Yesterday, I lost a friend. One of those friends that slipped into your life in a way that made them seem they’d always been there. They just sort of become part of you. You wake in the morning, you sleep at night, you know they’re right there with you; a part of your rhythm.
If you’ve ever lost a friend like that, you’ll know it’s a shock. Something you don’t accept at first, then later have to come to terms with. They even say the sense of loss eventually fades. Yesterday was a lot like that, as I helped Steve load the olo on his truck. The noreast winds were all over it and the waves were trying hard to live up to their name and purpose; knee high dribblers at best. I slurped at my coffee and made small talk with Shane. I pointed out that I’d sent a text message to five people. Maybe others would be coming. Steve turned up a few minutes later, and for a moment I was encouraged. But I knew this was is; the others had got up, looked out the window, seen the wind and turned the alarm off. The wind was already strong and the waves scarcely qualified. I should have stayed in bed like the others.
Not me, I’d got out there at the first sign of dawn. I wanted another session. I wanted others to experience the energy of the wooden wonder. I wanted to live vicariously their stoke and to capture it in my lens. I didn’t want that thirteen foot plank to go. For a month now she’s been in my garage, on my roof, underfoot. I’ve surfed nothing else. I’ve come to associate the sea with a rich, deep wood grain and have felt the tender soreness of seldom-used muscles reminding me of the heavy board’s presence.
Our dawn patrol turned into a sort of wake, disguised as an early morning board bag signing ceremony. Before I knew it, Steve was pulling out the drive on his way to Dunedin and I was left with nothing but fond memories.
Etched forever in the “once in a lifetimes” section of my mind’s long term storage file were a pile of grand visions from the month of the olo and this weekend past, and these have been cropping up to help me through my day of withdrawal. My last hurrah before sending the wooden warrior on to its glory down south was to make a trek over the coast, in search of some heavier water. Got in late to the campground at Westport and once through setting up camp it was dark, so the wave check would have to wait for morning. Across the reserve I could hear the thump of waves along Carter’s Beach as I drifted off to sleep. I was woken by the actual rooster’s crow from the paddock adjacent the campground – and the baby’s subsequent crying to herald the day. Eager to get a look at the situation, I trundled the wee girl into her car seat and headed off to check T-bay.
As the sun rose, a haze hung over the bay and long lines rolled in breaking well across it. This was only my second time here, so it was difficult to call the size without anyone out as reference, but it was clearly well overhead and I was charged with both stoke and uneasiness; not too certain about my capabilities with 13 feet of wood in these conditions. But I was going to find out. I headed back to the camp to put on a feed for the family and get everyone and everything together. As a side note; it’s not easy trying to organise a dawn patrol with an infant, a wife, a mother and a dog in tow. That said it definitely brings a new richness to the Surfari.
At T-Bay I headed out quickly, anxious to see what the mighty paulownia warrior would do in these bigger, thicker West Coast waves. Since I wasn’t real familiar with this place, I stayed away from the daunting-looking rip by the rocks, and chose to paddle out further down the bay where it looked safe. This would be my first mistake, and I’d pay for it by spending the next hour or so paddling… and paddling… and paddling. In between paddling, I’d get thumped by wall after wall of whitewater; rolled, flipped, tumbled and basically beaten about. Each time I’d make it out to the true impact zone some three hundred meters off the beach, hold my ground through a set and just about make the outside, another five or six wave set would explode on me and I’d lose fifty meters and take a miserable working.
After I’d battled for close to an hour, I relised I was now about half a kilometre down the beach and beginning to get caught in the sweep that would take me north through the seal colony channel and out to sea. It was time to reconsider my strategy. I paddled into the shallows and then headed laterally back up the beach; paddling since it’s so much easier than carrying when it comes to the olo. Cautiously, I made my way into the rip and very quickly realised I had been an utter moron for my earlier reserve. The rip was the way to go and with a little bit of timing I was well outside in about a minute. I sat out there for a while just trying to get the rhythm of the sets and taking some time to recover from the previous hour’s paddle-a-thon.
