Saturday morning was a pretty shit surf.
Cruised out to Piha nice and early for the 9 ish high tide, but made a couple of crucial mistakes. Got in the water at the North End along with a ton of other people and although there wasn’t much wrong with the actual surf, a nice wedgey little peak, the rip was instense. Hard core. Firing. Rad. A pain in the arse. The whole pack of surfers in a constant paddle South towards where the nice little peak was. If I want to paddle constantly, I’ll surf the Mangawhai Bar on the outgoing thanks. I figured this is going to get way worse in about 10 minutes when the tide turns, so headed into the sand and down to the South End for the nice little right hander that’s been working just on the South side of one of the world’s most spectacular beach ornaments, Lion Rock. That wasn’t working terribly well and was really crowded. Didn’t really sit in the right place. Got a couple of short ones but hadn’t really found my rythym at all, so pulled the pin and returned to Saturday morning in the city relatively un-stoked. Clutching at straws like “The water’s warm” and communing with nature first thing in the weekend. But even so, it couldn’t take the shine off Tuesday, and Raglan.
I had been watching the maps and reports and knew it was coming, beastly huge swell from the South. The West Coast of Auckland was maxing out, too big, just mountains of water everywhere. But at Raglan with it’s sightly different aspect, the swell was wrapping around the points and quite simply, lighting them up. So. I said I would and I did. Spent the whole of Tuesday morning being cool. Staying calm, not being in to much of a rush to get there. Don’t get agitated. Look at the camera every ten minutes. Breathe. There’s no work today. And you’re broke. In the red corner, life is handing out a few lemons. But in the blue corner, we’re going to make some Lemonade.
The drive down was unspectacular, apart from a couple of motorcyclists on some kind of death wish as they overtook me on State Highway 23 into Raglan. I was much happier a little while later to come up behind the line of cars with the motorcyclists long gone, at least now I wouldn’t be first on the scene if one of them managed to not make it around one of these corners at that terrifying speed they were going. That guy in the white Toyota can scrape them up.
I pull into Manu Bay and it is way more spectacular than the drive. The sun’s come out, the sea and the sky are clearly competing in a ‘Who can be the nicest shade of blue’ contest and there are maybe 30 people in the water. But as per my reckonings – not all of them are surfing. In fact, while I was in the car park I saw at least 3 or 4 utterly perfect waves break right through with nobody on them. ‘You will be mine’ I said in my best medieval knight to unwilling princess internal voice. I went for the rock entry option. Even though it was at least twice as big as when I had last used that method, which wasn’t actually that long ago. Bigger waves means more water, so I’m thinking in some ways this will be easier. But it also means getting smashed if you get it wrong. So I got as close to the water as possible without getting into the line of fire and kind of crouched behind a rock to take the heat out of the waves that were smashing into it. The energy is awesome, it’s noisy and exciting and you’re not even surfing yet. Plus, get it wrong, and you won’t even be going surfing. Wait for the last wave of a set and after it’s covered the rocks and swirled around menacingly for a bit, it’ll rush back out and I’ll be on it. I’m here to report that on this day at least, I got it right. There must be some spectacular disasters here. So many ways to hurt yourself.
So I paddle across to the take off zone. Just casually. And take note of the dude who’s sitting in what looks like the best spot to take off, just behind the corner. What I notice most, is that apart from where he’s sitting, there’s very little to suggest he knows what he’s doing. The outside points are all firing, so all the hot shot locals and visiting shredders are out there. I’m at one with tourists and people like me who favour being able to park your car real close to where you’re getting in the water. 50 metres is hard to beat.
I’ve been there less than 5 minutes and a set comes through.
The water starts getting sucked off the rocks as you paddle into the wave, it boils and swirls and seems to move unnaturally, almost like it’s full of serpents – so looking down just before you get to your feet can really put some people off. Including the 2 or 3 people inside me, they have rights to the wave because of where they’re sitting – but they freak out at the serpents and don’t take off. Mine. It’s a steep take off on an angle. I’m in a little crouch, it feels cool to do, but I also think it serves a practical purpose with centre of gravity, water and surfboard physics combining to hold the board (and me) high in the wave rather than just slipping sideways down it. The water swirls around the rocks below, the wave gets real steep and pitches over my right shoulder (I’m on my backhand) and here we go. The thing with a wave like Raglan, is that when you take off, you look along the line of the wave ahead of you and wonder “What the hell am I going to do with all of this?”. There is just so much in front of you.
