Strange days

Met a red-eyed South African, out in the dawn surf this morning – let's say his name's John. I called him into a wave; he paddled back out and we started chatting.

"Thanks, bro. Stoked to be out here. I live outside Madrid, just back from three years in Iraq. Not too many waves there." OK, I'll bite: what were you doing out there? "Bomb disposal."

Just stop myself asking what he thought of The Hurt Locker, and instead say I hope it was well paid? "Shit, yeah. At the end I was pulling down $15,000.00  month. But I can't do it any more; I'm retired."

So here's this guy, taking home (tax free) $15,000.00 a month, for disarming bombs that are probably only there, in some sense, because he is.

Strange days, these.

So long, old friend

Warning: this post is only of the remotest interest to surfers. Everyone else, move on please; nothing to see here.

It’s a poignant thing when a much-loved surfboard leaves you. Surfers and their boards go through a lot together. Nightmare sessions when you couldn’t catch a single wave, or the locals were ganging you, or your leash broke and you had to swim in and see whether the board had come to rest on rocks or sand. Epic sessions where you seemed to hoover up everything that came through, or you caught just that one wave that made it worth paddling out, and which stuck in your mind for a long while. Most of all, those regular go-outs – onshore, crunchy, too small, closing out, dirty, cold, rainy, foul-tasting, shivery, aggro – which make up the median life of a British surfer.

The Fat-Assed Wombat and I experienced it all. It was a pretty short board for me at the time I bought it – 6’4”. No one ever believed it was that short though, because it was so, well, fat-assed. It looked more like a longboard than a shortboard, and latched on to waves like one, too. I took it to the Outer Hebrides for the best-ever (so far) surf trip. It endured many skunky sessions huddling away from southwesterly gales in the lee of Brighton Marina (and once got blown along the undercliff path by a wicked gust). I lent it to my friend Bonga, and he dropped his microwave oven on it. Portugal and Morocco both saw the Wombat making me look a much better surfer than I really am, by virtue of its design. And now it’s gone; gone to the second-hand rack at 58 Surf in Baleal, though probably not for long. Someone will snap it up, and André’s immense turnover of boards will continue.

Disloyal to say it – but I’m glad. The Wombat, you see, had become a bit of a crutch. It worked in just about every kind of surf, from knee-high to a little bit overhead. It always caught waves, performed reliably, resisted airline baggage handling’s every attempt to crush it (I once saw it being thrown nose-first to the ground from the top of a teetering luggage stack, then having a load of prams and golf carts chucked on top: not a mark). But if it did everything well, it didn’t do anything brilliantly. It was slower down the line than my twin-fin; harder to turn on steep faces than my 6’7”; didn’t ride bigger waves as well as my 7’6”  – all in all, a bit of a Ford Focus.

So, we’ve both moved on. No hard feelings, on my part at least, only gratitude for all the things I learnt while we were together. The Wombat will find someone new: a neo surfer from one of the schools in Baleal, perhaps, keen to change up after an intensive couple of weeks learning. It’ll be a bit much at first, but they’ll grow together. Ride on, Fat Ass – ride on.

Twice in two days!

Told off by the lifeguard again, this time at Baleal, for bodysurfing when an orange flag was up. At least he waited till I'd got out, and said he hadn't come to order me out of the water because "I can see you don't drown." An improvement, I think.

Meanwhile, England claw their way to group-match victory against Sweden. There's no pleasure in an England win, just a release of pressure. It's like riding an Italian motorbike: you spend your time in the saddle with buttocks clenched, constantly wondering what new way it will find to break down before you reach your destination. If you do actually arrive, you can relax – until it's time to climb back on and go home.

Kooksville

Did I really write the sentence, “I never, ever have a bad surf on the mat” in the previous blog entry? Consider this a correction.

I knew I shouldn’t have bothered, but sometimes you just need to get your scales wet. It’s onshore surf, crunching on to some kind of sandbank. The wave are really just folding over all along their length – but once in a while, an unpredictable shoulder appears. It’s just enough to tempt me in.

