almost certainly result in a broken board and given I was attempting to sell it later in the day I thought better of risking it, instead opting to go bodysurfing instead. 

I swam out to the area where I thought the waves were breaking first, which was somewhat further than everybody else messing about in the shore break. Whilst waiting for the sets I would have tiny fish leaping out of the water around me and sometimes into my face, which was a first! Then spotting a set on its way I would try to pick the big one and swim like a man being chased by a shark.

The wave catches you in the same way it does a surfboard and you then try to stay a rigid as you can planing along the wave. I rode a few waves in this way all the way to the shore, each time getting unceremoniously dumped at the feet of many people who were now watching my exploits from the sand. Sadly Jenny didn’t get any shots of me doing so, but I suspect they would just have been of a couple of hands sticking out the white water superman style so I have added this picture of Barack Obama styling down a wave as it should be done in Hawaii.

It wasn’t great but I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back in the water, and I definitely surfed what was available. One more wave for the scrapbook!

They are announcing the winners of Billabong’s annual XXL competition on Friday. This picture is of the biggest wave ridden in 2006.

There are a number of categories up for grabs, biggest wave, biggest tube, etc but my personal favourite is the best wipeout. As usual there are a couple of gems this year. You watch them thinking ‘that has just got to hurt!’ These were last year’s shortlist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2J1Sj3TRHQ

I don’t think I will ever have any entries in the pot for the competition, but take my hat off to the chargers that do. Check out footage of this year’s surfers at the website: http://www.billabongxxl.com/

I haven’t so much as dipped my toes in the sea for more than two weeks and it is killing me. The massive waves of Santa Catalina seem a long time ago now.

However thinking about them reminded me of something I meant to pass on at the time. More than once at Santa Catalina I was the only person to get past a set of waves and looked back to see everybody’s boards tombstoning behind me.

Tombstoning occurs when a surfer has been pushed down so deep below the surface by the impact of the wave landing on them, that their leash becomes fully outstretched. The surfer’s weight pulling down on the leash yanks the board upright, leaving the front sticking straight up, rocking to and fro as the surfer moves about with the currents of the water underneath.

It is more likely to occur in larger waves following a cleanup set or a particularly bad wipeout, but when you see the whole line up behind you doing it, the resemblance to all the tombstones in a graveyard is clear, hence the name.

Most surfers who have been out in big surf will know about this and perverse sensation of schadenfreude you get when looking back towards the shore at it. The surfers usually resurface unaided, but some aren’t so lucky, unconscious and dangling in desperate need of a tug up. At least their boards tell you where your mates are if not how to get them out if they are in difficulty.

It would appear that great minds think alike. I have been contacted by a Canadian surfer called Gavin whose home break is near Vancouver and who is up to similar adventures to my own.

He stumbled upon the details of my trip whilst trying to shortcut to the details of his own journey.

For those of you on Facebook, you can check out what he has been up to using the following link:

www.facebook.com/aroundDaWorldIn80Waves

There is a chance our paths may cross later in the year when will both be in Asia.

After pushing the envelope to the very edge of my own comfort zone and probably some way past it at the triple overhead waves of the point, I was looking for something considerably less gnarly the following day, so chose the wide expanse of sand about a kilometer east along the bay.

It was just a short stroll from the hostel and I had been told it would work best at mid tide so went there after watching the nutters take on more madness at the point over high tide first thing in the morning.

I spotted a channel to paddle out into straightway and was out back in no time at all. However because I had left it late after watching the surfers the convections currents had already kicked in making the water surface really choppy.

There was still a 10 foot swell passing through so this made catching the waves rather unpredictable and quite difficult. On this one I am sort of taking the drop on I had to paddle so early to be sure of catching the wave that I passed a point of no return, to then have no choice but try and land the drop on the wave closing out behind me. 

Here is not a picture of me because I am still in the process of trying to make my way back to the surface of the water, which I should add is a good 20 seconds after I have spectacularly been swallowed by it!

The surfers amongst you may know the sensation of swimming hard towards the surface only to discover that you were in fact swimming down instead due to being so disorientated by your wipeout. This does mean that you can get a solid push off the bottom if the water is not moving too much, unlike my own situation where with each stroke you make upwards you make very little progress due to all the air in the water. 

