The summer of 2018/2019 is pretty much over. I’ve had 54 summers and though I can’t remember all of them, I know this one is right up there with the best. Because once you’ve had 54 summers, you really do have a handle on what you like about them. I like being in the sun. I like surfing. I like driving my car to the beach to enable those activities.
But this summer was different. There’s been a growing sense of appreciation simmering for a couple of years, and this year it ramped up. I love the things I love in my life now more than I ever have. So does the slightly older guy I was talking to about it in the car park at North Piha the other day: “Shit yeah mate, when the surf’s like this I’m in bed at 8.30 the night before”. Me, I’m more of a can’t sleep guy when I know the surf’s good.
This summer was special because over the winter I had a double canalplasty. That’s when you get your ears drilled out to remove bone growth that has developed in the ear canal because there’s been so much water in there. So many surfers get it it’s called ‘Surfers Ear’, but the medical name for it is ‘exostosis of the external auditory canal’. Anyway, with the operation and the mandatory stand-down of 6-8 weeks behind me, I went for the first surf of this summer on December 1 at South Piha. It was pretty shit. But I was in the water. And that was the first change in my approach to surfing. Surfing in any old shit. I used to only surf when the conditions were really good, but I was so happy to be back out there, I allowed myself to surf some pretty average conditions a few times to get back in the right shape and used to the way the water was moving around Piha beach and to train my number two board, the 7 foot Noosa Longboards ‘Bubble’. I figured, correctly by the way, that if I surfed while the sand banks were finding themselves, by the time everything was finally lined up properly, those of us that had been doing so would have an advantage.
A couple of weeks later, December started getting tropical, black clouds and really localised breezes and showers. You needed to get out there while the air was the right temperature. And you had to make some calls. One mid December day I arrived at South Piha and the wind was a dissapointing onshore, contrary to reports and what was happening back in town – but you could see exactly where it was coming from. The little mini-front was coming in from the Tasman to dump rain on the Nikau, Ponga, Kauri and everything else that grows in the Waitakere ranges. So I just waited. I had an awesome raw fish salad from Murray’s, the splendid food set-up that’s replaced the burnt down takeway bar, and then had a tasty little wave in the middle of South Piha. Because that wind did change after the front had moved in. Years gone by I wouldn’t even have gotten out of the car, I would have u turned in the car parkand gone home. That’s old me style. New me gets more waves.
According to my Facebook page, it doesn’t look like I went for another surf until paddling out two days in a row at Mangawhai Heads early in the new year. Those days the surf was actually pretty flash – but there was hardly anybody out there. Nobody likes surfing in a crowd so some places are best avoided, but for some reason I think people incorrectly judge that Mangawhai gets crowded, maybe because there’s a population that lives at the beach. But it’s Te Arai down the coast that gets crowded. I like Mangawhai because there are options, the bar if it’s big enough (and you can be bothered paddling against the tide flowing in (or out) of the estuary) , the beach break (preferred), or even Waipu Cove just round the corner. And also because if my friend Rochelle’s home I usually head back to the 09 with some homegrown chillies and fresh layed eggs. These two days were special also because my boy, Joe came with me. I love it when he gets a few waves, and Mangawhai was good to him on these days.
The next 8 or 10 surfs were on the family holiday at Noosa Heads. It was pretty unusual for the points there to break for so long. Noosa is an amazing wave, (more than one actually) but it needs some serious swell to work, and they can go months without seeing those magical points come to life. And when they do it’s crowded beyond belief. But the water’s warm, and although the population is high the vibe is pretty mellow and good natured. We surfed mainly at Tea Tree Bay, it’s a 15 minute walk out through the National Park and it’s beautiful. I hope the people that fought for saving the out-crop that is the Noosa National Park have got special places lined up in their particular ideas of heaven because, God knows, those Australians aren’t shy when it comes to building things on the beach and the planet would have lost something really special. Like a place where you can paddle into a wave and kick out of it about 200 metres down the line in a perfect horseshoe shaped bay with boulder strewn beach neatly surrounded by, yes, Tea Trees. The Noosa Points are like a liquid 3D printer for perfect waves. As a result, the standard of surfing is really high, and one of the great things about being out there is just seeing some real classy surfing. 6 year old girls ripping waves 3 times their height, craggy old buggers with long beards that look like they live somewhere under the waves with the crabs and fishes, a continuing procession of surfers from all over the world including no shortage of incredibly beautiful young Brazilian women riding longboards. And hipsters. There are tons of hipsters. But that’s cool because moustaches and beards look good on cats riding longboards, and they do ride them well in their especially retro boardshorts, undone Hawaiian shirts and shit brown boards. That’s something I can’t understand, they make beautiful boards at Thomas Surfboards, Noosa Longboards and others – but many of them are foul colours lately. Weird. Anyway, it’s handy that all this is going on because it’s pretty hard to get a wave, but the ones you get are worth the wait. And you only need a couple.