My first lesson in bigger-wave olo-ing came as I began trying to paddle for a few set waves and watched them frustratingly flow right out from under me. The wave at outside T-Bay is big, but it’s meaty and thick and its pitch develops slowly. Despite its monstrous length, the olo just doesn’t get in early and so I spent a long time gradually getting my nerve up to take off right at one of the big peaks, picking my way along the shoulders of set waves and gaining a little more confidence. I was feeling pretty good just getting into a groove where I thought this wasn’t too bad and I’d soon get a wave when the horizon suddenly did something really odd; it rose up darkly, menacingly and a long foaming crest developed well outside of where I was sitting. My stomach turned, and I paddled like a madman. There was nothing for it and the wave heaved over in big roiling sections well ahead of me. Recalling the working I’d had inside I knew I wasn’t up for being anywhere near the olo with this one, so I ditched and I dove and swam as deep as I could. The whitewater passed over me, then grabbed me and flung my eighty seven kg’s around like a doll in the darkness. About the time my lungs began to scream, my left leg was suddenly yanked violently back and I found myself being dragged by a massive chunk of wood at an unsettling speed. I think at one point I wondered what the headlines would read, and felt like an ass for dying while my wife, daughter and mother were on the beach watching. But then it was over and I was breathing and in one piece. As I tried to heave the olo around to point it back seaward, the next wave’s foamy blast arrived and I took another, smaller working.
That scenario played itself out several times over, and I found that with the outgoing tide I was having to head further and further out to sea, now sitting just off the rocks that form a sort of natural breakwater along much of the bay’s mouth. I saw something break the surface and for a moment had an intensely vivid recognition that I was surfing the West Coast, less than two kilometres from a seal colony and sitting all alone a long, long way from shore. Needless to say when the water beside me suddenly erupted I nearly shit myself – before recognising that rather than a great white’s gaping maw I was looking down at three hector’s dolphins. I took their presence to be a good sign, and indeed it was. Not three minutes later another horizon-warping set appeared and I stroked for the skyline hoping to avert yet another ten minute working. This one looked like it was shaping up to be a hell of a bomb and frighteningly, I was right in position for it. I sat way back on the tail, brought the olo ‘round and at the last minute I scratched for this beast, looking down what had become a watery ledge and committing fully.
I’ll never forget the view; some ten plus feet of board stretching out in front of me at an angle that seemed near vertical. I learnt in that moment that when surfing the olo in big water significantly more Organic Surf Wax than I had applied is necessary; I nearly slid right off the deck which was covered in water due to the board’s rocker. Somehow I stuck it though and found myself barrelling down this monster wave and trying to keep my balance at what was shaping up to be an incredible speed. At the bottom turn I looked up at a wall of choppy water that was definitely pushing double overhead and in that moment I was jolted with adrenaline and stoke and I shifted weight and was slung back up the face. The board had impressive responsiveness and felt very lively, surfing it well off the tail it was performing with a lot more agility than I’d ever expected. At the top turn, I rotated my shoulders and looked back and down a bit too far and felt myself coming off the top on a funny angle. The view down that ledge again, with the sense of losing balance combined to create a powerful sense of impending doom, and I bailed without thinking. I dove again, this time straight down into the belly of the wave and I stroked like hell to get away from the board. A beating ensued but I wasn’t flogged unconscious by the board and after several minutes of hell I was back outside and trembling with stoke. If I got only that one wave this entire trip, it would have been well worth the drive. I considered going in, but then the inspiration of Daily Dale Webster hit me and I realised I had to get three waves minimum. I admit that while I was stoked, I was also on the edge of my comfort zone with that last wave and a part of me was suggesting quite loudly in my mind that it was time to pack it in before I managed to get myself killed. In spite of that voice, the stoked part was louder and more convincing in his arguments, and I remained out there for two encore waves. Both were smaller but still well overhead and meaty, one offering me a beautiful long ride halfway across the bay which gave me the opportunity to really feel the board and tune into it’s performance in big stuff.
