The life of a World Surf League pro surfer isn’t too shabby. Touring the world surfing the, ahem, “best” waves that have been cleared of the hoi-polloi for a few days of fun and frolics before swinging back to the airport for the next leg.
Getting awesome surf in the event windows is of course a meteorological lottery. Mama Nature occasionally treats them to a show and sometimes she pulls the plug and goes on holibobs for a week, leaving mirror calm in her wake.
Like at the moment. The pros are marooned, Robinson Crusoe style, on some beautiful islets off the south west corner of Fiji.
Sure they’re not exactly doing it Bear Grylls style … which it must be said IS an idea for future seasons. The Island with Bear Grylls and the Top Surfers in the World … certainly has some legs. More so than Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank. To watch them bitching and losing their marbles on an island without AC and hot tubs whilst having to hunt for their dinner AND compete would be televisual gold. Lord of the Flies surf style…
Anyhoose. Televisual format brainfarts are not the point of this piece. It’s what to do with the many lay days and an expensive production crew twiddling their thumbs. Because those production bods, commentators and camera folk cost upwards of £250 a day for their tech know-how. And right now they’re sitting by the pool drinking G&Ts. Because all media folk know when someone’s paying you and there’s nowt to do then once the clock strikes 10:30am it’s G&T time.
So. A modern decathlon is in order. It would give the pros something to do and the production team will spare their much abused livers.
1. Swimming
A straight all in race across the channel from Namotu to Tavarua. Anyone that does not finish the mile is instantly disqualified from the rest of the decathlon.
2. Kayaking
After a refreshing pint, or two, of Pimms the return leg to Namotu. Again, an all out thrashathon with the remaining surfers windmilling back across the channel … whilst:
Anyone that snags a fish whilst towing a line on the way back earns bonus points based on fish weight in kilos.
4. Beach Volleyball
After a mid-morning sushi snack from the freshly caught fish a bit of team play. Based around national teams. This is a bit unfair on Jordy, Jeremy and Michel so they can play as Rest of the World against Australia, Brazil and the USA. Seeing as Jordy is the tallest pro then there’s a good chance they might smoke it. But the Brazilians are pretty renowned for their beach volleyball so who knows.
5. Sand Sculpture
After a hectic morning of competition we need a more restful activity that displays the creative, artistic nature of the pros. So. Sand sculpture it is. Sure coral sand isn’t ideal, it’s not as sticky as Weston Super Mare’s legendary sludge. But you work with the materials nature gives you. Something makes me think John John might build a mean sand castle, seeing as he’s so flipping good at everything, and there should be abundant coral/shells for decorative effect.
6. Ping Pong
After lunch it’s the back five. With a few tables in play this event would be a simple man on man from the start. With the winner from Namotu taking on the winner from Tavarua for the most points. Sure it’s sweaty as hell playing wiff-waff in Fiji but that’s part of the fun when the sweat’s running into your eyes and burning them…
With our pro heroes pretty much broken by this point it’s time for a disco nap and then food. With a sunset dinner comes great Instagram potential. Again artistic merit is key here. Straight horizons, utilising the rule of thirds and filtering appropriately will all be rewarded by the judges. The commentary on this leg will be particularly spicy: “Joe, I can’t believe Wilko is going Clarendon at this juncture, that’s some spicy ‘Gramming.” Etc.
On to the main event. Points are awarded on units. Not volume. So it’s cocktails and shots not pints of Fiji Bitter. Anyone that spews, passes out or goes skinny dipping is disqualified.
9. Arm Wrestling
Drinking and testosterone inevitably leads to arm wrestling. Again man on man for the last few vital points. No holding on to the table with the spare hand and no leg bracing against the table legs allowed.
10. Creative Hairstyling
Finally. The crowning glory of the Modern Fiji Decathlon. Clippering the shit out of each other with rusty barber clippers. Points awarded for the most shocking mohican delivered. Speed is of the essence here.
***
So. There you have it WSL. A lay day filled with thrills, competition, creativity and fun. Keeping boredom at bay and the pros and crew enthralled. It would be phenomenal on the live feed.
Make it happen.
Oh.
And PS: you’re welcome.
Tomorrow marks the start of (and yes I’m doing the ‘quote fingers’ mime here) the “British summer”.