We get back from Noosa and the left shoulder’s developed a condition, which hasn’t got a medical name yet, but I call it Noosa shoulder. It’s from consecutive days in the water. I give it a couple of days to recover before the probably the most significant surf of the summer. Not the best, but an important catalyst for what was to come.
So I’m on a rare visit to a place I really must spend a lot more time: Raglan.
I’ve succesfully delivered Joe and his mates to The Soundsplash festival and I have decided it would be prudent to remain in the area while the 16 year olds run amok amongst the badly put up tents and other 16 year olds at their first music festival. I’ve got the board on the roof, and figure I’ll check the points while the festival distracts everyone under 22, even though there’s not really any swell forecast. I know nothing about Raglan and I have huge respect for the ocean, so when I saw Indicators breaking at an OK size but no one out, I just got suspicious. Here’s one of the world’s legendary point breaks, it’s working, and there’s no-one there. It’s over cast and grey. Not the prettiest of days. Clearly the place is tapu, or something big and nasty has been circling nearby for a few days. It just looked lonely. And heavy.
So, I go to the surf shop and announce that I am a visitor to the area with no knowledge of the points and have a rookie question: What be this curiosity of the empty world class point break? What creature lurks? What spell has been cast?
“Mate, the only reason there’s nobody out there would be that nobody’s seen it”
So, I’m still thinking it looks a bit heavy and head back to the camping ground. Torturing myself all the way there before realising there are two options here. There’s an “I surfed Indicators by myself” story. Or there isn’t. I pulled a u turn at the campground gate and headed back out to the points.
By the time I was in the water, there was another guy out. But he left, and I did surf there by myself for 40 minutes before I was joined by a couple of other guys. It was low tide and the section over the rocks was tricky to make but I got through once or twice, I had popped my Indicators cherry and opened up a world of possibilities outside of my South Piha on the last two hours of the incoming tide routine that I’ve been stuck in for years.
The next surf that was worthy of a Facebook post (that’s what I’m using for reference) was a couple of weeks later on the bar at South Piha at low tide. It was awesome. Exciting. Busy. Dangerous. The ocean crackling with energy. And if you got the right one, a left hander all the way to the sand. Way more intense than Tea Tree Bay. But no Brazillian longboarders.
The thing out on the bar is that everyone is feeling the tension, quite a few people sit out there wondering what the hell they’ve got themselves in for. These folks tend to get in the way a bit before they realise they’re better off elsewhere.
Then, somewhere out in the Pacific, something got big and nasty and powerful and generated some awesome swell into the East Coast. It must have had a name, but the only thing on the Wikipedia register of cyclones around that time was called Neil – and it doesn’t ring any bells. Whatever it was sure pushed some surf in though. So much so that there were waves to be had on The North Shore of Auckland. Milford Reef was working, so must have been all the spots from Takapuna to the legendary reef off the island at Waiwera. The water in the Hauraki Gulf is so manky though.
Further North it was epic. I managed to get into that swell at Te Arai Point on a beautiful summers Tuesday. I hardly ever surf there, I much prefer Mangawhai as I’ve said, but if you saw the photo I got sent, you’d have gone to Te Arai too. Big right handers, in the East Coast style. That is; they don’t destroy you like the waves on the West Coast. The waves out west come out of really deep water a couple of kilometres out, that’s why there’s so much water in them, why they are literally heavier than the East Coast waves and why they seem to just keep coming and coming if you’ve gotten yourself caught inside the break. It can be hideous, but it makes you strong and after negotiating a few good poundings at Piha or Muriwai, you can handle most other things the ocean can throw at you. But back on the subject of Te Arai, this day was probably the best surf I’ve ever had on the East Coast. Of any country.
