SWIMMING AND SURFING
“I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied” Sea Fever, John Masefield.
ABOUT SWIMMING
Swimming in pools. I learned to swim properly in Tobago and I learned to dive after a fashion in Barbados, and I took both these skills to school and university teams in England. But you have to understand that swimming then became competitive, in pools, with lanes; the seas were far too cold for enjoyment, and in fact froze over twice in the 22 years I was there. So I didn’t discover the joys of body surfing and board riding until Australia. But now, before breakfast each morning, I swim 20 laps and I still remember Bob Logan’s puzzled question “what on earth do they think about?” as we watched two swimmers lapping the Shell Company pool in London. I do, of course, count laps as I turn at the ends of the pool, and I do make mental notes of things concerning the world above, but there is something way beyond mere thought going on here. There is the athlete’s satisfaction as thousands of repetitions bed down those neural pathways into movements that are not only efficient but graceful. There is that unique, soothing, undulating hum in your ears not found in other environments. There is wonder at the ghostly outlines of other dolphins, perhaps going stroke for stroke with you, or trailing bubbles going past the other way. There is the adrenalin of cool, powerful aerobic exercise without the heat and stress that chafes at any other form of exercise. And, as we cleave through that limpid, serene world, tiny bubbles stream back from outstretched fingers like star dust.
Swimming with dolphins. “Dad” calls Madeleine nervously from her surfboard. Six fins unzip the surface of the morning swell, their tracks undulating and friendly, not straight and menacing like sharks. “They’re only dolphins” I shout back. But we both paddle in, just in case. And Madeleine runs up the beach, just in case. One morning, from the campsite’s north headland, I saw I surfer who took off and was then immediately flanked by two large dolphins who just wanted to play. They just shot out of the near-vertical wave surface alongside him. But the surfer, like Madeleine, came in to the beach, just in case.
Body surfing. We went for a drive round to Pretty Beach and watched a pelican as it banked sharply, lowered its undercarriage, skidded like a water skier between the sand banks and lowered its bulk into a burst of ripples. Halfway to Putty beach on the ocean side is a turnoff through the bushes to the middle of Kilcare beach which we had not tried before, normally deserted and with safe, gentle body-surfing waves on shallow sand banks. Flippers give that extra acceleration onto that wave and then, if your take-off angle has been too steep, it is salt in the nostrils and the rasp of sand on your chest. A good wave takes you right up to the sand where little waves giggle and chortle with delight. The Pacific is well-named and, in that peaceful environment, the only sound is the occasional crack of a curling wave closing out on a sandbar. And we watched as shearwater gulls would suddenly fold their wings and dive-bomb unsuspecting fish basking not far enough below the surface. Early morning is the best time as shoals of little fish are back-lit by the sharp rays of a golden sun rising on the other side of the wave. We asked a beach fisherman what was the best time of day to fish and got the reply we deserved: “Without any doubt, the best time is when they are there!” Later in the day competition hots up, youngsters on foam boards turning sharply just before impact with tiny jumping children shrieking with excitement. And out beyond all these, are the big waves, like proud horses rearing up, with manes of spray combed back over their shoulders by a north-westerly.
Swiming with a snorkel. Just about everyone, after their first go, says the same words “It’s a whole new world down there” and it is. You can cruise on the surface, as I remember Kate did, leading a young Vee formation of Rosie and Sophie skirting the rock platform at Putty Beach, spotting star fish among the green seaweed waving like long grass. Or you can take a deep breath and dive “down, down, down to that moon-chained and water-wound metropolis of fishes” (Dylan Thomas) and watch as they quiver above squat trees of coral, darting in and out of the branches if you get too close. Madeleine, always prepared for anything, carried a shark knife strapped to her leg. At Blackfellows I once sealed a movie camera in a plastic bag and chased some shoals. It didn’t leak but the fishy outlines were rather blurred. More successful was the disposable underwater camera at Great Keppel Island. “The lenses are embarrassingly good” said Peter Noone at the camera shop, as he disposed of it. I suppose the next step would have been scuba diving, but instead we just listened to the aunties’ stories of adventures with pressure valves, decompressions, sharks and manta rays off Rabaul’s volcanic coast and over wrecked warships in the Solomon Islands.