After last week’s glorious mat session, I elect to go in on that. Getting out through the crunchy shorebreak turns out to be really hard work. Several minutes of paddling and about halfway out, I’m starting to feel a bit like Katie Price: the airbag seemed a good idea at the time, but now I can’t get rid even though I’d like to.

I finally make it out the back just in time for a cleanup wave to sweep through. Unlike the Buddha Wave, I’m most definitely not in the spot. I make a try at getting through the cresting lip, but without really thinking it’s going to work. Almost straight away I get the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that Captain Matthew Webb must have had, the moment when he realized halfway that his attempt to swim across the rapids at the foot of the Niagara Falls wasn’t going to come off.

I’m pulled back over the falls, and get royally rinsed. Bounce on the sandy bottom a couple of times, and come up in waist-deep water, still clutching Katie to my chest. I’m standing in the shallows trying to decide whether to paddle out again when I hear a whistle. Turn round with a sinking feeling: this can’t be happening. But horrifyingly, it is; the lifeguard’s whistling me in. The thing is, I qualified as a lifeguard myself, years ago, and I’d be whistling me in too. What a kook.

In the end we have a chat. His name’s Junior, which is a hell of a misnomer: he’s the biggest, most muscle-bound, most heavily tattooed Portuguese man I’ve ever met, and looks more like a member of Da Hui than a municipal lifesaver. Junior tells me it’s OK to come back with a surfboard – but “Not this thing”, he says, pointing at Katie. I can’t blame him for doubting.

Poor Katie: some you win, some you lose.

Buddha wave

The thing about the Buddha Wave is, you have to know it when you see it. Most sessions, you won’t catch it at all. It’s a good wave, and a wave you couldn’t have ridden better. If you catch the Buddha Wave, paddle in. Anything else will be a diminution.

Yesterday a new swell hit the coast: about 2 metres, a good size, but lumpy and bumptious. A good day for sightseeing – so that’s what we do.

Back that evening, I wander down to the beach to have a look at the waves. Still junky, still big and a bit wild, but I decide to go out on my surf mat. This has been an object of guarded reaction on several continents, notably Australia, where one surfer took a look at it and said: “Jeez, I thought those were only for kids.” I tried to take this as a compliment on my youthful exuberance, but I’m not sure that’s really how it was meant.

To be fair, there probably is something childish about going surfing on what’s basically a cut-down li-lo. I like the portability, though: last night’s full kit is shown in the photo: board shorts, fins, thermal rash vest, short-sleeved wetsuit top, surf pursuit vehicle. Also, I never, ever have a bad surf on the mat.

The shorebreak was a bit tricky: chest high and heaving with sticks, bits of weed, small pebbles, etc. I stood there for a while working it out, charged ahead when I thought I spotted a gap, tripped over my fins, splatted, and got washed up the beach, hoping no one had noticed. There was an older couple on the beach, and one of those general-issue blonde-dreadlocked surfers you get living in beach car parks around Europe. He’d studiously ignored me as I walked down the ramp to the beach: one of the Mat Haters, clearly.

There’s a knack to getting out through big waves on a mat. On a surfboard you duck dive, shoving the board under water. That’s pretty much impossible with a mat, which is basically a giant bag of air. Instead you can either swim out with the mat tucked into your wetsuit and blow it up out there; or roll over as a wave hits you, clutching the bag in the kind of death hug the wrestler Giant Haystacks once used. The second option is my preferred technique: I get scared of sharks if I have to tread water too long while blowing up the mat. I know this isn't the reaction of a strong, powerful man, but I can't help it.

A couple of waves ridden, I start thinking how smooth and fast the mat is compared to this morning’s surfboard session. Then the horizon darkens: a whopper of an outside wave is pitching up, approaching the crease like Dennis Lillee wearing a pair of uncomfortably tight trousers. Amazingly, I’m in the spot.