It’s the meteorological one they use for easily understandable stats as opposed to astronomical one that’s connected to the solstice and what not, that longest day ain’t until the 21st of June pards.
Whilst the current British weather isn’t exactly classic “summer” for some: grey, cold, torrential rain, birds being blown backwards by gale force winds etc on the east coast, it’s a fitting day to run this.
Here’s hoping we get a summer not the standard warm, muggy and perma-grey skies that have been depressingly regular recently. Roll on boardshort surfs, warm evening beach parties, golden memories with friends and snorkelling NOT in a 5mm…
Just in case we do actually get a summer here are the reasons we dig it.
Rubber
It’s simple science that even with the advances modern winter wetsuit technology has made shedding the five or six mil for the three, or hell even a two sans arms or legs (not both … are you mad?), is like adding an extra gear to your surfing. You’ve lost a few pounds of rubber so you feel lighter, springier and the flexibility with that sheer second skin. Man it’s almost sexual how connected you feel. Summer wetties also dry fast and due to the warmth don’t come with that sinister second session ‘putting on a cold damp wetty’ dread. Double dipping is an absolute breeze. Mad thing is this year it’s still boot weather for some even now. So hopefully summer will actually get to ‘no boots/gloves/hoods’ if at all possible.
Boardshorts
The iconic surfing wardrobe item that we rarely get to use for its intended purpose; unless there’s been a few months of constant sunshine. Surfing in boardies in the UK is a badge of honour, something you need to do at least once (insert bikinis if you are a lady or a man that wants to surf in a bikini where appropriate for boardshorts). It’s refreshing if nothing else. Also you don’t feel like a dork wandering around in boardies in the summer, even if they’ve never actually been in the sea. Don’t scoff it is possible. Without hypothermia. Honest.
Anything Goes
Whatever you want to dick about in the water is fair game. Macca’s trays, hand-planes, boogies, foamies, mals, retros anything that’ll work in the tiddly summer conditions. Float is your friend. It’s not about performance but fun pure and simple. Glide is your friend. Which can be eye opening when you jump back on the shortboard in September.
Vitamin D
Face it when the sun is out everyone is happy … Apart from Vampires.
Laundry
A simple thing, but how good is it putting out a rack of laundry in the summer and it being dry in about a millisecond. The nuclear inferno in the sky beats the shit out of an expensive tumble dryer any day. Unless it’s windy. In which case you can play the ‘find your smalls in next door’s garden’ game.
Salad
The one time of year you can eat salad on a daily basis without feeling like an overly devout clean eater. Salad is your friend. It also doesn’t need cooking. Which, in essence, makes it the ultimate convenience food. Especially the bagged stuff. To prepare: open bag, pour on plate, splurge some dressing on it, boom, done. It’s even good for you.
Meat
Conversely you’re allowed to eat far more burnt meat than any other time of year. Barbecue invites are backed up and it’s a great time to be a carnivore. Assuming you don’t get sidetracked by one of those ‘not quite cooked’ episodes that sees you sweating to death while turning yourself inside out. One thing get a decent portable barbecue. The disposable ones are a) crap b) an increasingly prolific beach blight. Th little metal bucket ones are far better at actually cooking your food and are a doddle to take home.
Winning Stuff
Andy Murray. We’re looking at you here. And Lewis Hamilton. Time to swing the balance back from Rosberg buddy. Not sure what else is going on. Is there some kickball tournament or global jamboree of sport happening this summer?
Outside Music
Now the best way to enjoy any band is in a dark, sweaty club with a floor that’s sticky and a smell of stale beer and cleaning products. The acoustics are better, the atmosphere more intense, the lights blinding. But there’s something about sunny outdoor gigs that, whilst the sound is blowing in the wind, just puts a smile on your dial. Even the big festivals on a prime summer day can transport you to bliss. We’re more spoilt than ever with every scale of festival and whether you dig the tunes or not they’re all fun.
Free-balling
Yes ladies, we have a word for it. Not sure if the fairer sex has an equivalent apart from ‘going commando’. But no under crackers and swinging in the breeze is a joyful way to be. Until the inevitable rub sets in and you end up walking like John Wayne. Those ugly little plum units are dangling there to be air-cooled, we’re just giving them what they want, nature’s very own AC. Sorry if that’s a bit TMI.