BOARD RIDING – HOW DID WE START?
Yes, I think Kate probably took off first, here at an early summer holiday when we hired an onsite van at Ocean Beach. Tim Winton in Breath describes the early promise of a small girl wobbling to her feet, arms flailing to keep her balance. But here Kate is already the poised athlete, swerving past her father who is hoping the ancient camera won’t get wet.
This was a good beginner’s beach, shallow for a long way out with an easy breaking wave. Around that time I hired a “plank” from a surf shop in Umina, an old heavy long board, for the holiday. I first dug the nose in too deep and it went end over end on top of me as Kate yelled “hang onto your board, Dad”. But by the end of the week we were both riding waves right up onto the beach.
Our board riding project was then set back five years by a teenage crook who sold me a dud board. It lay abandoned on the laundry roof until we bought Henri, a chunky single-finner with a leak in the tail, the first of a long line of boards.
ABOUT SURFBOARD RIDING
The literature on surfing is sparse. Kate once gave me a history of surfing. Those early pictures looked like wood-cuts made, I like to think, by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook first visited Hawaii, with demure maidens sliding down gentle waves. Then there was a famous movie called Big Wednesday, set in California, and Chris and Madeleine have given me a DVD Riding Giants mostly set in Hawaii. The giants breaking on Hawaii’s offshore reefs are so big and powerful that surfers have to be towed onto the crest by jet skis, and then released to drop down a fifty-foot wall of water. Tim Winton’s novel Breath is almost entirely about surfing the Margaret River reefs of Western Australia. There are four full pages dedicated to a description of just two waves, written in the blunt, somewhat brutal vernacular of a fifteen-year-old, powerful but scared out of his wits, and nicknamed Pikelet.
“Before I got halfway out to the bommie [bombora, submerged reef] it dawned on me that Old Smokey was breaking much bigger than I’d seen it before…..All the way down the big board chattered against the surface chop; I could hear the giggle and natter of it over the thunder behind me…..I came lofting back to the crest….before sailing down the line again…..wheeled about, paddled back into the impact zone…..In the few seconds left I sprinted for the channel but I knew I’d never get there. I pumped myself full of air, hyperventilating hurriedly as the crashing white wall came down…..I clawed up into the sky…..I saw I’d been bulldozed, mostly under water, for four hundred yards”
Later, as a middle-aged paramedic, Pikelet resuscitates a girl who gets kicks from partial asphyxiation, and ponders the parallels with his own early addiction to surfing. But he still identifies positively with the next generation: “wobbling in across the shore break…every time I see a kid pop to her feet, arms flailing, all milk teeth and shining skin, I’m there. I know her, and some spark of early promise returns to me like a moment of grace”. And he reminisces on “How strange it was to see men do something beautiful, something pointless and elegant, as if nobody saw or cared.” In Joseph Bank’s pictures naked girls recline demurely on planks of wood on impossibly steep waves “as if nobody saw or cared”. But then, catching a wave is rather impossible, which brings me to its geometry.
The geometries of board riding. There are three. Let’s start with the vertical. If the swell reaches the reef or sandbank suddenly, the face of the wave rears up suddenly. If there are other, smaller sand banks in the way then the wave jumps up once or twice before it reaches full height. Whichever is the case, the face tilts until it is top heavy, the crest forms and drives broken water down the face which is now concave. If the wave now drops into a “gutter” it will just collapse. If not it may drive a hundred metres to the shore. Along the way it may hit another bank, rear up and break again. Next to the beach this is called the shore break.