That swell hung around long enough for another crack at Mangawhai too.
Then a week or so later surfers all over the world watched in awe as Cyclone Oma pumped giant swell into the East Coast of Australia. It was insane. The points at Noosa were unrecognisable as huge, perfect waves wrapped around them. Actually, they were quite recognisable because there were hundreds of people in the water. But some of the footage from that week is well worth looking for, the world’s best surfer population in sensational surf.
The excitement on those beaches and in those beach towns would have been fantastic. Good surf does that, it creates positive energy.
Oma moved far enough east as she weakened to push a little swell in for us, and I managed to score a cool little day at Mangawhai with Joe and a few of his mates. It was real nice. Really strong offshores holding you high up the face of the waves. Lots of spray. Lots of fun. Lots of waves. Which was important in front of the young fellas.
Then early in March the whole stretch of Piha Beach, from The Nun at the south end to what some call Fred Flintstone rock in the North, it just went mental. Insane. Rad. Off it’s face. Sick. Epic. Choose your own adjective for ‘of the highest order’.
The sand-banks that give waves their shape and influence how they break all got really good. The strength of the offshore wind was just enough to hold the waves up, but it didn’t really ruffle the surface of the water. The sea was pale blue and warm. I thought it looked like how the Pacific looks in California, but someone better travelled upgraded that to how the Pacific looks in Mexico. It was simply beautiful. The waves were plenty powerful enough, but not overly big. It was just all so manageble and extraordinarily good. There were a lot of happy surfers – especially on the weekdays. Also favourable were the tides. High at the ends of the day, first thing in the morning or last thing before dark, and of course, low tide in the middle so you could surf the South Piha Bar in all it’s glory. It was like this for nearly two weeks. With the tide times slowly creeping into the day so you could eventually have your Piha Bar low tide session in the evening. We gorged ourselves.
The first day I surfed it like this I had a half hour of catching a wave, paddling back out, and straight into the next wave. Breathing hard the whole time, it was really physical, I realised I had kind of treated it like a contest heat. Which is kind of bogus, but well worth it for all the quality waves I got. Once it got crowded, I’d already had my fill and backed off a bit. The effort I put into staying paddle fit was vindicated in that first half hour.
You’d see a bro in the line up and not have the conversation you usually have out there because there were so many waves to be had. You’d surf off The Caves at the North End, Monkey Rock, The Bar, Barnett Hall. All the Piha spots. The only places I didn’t surf were the banks between the Stream at North Piha and The North Side of Lion Rock. It’s the longest period of ‘surf-every-day-quality-surf’ I can remember on The West Coast.
On one of the days, 3 or 4 of the 50 or so Maui Dolphins that live in Earth’s Ocean came into North Piha for a visit. I joined West Auckland Christian Surfers paddle out vigil after the Christchurch Mosque attack. I caught up with old friends and spoke to people I see in the line up all the time but have never spoken to before. Every day, you’d have the “Jeez this is good” or “Glad we beat the school kids out” conversation with stranger. Surfers of all kinds, bonded by an epic run of surf. And that’s the great thing, it’s a moment to be part of, a time. A gift of nature. But only if you surf. I have asked to be buried in the boardies I’d been wearing in the event of anything happening to me.
Piha, Muriwai, Bethells, Karekare and the others are being pounded by massive waves at the moment. The size will come back down to manageable in a few days but I fear the perfect sandbanks that have provided such an amazing playground will be destroyed by the massive increase in water movement, they could very well be washed away. It’s almost like something dying. It’s there. Then it’s gone. Just like summer. But the great thing about summer and a sandbank is that it’ll be back.
Haere Ra Summer of 2018/19. See you when the Earth tilts back your way and you are the summer of 2019/20. And sorry South Piha on the last two hours of the incoming tide. I have new friends now.
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