Salt Crust
Summer surfing equals the brine drying on your face darn quick. The salty eyebrows, taut, dry, leathery skin and slightly crusty feeling you get from surfing all day in the sun is a sensation you pine for in the winter. It’s the manifestation of a day well spent.
Not Driving
Skatey, bike or walk. Leaving the car behind because you’re not slave to the weather is a treat. Cars are a mare in the summer anyway, roasting bleddy hot, your wax melts off and sticks in your seats/carpet and your sleds really don’t like being left in the car. It’s not just not dogs that die in hot cars … your stick can too. Parking is an expensive kerfuffle as well.
Skirts & Shorts & Sandals
There’s something so pleasing about not wearing long leg coverings and shoes. It’s like throwing off the shackles of authority. Flip flops and shorts/skirts rule. Whilst you ladies have a smorgasbord of choice for us chaps getting the right shorts is tricky. Don’t get sucked into the skinny short … down that road sweaty plums, as noted above, and exposed arse crack lies. And nobody wants to see your coin slot. Flip flops are a matter of what works for you. Be it the perennially classic Birkenstocks or your standard flip-flop. Just get a foot tan going on asap. White feet: them ugly. And men: cut those ruddy toe nails.
No Poo Head
Summer is the one time of year you can get rid of your farmer’s tan. Even that shit up a bit. Spring surfs leave you looking a bit of a muppet with the brown face/glowing white chest thing. Get an even bronze on (responsibly using creams, ointments, oils and tinctures as directed) and you’re literally golden. Just remember the after sun.
Visibility
Do you open your eyes when you duck-dive? No? Well you should. The summer water clarity can be amazing. Not something we get to say too often on these shores. It’s actually worth going for a body bash with a mask on just to watch people surfing by. Just like Tahiti, but with less reef. The downside is of course for the fishes. They’re easily visible and run the risk of getting spearfished to the point of extinction by the more waterman style surfers amongst you. If it’s flat it goes without saying that a snorkel or free dive is one option to keep yourself in the brine.
Daylight Hours
Maximum daylight hours for the next few weeks so still huge amounts of time pre/post-work to get in the salt. Make the most of it as it’ll getting dark early before you know it. Sorry for the reality check there.
Staycation
The UK and Ireland are home to some of the most beautiful coasts in the world. Especially when bathed in golden summer light. Can’t beat exploring your own backyard for a holiday. Cheap, easy, you know you like the food and you haven’t got to deal with the budget airline board costs. As ever, especially if you’re wild camping or vanning it, leave wherever you go as you found it. Never an excuse to litter.
iPhone Down
Smart phones hate the heat and aren’t fans of sand. So much so they pack up and you’re left with a screen that simply says: soz, too hot, come back in a bit now. Which means you can put the damn thing away and enjoy the real world here and now with your actual meat space friends. Rather than tweeting, Instying, Snapchatting, FBing about how #blessed you are this #summer.
September
Summer is glorious, warm and fun (dear Mama Nature, please make it so). The longer it goes on the warmer the water gets for the real surf season. And every week of summer fun brings us closer to autumn. Fingers crossed this year’s prime time shapes up with plenty of hurricane swells and perfect conditions. We love you summer but we’re all about autumn and we’re kind of owed a decent one of those also. So get the sea nice and warm over the next few months so we can really enjoy the best month of the year…
With the Pacific leg of the World Tour looming (gals from May 29, chaps from June 5) it’s that time of year when the pros are emptying their boardbags of small-wave Rio sleds and weighing up what boards to chuck in to take on potentially huge Cloudbreak and the girthsome tunnels of Teahupo’o.
The events of yesterday, when some of the world’s best free surfers had a dig at maxing Cloudbreak, leading to Aaron Gold’s, sphincter clenching for all involved drowning / rescue / resuscitation, must be weighing heavily on their minds.
The session took a dark turn, no longer an amuse bouche for the Fiji WSL stop, but a serious heads up. No other stop on the tour has the potential for being so outrageously big and perfect. Sure Teahupo’o gets nuts but there’s a point where paddling it is beyond human physics and it goes Code Red for the tow crew.
Cloudbreak, as it has occasionally shown, can be massive and perfect. Outside of the realm of what tour surfers expect or in some cases have any experience in. We all remember the kerfuffle that happened the year the event was put on hold as Cloudy went mental.