The horizontal geometry, the resultant of wind and the relative angle of swell to sand bank, creates a right or a left break, otherwise it is called closed out or a dumper. In shallow water the wave may return from the shore and, meeting an incoming wave, ripple like a zipper being pulled rapidly across the beach.
Then, there is the geometry of the ride itself. To takeoff on a dumper is usually a mistake, and the wave will eat or munch you. But sometimes a sharp kick left or right immediately you stand up can get you out of trouble and into a less vicious section of the wave. This is called a top turn. Otherwise, take off at a slight angle and, by the time you are doing a bottom turn, you are pointing along the wave. A natural surfer leads with the left foot, a goofy leads right. With forehand you face the wave, with backhand your back is to the wave. You can zoom up to the lip and then lean back down the wave. This is a re-entry. Lean hard enough and you turn back the other way. This is a cut-back. With a three-sixty when you hit the lip, instead of turning back you continue right round the arc.
Finally, at the end of the ride, or to get out of trouble, there is the kickout. You turn sharply into and over the top of the wave. If the timing is right you end up on your board paddling out to sea again. If not, the wave sucks you into its spin cycle. In that case you risk fin chop, so get away from those sharp fins by heading for the bottom and, when your leg rope is tight, you know it is too far away to injure you. I did once get chopped by someone else’s fin, lay on my bed for four hours and, when the bleeding didn’t stop, drove to Gosford hospital. It stopped bleeding as soon as I got into surgery.
NOTES FROM A SURFIE’S DIARY
Financial advice. Tony, my financial advisor, with whom I go surfing, had advised that my investment in my 7’2″ Mark Richards board (see photo) was due for revue and he recommended full amortization and replacement by a new board with better returns on investment and representing a more balanced portfolio of stability and flexibility, particularly in respect of steep take-offs and fast turns. Fortunately, “Sunshine Surf” shop was having a stock clearance of large boards suitable for the older surfer. But as another surfie explained as we sat out in the ocean waiting for waves “You don’t get too old for your board, your board gets too old for you”.
The black and red rubber where you stand is called ‘gorilla grip’. Putting weight on the back foot gives more speed and flexibility, but I was never as good at that as Tony or Michael.
Tony and I surfed nearly every Saturday for many years. He was very particular in choosing the right beach, weighing up the congruence of winds and tides as we cruised up and down the Northern beaches surf spotting. Out beyond the break he would call “Better waves over here, David’, and tell me of his waves the previous Sunday. One Sunday he fell on his fin in the surf. It went in somewhere between bicep and tricep and his wife Margie found him trying to lift the board onto his roof-rack with the other arm. She took him to Mona Vale hospital and, when I visited him there, he was in bed trying to write up clients’ reports. Tony’s other passion was windsurfing. On holiday on Lord Howe Island, he was enviously watching a windsurfer when he came in suddenly holding a mobile phone. “I’ve been called on emergency” said the doctor. “Can you look after my board for an hour or two? There’s quite a good Nor-Easter out there.” Most of the rest of this chapter comes from diaries of adventures with Tony, my financial advisor and surfing mentor. Here is Tony (a goofy, forehand) chasing me (a natural, backhand) along a four-footer as another surfer hopes we will go past him.
Mostly I rode three-footers like the one above, but once, by mistake, I rode inside a 7-foot tube.
The 7-foot tube. Saturday and I collected Tony, Tony’s builder Michael, and Michael’s son Jason and we cruised the northern beaches, finally deciding on a big swell and perfect waves at Avalon beach. “Bet you enjoyed that left-hander” said someone as I paddled back out again. So I am “stoked” and go for an even bigger one. Suddenly, there it was, another left, a backhander for a natural like me, but I was on it. I didn’t really know what was happening except that it seemed dark. Later, Tony and Jason who were paddling back out from their rides, said they could see my bald head and white beard as I crouched inside the tube with a 7 foot wave breaking above my head. I have to admit this was my one and only tube ever, most days I was happy to get a 3 or 4-footer, and often the surf would be closed out or flat.
