Last weekend I got up before dawn and drove with a white knuckle grip through dense fog toward the surf. It's hella frightening - one always expects roos or zombies to reel out of the fog and crash through the windscreen biting and kicking. I managed to get all the way to the coastal town I was born in and just before I hit the main road, at a mere 40 kmph, a kangaroo leapt out of the bush at the side of a housing estate and slammed into the side of my van. You're meant to get out and check to see if they have a joey on board, but it appeared to bound off into the bush, so if it was injured I was never going to find it.

At the beach I didn't have much headspace to check the damage - besides, after a week of poor wind conditons, it had gone offshore and was clean as a whistle. My best mate and I were tugging on wetsuits and trembling with anticipation. Three foot waves were rolling in and they looked totally gorgeous. The tide was perfect. There was hardly any one out. The dented van was the last thing on my mind. Besides, Jamie'd pull it out somehow and my hobo van would be back to some semblence of normal in no time.

I love Drainos. It's not everyone's break, but I love it's speedy little runners and peaky take offs. It can go left too, which is more officially Zoomos, but the fact you can go either way thins out the crowds a little. It's a little more of a challenge and I do like the high and fast take offs without the risk of sucky little shorebreaks or too much heavy water involved. It's one of three of my favourite waves on the coast.

If you're interested, here's a little clip of it - not from this day, and in the clip it's probably a foot bigger than Saturday. In the video the left is working a bit better than the right, which is closing out. I kinda don't mind taking off and getting a fun turn in before it closes out anyway. In the clip below, the swell's a little wonkier too but it's holding up okay.

Anyway, I probably surfed for two hours before disaster happened. Now when I say surf, I ride a 8'3 hipster twin SUP by Smik - I surf it like a surfboard, but it involves a paddle. So on the bigger sets, you can't really duck dive - you just paddle like hell and hope that you make it over. It's fairly easy as you can see the sets come from a long way aways, as you're up high, and if you choose the right wave to take off on knowing the set's coming, you don't really get into trouble. So anyway, I'm out the back and a bigger set came through, probably a good 4 ft, so I paddled like mad as this big wave feathered and I made it over the top. Well my body made it over, flying through the air (which is fun), but the momentum chucked my board behind me and I felt the legrope snap and my board disappear.

Now, I don't mind swimming for my board - that's kinda fun. The water is warming up too and it's nice to get wet. But that happened to be the first wave of the set, and I was about to be swimming through a washing machine hoping to get my board before it crashed on the rocks at high tide. Another thing is that I'm a good enough swimmer and confident in the ocean, except I had to swim with my paddle and that's not bloody easy. You have to kinda chuck it a couple of metres ahead of you, swim for it, chuck it again, and so on and so forth. It was a long and labourious process as sets kept breaking on me.

I was quite relieved to see someone hanging onto my board as best they could in the shorebreak. I kinda know this guy to nod at - he's an Irish longboarder, not that that means anything much. I was trying to get to him as quick as possible but I was really getting tired, and eventually a wave pushed the board out of his hands. The sweetheart actually paddled into the beach and grabbed my board before it was swept onto the rocks and pulled it out of harms way. I kinda thought he was going in anyway but nope, he was just helping me out.

'Man, thanks so much' I puff, exhausted from the very, very long swim.

'No worries, mate, happens to all of us!'. It sure does. But not everyone will go to such lengths to grab a board like that. I was pretty grateful.

After that, I went back up to the van to grab another leggie, and then stopped. Last time I had a super long surf and came in and changed equipment I ended up with six stitches in my forearm.

I'd already hit a roo and snapped a leash.

No way was I going to risk a third thing.

After that, it's gone onshore again, and the worst kind of cross onshore, so I haven't surfed since. I keep thinking of the rare beauty of that morning, despite the mishaps. That's the kind of thing us surfers live for, right?

With Love,

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