With a distinctly dismal Brazil event this year the WSL sorely need the Pacific to deliver. If it’s massive and clean they’ll have no option but to run. Unless the surfers vote not to surf. In which case the public will be baying for blood. And the free surfers that are keen to take it on will garner all the coverage. Again.
It’s a tricky proposition. Surfing Cloudbreak, or Teahupo’o at size, in the name of ‘sport’, is frankly nuts. Even though the surfers now have the option of life-vests under their suits and some of the world’s best water rescue guys on hand.
Mick’s tussle with a shark live was terrifying; a warning shot across the bows. No one wants to be holding the tiller of the professional sports organisation that leads to someone drowning live on the internet in the name of entertainment.
How many sports involve such risk? Sure you might break a leg playing footy or get concussed playing rugby. Tennis elbow is an issue. A ping-pong ball in the eye sure does smart. Sure F1 and most motorsport comes with a healthy dose of life threatening but it’s not an unruly track that kills you.
Few competitive sports compare. It’s hard to comprehend getting brutally beaten into a coral razor garden while half the Pacific tears you a new one … all as you struggle to not pass out.
Which leads us to the question: How many sports expect that you risk drowning, wounding and even death to get a score?
This is why watching surfing in serious surf is so magnetic. It transcends sport. It’s not about scores, rash-vests and sponsored messages. It’s man v nature. Plain and simple. It explains why big wave events draw the crowds. It’s why the Pacific leg is the most anticipated part of the tour. Big, clean 10-15 foot Cloudbreak and ‘edge-of-ridable Teahupo’o’ is what we want.
In an age where visual is all and being able to grab the hoi-polloi’s attention in three seconds or less before they scroll on is key. Big, bombing, blue barrels will do that. Here’s hoping the conditions are at the fine line between crazy and awesome.
Ignoring the farcical political campaign that is fast becoming embarrassing on all levels Steve England has a quick look at what Brexit would mean for surfers on a day to day basis.
I guess we (or I as I am writing this, me) need to put a disclaimer in here as to political inclinations. I pretty much look at 99% of politicians with complete disdain … the others I just don’t trust.
So Brexit.
As a surfer for over 38 years and a founding member of SAS I remember life before the EC well. A lot of time we surfed in foam that would come up to your armpits at Porthtowan. St Agnes was just brown with shit. It was laced with pieces of human turd, tampons, sanitary towels and condoms. I surfed right around the UK and on any popular beach with an outfall nearby it was the same. Oh how we laughed.
The Conservative government of the time, indeed Mrs Thatcher herself, said, “ There is no raw sewage discharged off our (UK) coasts.” It was a line they stuck to no matter what. Most Conservative MPs were equally as misinformed, including Lord Coe, who was Falmouth MP for some time. On the other side and over time there were a couple of MPs in the Liberal and Labour party who were onside and helped in the fight for clean seas, but they were small in number. The fact is the major influencer on environmental standards forcing the water companies to treat sewage was the EC Bathing Water directive.
The politicians had their heads in the sand, as most do today. The water companies were useless, much as today. And the watchdogs were toothless, much as today.
This is not opinion, this is a fact. If it were not for the EC I have little doubt we would still be surfing in shit. And having dealt with a lot of the above in the present day I have no real expectation of them to change if we left the EC. My opinion is they are, for the most part, self-serving with no respect for surfers or any beach lover and water user.
Money talks. Water companies and polluters have lots of it…
SAS put it in a more politically correct manner:
“These Directives have been fundamental in the protection of our wild world over the last 25 years and offer us strong and proven route to tackling the pollution and destruction that continues to threaten our environment.
European legislation, gave a structure for protecting our beaches from continuous sewage pollution, including new obligations and timescales to install full sewage treatment works around the country. More specifically, these were the Bathing Water Directive, the Water Framework Directive, and the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive in 1991, which was the real game-changer in terms of introducing vastly improved sewage treatment facilities nationwide.”
At the moment the EC is strengthening it’s directives on bathing water with tighter standards and it will continue to do so over the years as well as addressing an EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and proposed Circular Economy Directive to combat marine pollution through plastics and the like. The UK water companies and polluters would LOVE it if we pulled out of the EC and these directives went out of the window.