Crazy ideas. Tony and Margie were staying with us at Kilcare. “They say it’s a sharky beach” say I as we look down the long, sloping track over the bush headland to Tallow beach. “But that’s a good left hand break” says Tony. “No way. Sharks” say I. His other idea was to hire a boat to take us with our boards to a reef in the middle of Broken Bay and collect us four hours later. “No” said I.
Closing out. Yesterday Joan and I called in to the Avoca beach fleapit to see Gerard Depardieu water skiing in Bermuda, and afterwards we sat outside the Avoca beach cafe for coffee and a front-row view of the surfers. Today, and before breakfast at mid-Avoca, the paperbark trees are reflected perfectly on the glassy landlocked lagoon which stretches back up to wooded hills. But across the sandbar the rain has smoothed the big swell, and it comes straight on to the coast, “closed out”, breaking all at once with the sound of a six-inch naval gun. Even the boogie- boarders are getting zapped before they can turn on the take-off or back off and escape. And when the submerged sandbanks are in the wrong place, the trapped water has nowhere to go and erupts back up through the foam like a string of bubbling and frothing geysers. Discretion took the better part of valour and I paddled back in to shower and change without catching any waves.
It’s a Mal Day. But three days later, and back in Sydney, the South Curl Curl waves are made for long boards . “It’s a Mal Day” says the guy on the short board next to my mini-malibu on the line-up, enviously. After a swim, most people leaving the beach use the steps, but a young, blond giant with a full-length Malibu surfboard leaps up onto the wall and we get talking. He was in Norway last week (Minus 26, he must have been pretty far north), and will be in England on Saturday for another year’s contract, teaching fitness and rugby football at a school in High Wycombe. In school holidays he roams the world, north for the snow, south for the surf.
The nine-foot maibu and its rider looked familiar and Merv waved to me at the end of his 150 metre ride. He is good, very good. So I paddled out and lined up where Merv and George have been catching waves at Avoca for 40 years. I haven’t seen them for two years. “Where you bin?” says George. “Old age” say I. “Better than the alternative” says George. “Better to be on the grass than underneath it” says Merv as he takes off on a right-hander. Having been barred from swimming and surfing by the doctor and the ‘physio-terrorist’ for the past 8 months I’ve now disobeyed them and feel like a new man, and I get three re-entries and one cutback on my first wave. But the other waves aren’t much good – maybe it is old age after all. Today, back in Sydney, Joan decided my antibiotics weren’t working and drove and half carried me into Dr. Lele’s surgery. Dr. Vinoo Lele, from Poona, looked at me with that mixture of disbelief and long-suffering patience characteristic of all doctors and wives. “Surely you haven’t been surfing again?” “No doctor.” “Then what is this sand doing in your right ear?”
The “Clubbies”, the surf life saver club members, to give them their proper name, kindly looked after our boards. Tony and I were going for a cliff walk to warm up and wait for the surf to improve. When we got back we asked them about a lone swimmer way out in the ocean apparently swimming the full length of the beach. “He does it every day. He’s a Welshman so he doesn’t mind the cold”. We thanked them and collected our boards. Next week we were not so lucky when, turning dusk, the Clubby on duty decided to go home, collected our beach bags containing Tony’s keys, locked then in the club house and drove off. Tony’s wife collected us and drove to Morton Street where Joan cheered us all up with some curried chicken. I did get my bag stolen once and, standing in my dripping wetsuit, flagged down a reluctant taxi on the Corso at Manly. And once at North Narrabeen, my beach bag had vanished when I came out of the surf. But halfway up the path: trousers on the ground, car keys on the sand, spectacles in the bushes & no money taken. Either they were disturbed by someone or my hunk of surf-wax gave them a guilty conscience. We are now up here for a week and, at Kilcare beach John, Rebecca and I enjoy some body-surfing and then relax in the sun while Shivaji trots over to a group of giant life-savers. “Hi kid, what do you want?” they say. “I need to wipe my hands” says Shivaji, and proceeds to use their beach towels while they burst out laughing.