The wave lifts me up, up, six, eight feet, and then chucks me at the beach. I’ve got the mat at such low inflation that it’s more like bodysurfing than anything; we take off together, bounce once about halfway down, then again near the bottom. For a moment I wonder if the mat might burst – but then it finds the sweet spot about two-thirds up the face, and we’re flying along.

How do you measure a wave? Height, speed, distance travelled? This one is big, long, steep and fast. It breaks perfectly, all the way to the shorebreak. Given a hundred chances, I couldn’t ride it better. It’s a Buddha Wave. I paddle in.

As I walk up the ramp giggling like a schoolgirl, dreadlock man leans across. “Eh!” I catch his eye. “Mat man. Bonne vague.” 

[Bonus photo of Glamorous Companion enjoying The World's Biggest Beer on the terrace above the beach.]

The music of life

Three days of good, head-high waves out here on the far western tip of Breizh. This country’s very like Cornwall: windswept open moors or fields, tight little valleys with trees huddled in the bottom, granite coasts, low houses.

Just down the road is a beach with at least three names. An attempt by local surfers to keep its identity obscure? More likely the product of being somewhere with two languages, and an uneasy relationship with the rest of France. The local Mairie has a plaque outside, noting that two deputies from this region voted NON to Pétain’s accommodation with the Germans in 1940.

The surfers here are the usual mish-mash: kids practising aerial 360s in the shorebreak, older gentlemen on larger boards (more and more, stand-up paddleboards), everything in between. You couldn’t, in your wildest dreams, say the surf was busy. I haven’t seen more than 20 people in the water, in conditions that would have an equivalent British beach looking like a sea of fibreglass.

I’ve been riding my 6’4” Bear Wombat. It’s a board that has a particular feel to it. The soundtrack in my mind when I’m riding it is always the late, great Michael Petersen in Morning of the Earth: all pivoty, jangly 70s fun. Though obviously there's less hair, less style, less speed, and quite a lot less heroin involved in my version than MP’s.

In an attempt to give the board a different soundtrack (Sure Feels Good by Brian Cadd wears thin after a while), I’ve been experimenting with different fin setups. (Apologies to non-surfers reading this: just skip to the photo of the food, if you prefer.) The results so far:

1) Single-fin only: slow, boring, ponderous – some Wagnerian overture, or one of those mind-numbingly endless guitar solos by Lynyrd Skynrd.

2) Full-size FCS side fins, but nothing in the middle: unreliable, frivolous, you shouldn’t like it but you do – it’s got to be Middle Period Kylie, some time around I Just Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. Or maybe the Pussycat Dolls' Don't You (Wish Your Girlfriend Was...). 

3) Proper Mark Richards twin fins: fast, zippy, snappy – no-brainer, it's Acid 8000 by Fatboy Slim.

4) Thruster setup, made possible by Ade Keane, a well-respected former shaper who got tired of the toxic fumes of board manufacture. I was telling him how I wanted to try a thruster setup, but couldn’t because an FCS centre fin wouldn’t work in the longboard-style finbox. Two days later, a thing of great beauty (albeit to a very specialized audience), shown left, turned up on my doorstep: a handcrafted fin. Merci beaucoup, Ade. I haven’t tried this fin combo in good waves yet, but I have high hopes the opening chords of The Ace Of Spades will start to play as I paddle for the first wave.

Meantime, yet more beauty. Yes, my Glamorous Companion – but also, look at that fish supper! Without going into detail, it tasted as good as it looked – apart from the cockles. Why do they always have to put in a bum note like that? An Islamic stitch?

Back in business

We apologise for the interruption to our service over the last 6 weeks. The author has been cloistered in a low-ceiling cottage in Dorset, alternately banging his head on the beams and writing Swim Better, Swim Faster (Bloomsbury, available in all good bookshops next year).

Manuscript sent to publisher this afternoon, van being packed up tomorrow, Eurotunnel on Friday, and we're back on the road. First stop, Brittany. Whoo.