A Salty Holiday Treat!

Beautiful Bondi Beach

To try to lighten up my blog and my experience, Hanna Groshong and Lori Bassman schemed to give me a gift certificate to a surf shop in Bondi Beach (complete with sunscreen) with the hitch that I need to write a blog post about my surf trip. Luckily there were no time restrictions on the gift because if there were, I probably would have failed. It's the end of march... Christmas was like 3 months ago....  But!  Better late than never, here is my experience (written probably 1 month ago - I just didn't get around to post it... I've got skills, right?)

Despite not being very good at it, I really love trying to surf - and this experience as no exception. I had wanted to surf in Australia, but did feel a little intimidated by the “city surf” scene. I am used to surfing in the open spaces of San Onofre, CA, but did surf around Santa Monica once. It was filled with failed attempts, people stealing my waves, and fears of bashing the heads of people in front of me. Luckily, my experience with city surfing in Sydney was much more pleasant than my experience at Santa Monica a few years ago. 

Since getting up on a surf board that isn’t twice as tall as I am still feels a bit like riding a wet fish, I’m not confident in my ability to maneuver around people who have the misfortune of being in front of me. And since no one likes getting hit with a surfboard, I like to have plenty of space. 

The day was a beautiful 30ºC (86ºF) and I would guess the waves were around 8-10 ft high. These conditions are perfect for getting tossed around and get tossed around I did. I got a 5 ft fish surfboard at Bondi Beach Surf Co and a wetsuit. I had only two hours to try to catch a wave, so I did a brisk jog to the pier where I could change. I snapped a picture of the surfboard, before grabbing it and running back onto the beach. 

Fiberglass Fish

What to do with the key to the locker where my citizen clothes were stashed proved to be a bit of a puzzle. It had a velcrow wrist strap, but one that I suspected wouldn’t last in the water. So I made like a little doggie and buried the key in the sand, making sure no one was watching me bury my treasure. I marked it with some garbage I found and headed off to master the waves. 

Here's some people mastering the waves. I was more like the people in the middle getting mastered by the waves

It was just my luck that the set was coming in, so it was quite a fight to get out there. The board wasn’t small enough to duck dive under the oncoming waves, so I had to do a turtle roll (rolling so the bottom of the board faces the sky with me under the water) to get around most of the passing waves. After probably 10 minutes which felt like an hour I had fought my way beyond the break line (the point at which the waves start breaking - which happens to be the place you want to be so that waves don’t constantly crash on you). In reality, I didn’t so much fight to get out to the break line, but rather struggled in vane to make progress until the set went out. Even though I had to wait a little while out in the ocean for the set to come in again, I got to enjoy one of the wonderful moments when the water is calm and cool, the sun is warm, and the view is amazing. 

Once the set came in again, I started trying to catch the wave. The fish board was a little less stable than I was used to, but I figured I would catch a wave and then worry about standing up. As the first few waves came in, I paddled hard to get in the right place for the wave to start pushing me, but was a bit too far out and was missing the first few waves. As I was waiting for the next one, a particularly sunburnt man ask me if my board was fiberglass. I thought maybe he wanted to know about the board to see how I liked it. I just said yes. He then replied that I couldn’t surf here. It was only for soft tops. I was a bit bemused because I had asked the people at the rental place if there were any restrictions on where I could surf and they said no. So I started to slowly paddle in.... but still trying to see if I could catch a wave.   I needed to move closer to shore anyway. After it was clear I wasn't trying that hard to paddle in, a lifeguard on an ATV with a loud speaker told me I need to come to shore. I gritted my teeth and started to actually paddle to shore.

Totally unrelated picture of some Kiteboarders. Kiteboarding is probably cooler than surfing. 

After talking to the lifeguard, I had two options: go to either end of the beach to surf with the other fiberglass boards, which didn’t seem very appealing since there were so many surfers there already, or go back to the surf shop to swap to a soft top. In the end I decided that I was more likely to catch a wave in the open space of the soft toppers, so I ran back up  the hill, to the surfshop, got a soft top, and ran back down the to the beach.

It was just my luck that during that time the set had come in, gone out, and had come back in again, so I again had to battle against the oncoming waves. Eventually I did get beyond the break line, but tried to stay a bit closer to the beach. I had a few good attempts, but time was running out. I decided to just go for it. A reasonable large (maybe 8 ft) wave was coming in and I decided to give it all I got. I got in front of it, paddled hard, paddled hard, paddled hard, and started to feel it push me along, but as I dropped down the smooth surface, the wave proved a bit too steep. The tip of my board poked into the wave and all was basically lost. In those moments, I don’t ever recall anything as I was tossed underwater and held there for a few seconds. Having been tossed around enough times, you learn to just let go. You aren’t in control of your body and just need to be patient. Eventually the wave will pass and you will surface, and I did just that.

More Bondi

Since I was in front of the break line and an onslaught of waves were coming in, I decided to just go with towards the beach and try to ride some white water instead of fighting my way past the breakpoint. I didn’t succeed in riding any white water before having to head in, but it was a lot of fun. 

Even just getting thrown around by the waves is exciting, tiring, and worthwhile. It isn’t quite as fun as actually getting up, but it is just the price that needs to be paid to enjoy the ride. Either way it was good fun!

A most special thanks to Lori for pushing me to get out on the water and for making my time in Sydney so enjoyable!  And to Hanna for putting the shackles on to write a less serious blog post. Sorry it came three months late!

My debt is repaid - I am again a free man!

And here's a sleeping Kaola