There is no strategy to hold these people to account should we Brexit, and I wouldn’t hold your breath for anything coming soon.
Hugo Tagholm, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage says “Over the last 25 years, EU Directives have undoubtedly helped drive huge improvements in bathing water quality at beaches around much of the UK. The Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and Bathing Water Directive in particular provided Surfers Against Sewage with a powerful legislative framework on which to deliver highly effective water quality campaigns ensuring water companies and regulators delivered, and continue to deliver, cleaner, safer seas for everyone. In 2016, European legislation continues to underpin the next phase of our water quality campaigns to stop marine sewage disposal via coastal combined sewer overflows.”
Vote as you will, just remember the lessons this story has taught us. Personally I don’t to want go back to this.
A few quotes that may help your decision
“A Britain outside the EU could in theory follow Norway and set high environmental standards. But most UK politicians regard them as ‘green frippery’ – Stephen Tindale, former head of Greenpeace.
“It is European directives which have forced the sewage out of Britain’s bathing waters and the acid rain out of Britain’s atmosphere; which are getting rid of the most dangerous chemicals in our environment and the carbon pollution of our motor vehicles; which are pushing the clean-up of our rivers and the switch to renewable energy; and which, of course, are watching over our wildlife, and that of the rest of Europe.” – Michael McCarthy, journalist
“As a boy, trips to the coast were often spoiled by filthy beaches and sewage-filled seas. The prevalence of acid rain won us the title of ‘dirty man of Europe’. Thanks to EU action, this now a thing of the past. The UK cannot win the battles of the future – against climate change, air pollution and the destruction of the natural world – on its own.” Craig Bennett, director of Friends of the Earth
“The environment doesn’t stop at country borders and UK air and water quality depends on agreement with our European neighbours on high standards. Europe’s environmental policy has grown to become the core framework in most areas of environmental policy.” Baroness Young, former chair of English Nature and chief executive of the Environment Agency.
Surfing is in one word: extraordinary. The simple act of standing on a board riding energy originally from the sun is mind-bending. But where do waves come from and how do they become ideal for us to slide on? Read on as we delve in to the inner workings of the surf. Don’t be scared. It’s science. And facts. But fun ones.
Beginnings
A wave has a life cycle that’s almost organic. From being born as the merest of capillary ripples in the midst of one of the great wave nurseries the baby wave grows into adolescent chop. It then hits its straps travelling out in to the world as an adult wave. Maybe wrapping around, perhaps breaking, on a few mid-oceanic island chains as it traverses thousands of miles. Later, in the prime of its life, as a clean, well defined swell, an OAP in the metaphor, it will end its days with one last hurrah against some distant shore. Maybe with you caressing a hand in its face as that energy gets turned in to barrels and noise. It’s a story repeated all over the world thousands of times a day. Waves are generated, propagated, then get ridden and die in a constant fluid dance which all comes down to our global climate system.
Why Waves Happen
You can blame the sun for everything. It’s all about energy transference on a planetary scale and waves are a happy side effect. Even that solar radiation that starts the ball rolling is a kind of a wave. An electromagnetic one of course but it’s a neat start point for the kind of waves we’re interested in.
The short version goes like this: the sun heats the earth unevenly. We all know this. The equatorial regions get the lion’s share of the energy and the poles a minimal amount. Our weather starts with this basis. The redistribution of the warmth in the middle. Hot air rises and cooler air replaces it: the basis of convection. Add in the rotation of the earth that gives us the Coriolis force, the tilt of the earth causing seasons and the distribution of oceans and continents that heat and cool at different rates to the mix and you can see it’s a complex beast.
But the takeaway is this: all that convection means packets of warm and cool air and moisture are on the move. This is the first step in the wave story.
Pressure Zone
It’s the march of low pressure systems across the world ocean that give us surfing waves (as opposed to tsunamis and tidal bore waves, that’s a whole other story). Where the warm air from the south meets the cold air from the north, and vice versa in the Southern hemisphere, is known as the polar front. Any disturbance along its length can start the formation of a low pressure system (you’ll know them as the onion rings on the pressure maps). Warm air is less dense than cold air and slides over the top and when a low forms this process becomes intense, with air being sucked into the vortex by the Coriolis force. As the polar front splits into individual warm and cold fronts (behind which the respective warm/cold air masses reside, cold fronts have blue triangles and warm red semi-circles on the pressure maps) it’s the warm sector between the fronts where the surface winds are strong and blow for some distance in the same direction. This is the key to good surf.