Surf rescue. “Those guys are in trouble” said young David. He and I were “out the back”, trying to catch some waves 200 metres from the beach at Blackfellow Point and two inexperienced boogie-boarders had got caught in the rip and were being carried at some speed out passed the rocks. We paddled over, passed them our leg ropes, towed them sideways out of the rip, which is what you are supposed to do, turned left and dragged them safely back onto the beach. I remember diving in with my cap still on to help a kid in the shallows at Blackfellows. And I once put flippers on and chased two Scottish women out along the rip at Putty Beach but, by the time I caught up, three fishermen had already dragged them up through the seaweed and congevois. Once again, I found the leg-rope useful when an English woman, bravely telling her husband not to jump in, was hurtling out on the northern Harbord rip. We headed south-west until her feet could touch the sand. Kate, of all of us the one least in need of help in the surf, was most indignant to be hauled into a rubber ducky by a trigger-happy crew at Kilcare. But the physiotherapic side-effects probably helped as she gave birth to Rosie next day.
The waterspout. I did once see one, like a giant funnel with a wobbly stem, way out on the horizon beyond Manly beach. And once, coming back from work down Rocklands Road, I saw layers of green and black clouds swirling overhead in three different directions, like a celestial waterspout. I ran round the corner just in time and stood at the bedroom window watching the tall Lemon Scented Gums bent and waved wildly as the rain peppered the window panes in horizontal assault.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE SURF IS FLAT
There is always windsurfing. “Mummy, that man is going to fall off. Mummy, that man is quite old”, as I pushed out the windsurfer from Balmoral beach, rocked unsteadily on my feet as the 6 square metre sail filled, and then rejoiced on a lovely autumn afternoon as the water slapped faster and faster under the bow. And, though I am quite old, I didn’t fall off.
But this was much later on. “I’ll take up windsurfing when I’m too old for surfing.” I had said this years earlier, most unwisely, in the hearing of the Hartley family, and Ben Hartley had a new windsurfer. Not long after, we visited the Hartleys at Macmasters Lagoon. As we walked up the beach to the windsurfer pulled up on the sand my heart sank. I was falling into a trap. I was expected to perform. The result was pure comedy. A gust grabbed the sail and, to stay upright, I started walking backwards. At that point the mast came out of its socket, I ran back faster holding mast and sail overhead. The board accelerated across the lagoon leaving me momentarily in mid-air, the sail having become a parachute.
To learn properly, Rebecca and I went to school at Balmoral Beach. They showed us how to rig the sail and, for half an hour, they drilled us on land, only then sailing alongside shouting instructions. Our new Tyronsea board then saw active service on Terrigal, Narrabeen, and Tuross Lakes, and even on the ocean at Putty Beach (see photo). It provided hilarity to Balmoral onlookers when Joan and her sisters performed, and to us campers at Tuross Lake when the Jeffrey sisters tried their luck. These days, windsurfers perform in big surf on short rectangular boards dragged at high speed by half-moon parachutes. Oh well, when I am too old for…..
And lagoons to play on.
And bush-walking. Tony and Michael, my “surfie” friends had come up to Kilcare on Saturday, but after cruising the Central Coast unsuccessfully all morning looking for good waves, we do the cliff walk in the Bouddi National Park instead. Leaving Kate, Rosie and Sophie in a hideout of thick grasses which the children had found the day before (and turned into the bedrooms and kitchens of an imaginary house) we drop almost literally, onto Bullimah beach. Michael is happiest within sight and sound and preferably the feel of the ocean spray, and Tony, Sally the dog and I have a hard time keeping up with him, waiting in between waves before dashing along low-lying rock ledges, lifting Sally up over 6-foot slabs, finally regaining the trail at the top of the cliff, through the wind-swept and stunted coastal Banksias and Casuarinas on the spectacular Maitland Bay track. For us it was a 9 kms round trip, for Sally about 18.