About the board, I noticed on that trip a few things I hadn’t before. For one, it was violently pulling left each time I went to take off. For a while I couldn’t figure this out and wondered whether Roy had set the fin slightly off. That couldn’t be it though, because when going right the board did the same thing that way too; pulling hard to the right getting ready to take off. I think I’ve worked out what it’s all about. As the board starts to lift with the face of a large wave, the extreme rocker means that the big fin pulls up and out of the water, and if the surfer is turned even slightly to the left or right the wave then begins to push the fin as it crests. This can work out very nicely, but also makes for an interesting twist in the timing and catching of waves. A couple times I got turned sideways so quickly that I had to bail off the back or go tumbling down the face with the board.
Another new experience for me was how the board gets thrown around quite a bit by chop on the face of the wave. By the time I was actually catching waves a solid cross-shore had developed and the waves had good sized wavelets running laterally across them. Because I was surfing off the tail of the board – where it’s most responsive – the result was that the front three quarters of the olo got tossed back and forth quite a bit and the whole thing bounced around a lot as it ran across the chop. This made it a rather unstable ride in comparison to a long, slender gun (which is the only sort of board I have experience on in such conditions). I left the session feeling totally alive, charged, and confident at having been able to manage these west coast conditions on the olo. I was gutted to learn that my darling wife had given up her photo vigil after an hour and a half of me not catching waves, and had only just missed my wave of the day after being distracted by a tourist asking her questions on the rocks. So the only images of my day out at T-bay are those in my mind, but those will endure forever.
The next day I wanted to get out again, it was smaller but a positively beautiful day. However this wasn’t a surf trip and there were family things to be done on Sunday, so surf time was limited. And, I had promised a local named Mark Perana that he could have a go. He’d spent a long time admiring the board the day prior and in the spirit of the Hikoi I’d offered him a go. So, today was his turn. Mark is known locally as quite an accomplished big board rider, so I was anxious to see how he’d go with the olo. Until Mark surfed it I had been convinced the olo couldn’t be ridden like a mal. Mark proved me wrong, quickly getting it wired on the inside and surfing it in classic old school mal fasion; drop knee cutbacks, cross-stepping, noseriding. He made it work a treat even in mushy little waist high lines well inside, and had what looked to be a blast on the re-forms along the inner sandbanks.
Then I motioned him out to the outside after a good long warm up, and he hit the rip to go have a crack at something with more grunt. It didn’t take him long, and he was into a thick, grunty outside line that sent him hurtling shoreward. It was smaller than the day before but still a lot of water moving out there and I could see this wave had some real power. He rode that wave through the inside and all the way to the beach after it reformed. The beaming smile from ear to ear said it all and I was swelling with vicarious stoke for his big ride.
On Thursday this week I took it out for a short session at Effingham in North Beach. It was a clean, sunny, offshore morning and the waves were peeling along the sandbank in zipping chest high lines. I caught a dozen or so real fun ones before handing the olo over to Steve and Shane for a while. This was to be my farewell session. Just being on that board is a different sort of experience. There’s an energy in that wood, a richness I don’t feel surfing anything else. The sounds the board makes as its hull moves through the water, the smooth feel of the rails, the way it just slides right into the pocket and speeds you down the line. There is joy in that olo. Later that day I took my little girl out on the board and she got her first “stand up” waves at 14 months old; me on my belly holding her steady as she stood to ride wave after wave for nearly an hour. Then later in the day my wife Stargirl – still just a learner – had several fun waves and one of her best ever on it.
As Steve headed out the drive with the Olo – bringing the joy of its experience to Dunedin - I felt a pull, a sense of grief, and a feeling of loss. It was that strange loss you feel when you’re sad that a friend is no longer around – but grateful to have been touched by their presence.