However it eventually gets brighter in the water and you surface grab hold of your board and get on it just in time for the next one to hit you and throw you around like a rag doll.

As you can see here I am unaware that I am about to be eating sand again and probably just getting some air in my lungs.

Other times you do see them coming, but as you can see that is not necessarily a good thing either. No matter what I do from here I am getting hammered.

At least I caught something today, but so far I am just getting my backside kicked since arriving in Panama.

Maybe there will be something less extreme as I head towards the city?

Later in my stay at Surfers Paradise I discovered that there had been a photographer taking pictures from the cliffs during my scary session at the point, who got this shot of the line up.

I am the furthest left in this picture and like everybody else I am keeping one eye on the wave trying to decide whether to go for it, whether to get as far out of its way as possible, or just hoping that it doesn’t crash down before it gets to you, all the while wondering if the one behind is even bigger.

Try to factor into your thinking that this is the bathymetry that the wave is breaking over, barely over and not at all over at times.

Also that the above shot was taken from an elevated position, so it loses some of the scale of the wave.

Trust me when I say you lost nothing of the scale from sea level. I told you it was huge!

Without doubt the biggest and scariest waves I have been out in so far on this trip.

I have found this picture which says it all.

Enjoy!

I was up before dawn and into the water at first light to take advantage of the high tide and hopefully put enough water between me and the rocks beneath. I was wearing my booties again to ensure I had no issues getting out across any of the sharp surfaces beneath the water. The paddle out was surprisingly easy because you can paddle around the peeling section of the waves, but it was very long because the point is about 1km out to sea. After about fifteen or twenty minutes of paddling I was out into the set waves which were huge. By huge I really do mean HUGE!

A massive swell has arrived and here were only five guys out when I joined them in the line-up. Acutely aware of all the rocks that I had seen at low tide the day before, this was not a wave I wanted to get wrong. The faces on the waves were at least double overhead but seemed to be peeling beautifully to the right off the point which should favour my natural foot surfing. However as ever there was always a rogue set that would roll through from time to time. It would break much further out and if you were caught inside by the head high plus wall of white water of the first one, the rest of the set would also hit you and send you careering in towards the inside section and all the rocks that are showing proud of the water there. The result of this was everybody would hang slightly wide to the left of the peak and hope to catch one of the bigger set waves.

Like everybody else I did this and early on I very nearly bagged a beauty although as I got to my feet and realised I was pointing vertically down and the bottom was a very, very long way from the top I got caught by the lip and went straight over the falls. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared, but the whole time you are under the water you are wondering if you are just about to get clouted by the rocks that, unlike Pavones where they were akin to smooth cobblestones, are made of very sharp volcanic rock which is in lumps as big as cars and certainly will not take any prisoners!

Being honest I wasn’t enjoying myself as the sea kept exploding on rocks all around me and didn’t have the best time out there today. Although I had a few chances for waves early on in my session that I regret not taking, I actually blanked. I would keep thinking that a mountain of water was about to drop on top of me, and erring on the side of caution would keep scratching away towards the horizon to try and stay outside of the broken wave and white water, only to realise too late that I had probably been in a great spot to bag it. After I had been in the water for a couple of hours, with the tide dropping all the time, there were more and more areas of boiling water on the faces of waves where the rocks were clearly not very far below the surface. I quite like my face and my teeth the way they are and every time I would point the board down the face of the waves and see water boiling in front of me I would back off.

I hate nothing more than blanking and would usually stay out to at least catch something, but I was keen to get out before the water got so shallow that all the rocks would be in view almost guaranteeing a ding to the board or me, so got in front of one of the broken waves and belly boarded in having only got about a dozen jellyfish stings to show for my morning’s work.

However given that during the session I saw four snapped boards, one broken leash resulting in a very lovely board looking like somebody had test driven a sledgehammer on it, and one guy with a concussion in the water who had lost his board and after being rescued by his buddy was looking very pale as he clung on to the front of their board, I consider myself to have got off rather lightly. I could go back in the water here later today or tomorrow, but don’t think I will. I am not adverse to a bit of risk but I can hold my hands up and say that this break is a bit too gnarly for me.