A Word On The Coriolis Force
You’ll know that low pressure systems rotate anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. This is all down to rather complicated bit of science sussed out back in the day by French physicist and righteous boffin Gustave Gaspard Coriolis. It relates to the relative speed of the Earth’s surface. As the planet makes it’s daily rotation a point at the equator is moving far faster, and travelling further, than a point in higher latitudes. At the poles there’s no travel as motion would just be spinning. So any air mass traversing over the spinning globe is always forced to to turn right, in the northern hemisphere at least. It can be illustrated, just put an empty mug on a table, if you hold it between your flat hands and move both hands forward at the same rate then there’s no change. Do the same but push your right hand forward as you move, to represent the faster drag of the more southern area of the earth near the equator, you’ll see the mug rotate to the right. It’s this principle that guides our pressure systems rotation.
So How Exactly Do Waves Form?
Waves are the result of friction between the atmosphere and the ocean. A zephyrous breeze under two knots will generate tiny capillary waves but if the wind dies they die also thanks to surface tension of the water. Just blow in your tea. You’ll see how little it takes to make a ripple. A breeze over two knots, sustained for any length of time, will generate ‘gravity waves’ and ripples turn to waves as it becomes increasingly easy for the wind to act on the backs of the ripples. Ripples progress to ‘chop’ then to a ‘sea’. The bigger the waves the easier it is for the wind to transfer its energy to the waves; to a certain point. For wind waves to become swell there are three vital factors in the equation: the strength of the wind, the length of time it blows and the distance it blows over (fetch). If you’ve ever seen foot high waves in a lake you’ll know it doesn’t take vast tracts of ocean for waves to develop. Most models suggest the biggest swells ever seen can be generated with less than a thousand miles fetch. Next time you watch the weather try and pick out the warm sector between the fronts pointing at the UK, this is the fetch generating our waves. So short version: sun heats atmosphere, atmosphere moves about, transfers energy to ocean.
The Next Stage
Swell, the clean, defined waves that we crave as surfers have escaped the storms that made them. The confused sea becomes organised lines as the energy matures and consolidates into longer, faster waves. These swell trains can travel great distances, thousands of miles, a wave born in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica can traverse the South and North Pacific to end its days on a beach in Alaska. Our Atlantic storms traverse a more complex and chaotic ocean so we aren’t blessed with the long travelled, super mature, clean waves that grace California or Indonesia. But if a low is slow moving and gives the waves a chance to beat the storm to our shores then we can get quality surf.
How To Get A Perfect Wave
So we’ve got to a point in the story where we’ve got clean lined up swell making a beeline for our coast. It’s the interaction between swell and the land it reaches that defines if it’s any use to us as surfers. As with the whole complex saga it’s not simple. When a wave reaches the coast it ‘feels’ the bottom (when the depth becomes less than half the wavelength) so a shallow continental shelf, like ours, slows things up. A lack of continental shelf as seen so spectacularly at Teahupoo and on the North Shore results in far more powerful waves. Then there’s all kinds of modifying geography like offshore islands and trenches. Refraction can occur bending waves, the classic example being Hossegor where the waves refract on the edge of the deep ocean trench offshore and the resultant breaking waves are amplified giving the legendary punch of La Graviere while spots further north on the same coast are weaker.
Any wave will eventually break when it hits the shallows and the water depth is 1.3x it’s height. So a six foot wave will break in eight feet of water approximately. How the wave breaks depends on the local geography and wind. Offshore winds hold up the waves and dependant on the bottom contour of the shore you can get what’s known scientifically as surging, spilling or plunging breakers. Surging waves are of no use to us. Spilling waves can be found on gently sloping beaches and are perfect for beginners. Plunging breakers are the classic hollow wave favoured by advanced surfers. The key is the plunging breaker not closing out and breaking all at the same time. It’s waves that peel, along reef passes (Teahupoo), river mouths (Mundaka), reefs (Porthleven), point breaks (Rincon) or well formed beach sandbars (Hossegor) that surfers seek.
The End of the Road
So the radiant energy from the sun, that’s travelled 92 million miles across space, heats our planet. That now thermal energy gets converted into kinetic energy as wind and then passed on to the waves. Finally that bit of nuclear energy that started in the solar furnace of the sun unleashes when a wave breaks. The spectacular end point where all the kinetic energy, and a bit of sound energy, that’s just a sunbeam when you think about it, continues its energetic voyage. As you’ll remember from school one of most basic laws of science is the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.
So that is the life cycle of a wave. A mere matter of days. We won’t go into the cycle of the stuff on the seabed as that takes millions of years…
Getting itchy feet for an Indo mission this season? Let Jean da Silva’s epic scores from last year inspire you. Just in case you are heading eastbound here’s a few pointers:
Fear The Walking Chafe
If you are a boy in Indo then you’ll be prone to a certain chafing in the nether regions. No one’s sure how, when or why it happens. It just creeps up on you. One day you’re fine. Next day it feels like someone crept in during the night and cattle branded your inner thighs. Right in that intimate, soft, tickly bit adjacent to the crown jewels. Which now basically feel like they’re on fire. From this point on regular ambulatory motion, otherwise known as walking, is not possible. Unless using an exaggerated wide cowboy gait. Like good ole’ John Wayne. Hence sufferers being pointed and laughed at with expressions like, ‘Oof! Look at matey he’s proper John Wayning.’
It’s savagely painful and quite distressing. Stings a tad when you get back in the brine also. Women. You don’t know how lucky you are*
Got The Horn?
In Indo the MOT consists of one test. It takes less than 10-seconds for the whole thing to be conducted. You drive your wagon into the drive thru test bay, the inspector reaches in, honks your horn once, just a quick beep, then gives it a long, aggressive five second blast. As long as it makes a noise and doesn’t sound like you are running over a dog’s chew toy then you pass. Good to go. Head back out in to the insane traffic. This is the only mandatory requirement for a vehicle in Indo. It can be a rusty death trap with no floor, that’s partially on fire, but that’s no matter. If your horn works you’re good to go. Equally being a paid taxi/bemo driver it seems the only thing you need to know is where the horn is (that and how to do the steering wheel mime and say ‘transport?’ to every tourist). All driving is based around it. This is why -with the exception of Portugal- Indo is the most terrifying place in the world to be in a vehicle. But it is arguably safer to get driven than try and drive; that is just crazy talk. As for mopeds. Unless you’re on the outer islands or have Carl Fogarty motorbike skills forget about it. Unless you don’t like your legs of course.
Boat Safety?
Boat trips are great huh? Before you hit the Mentawai motherlode for the dream trip of dream trips how about a warm up? The classic Bali-Lombok-Sumbawa run, way cheaper, less crowded and some super cool waves like Deserts, Shippies, Scars and Supersuck to check out. Of course the boats are smaller, cheaper and more, errr, local. Wooden outriggers with one cabin that houses your bunks, kitchen and shitter are the norm. But they are a equal steps down in cost as they are in luxury from a Mentals charter. Proportionally they have less than a quarter (that’s a generous assessment) of the safety equipment as well. Life raft? Nope. Life jackets? Negative. Radio? Nah, well unless the car stereo jerry rigged to the electrics with exposed wires counts. First aid kit? What’s is thing you speak of? Any accident is fate and karma and just life innit?
In essence: way more fun. This is life on the edge of disaster. Anything goes wrong and you’re paddling your board away from the flaming, sinking wreckage of your own personal Titanic with a hell of a tale to tell, if, and when, you get home. Don’t smirk. It happens, a lot more often than you think.
Sea Ulcers Suck
Surfing in the tropics means one thing: pus dribbling wounds. If John Wayning wasn’t bad enough… The noble sea ulcer forms from any cut, nick or hint of a rub you have. Progressively getting worse until you really have to stay out the sea. There is actually an Indo based solution -a little bottle of purple juice you can only get in Indo chemists- called Gentian Violet. Makes ‘em heal, keeps them dry and is all round amazing. Only downside is you get permanent purple stains on your board, bed sheets, clothes, partner. This is no matter. You can still surf without them deepening and weeping until they touch bone.
*Prob best not to slather Gentian all over your nethers if you do have a savage case of the John Wayne’s. Nobody is going to believe your purple junk was a medical necessity.