After a bit the wave fattens out in deeper water, so you slow down. I cut back to the part of the wave that’s breaking, and get back to the power. She’s pretty powerful, so there’s this little moment where I’m kind of wrestling the thing to stay with it, I go a bit wonky but I win the battle and I’m lined up and trimming again. Top of the wave. Down the wave. Up the wave. Down the wave. Cut back. Up the wave. Little turn. Down the wave. Front of the board, trimming. Crouch. Stand. Up. Down. Back. I mean you get the picture. This thing goes for bloody miles. It’s ridiculous. I kick out at the end breathing heavily and ready for the long paddle back out. An American girl kicks out on the wave behind me and we talk about how much fun it is. Next wave, I get wasted. You can’t take off that late Paul. And I got smashed by the one behind it. It’s good to know what happens when you’re on the back foot. Like anything, you learn more from mistakes. Lots of water moving over rocks is pretty interesting.
But when normal transmission resumes, for the next hour it’s pretty much me, the American Girl (she’s sitting quite wide), a fella who was with her (her Raglan local father in law), he’s waiting outside a bit for the bombs, a young guy with a Go Pro in his mouth sitting quite inside & deep, and me. All catching waves pretty much all the time. At Raglan. At a decent size and perfect. No wind to speak of. Dreamlike. The waves that go on and on just went on and on. After an hour the crowd changed a bit, not so much in numbers, but the population of people who knew how the place works picked up so it was all a bit more ‘sharey’.
I sinned and dropped in on a bloke. Yikes. I thought I was deepest, but he was deeper and he actually made it so I kicked out of the wave and left him to it. He didn’t make the next section so that was a bit annoying, but still, I was in the wrong. The American girl thought I was too deep, and that the other dude was WAY to deep. It’s kind of interesting, the deeper you go, which is getting closer to the heaviest part of the where the wave breaks, the more dangerous it is. But you do it because not only is it exciting, you will get more waves and the better part of them. It also enhances one’s mana in the water. I find personally, that after getting half a dozen like this I kind of freak out and come back to my conservative senses. Like, you actually map out what’s happening: I’m paddling into this thing, the water rushing up into the wave is making it a bit bumpy and tricky and also it’s exposing those rocks that I can now clearly see maybe ten feet below me, the wave is really, really steep and there be serpents. So I kind of mellow out a little, and move over a bit wider for a while.
But on it goes: Angled take off. Crouch. Up. Down. Up. Trim. Cut back. Trim. High. Low. Cut back. Section on the nose of the board. Kick out. Paddle. Repeat. After two hours, I’m tired. I’m fizzing. This may have been the best ever. Time to go. I’ll get one of these big ones in. So I move back over to the ‘quite deep’ part of the pack wait a bit and then hook into a bomb. Little do I know it but this is going to take me all the way to the boat ramp.
I’ve included a shot off the surf 2 surf camera for reference. It’s not the same day, but the placement of rocks and the boatramp is constant, even if the surf is not. This is way smaller.
Now by no means have I got this wave dialled, but I sure know it a lot better than I did two hours ago so I’m just going with the sections in kind of lazy, drunken master style. I’m just rising and falling and staying with the power in this kind of stumble, as if I don’t care, almost falling along the wave in this wobbly posture. Then just standing there with the board really nicely trimmed, really high up in the wave sliding along looking almost disinterested in the whole thing. Not saying I looked particularly cool, I felt cool and it does actually look cool when other people do it, so maybe. Whatever, it’s a very, very long ride. The wave dies out in the deep water by the boat ramp. It’s over.
I do better job of negotiating the swirling water than the boaties labradoodle which has just been sucked off the ramp into the sea, and walk up to the carpark.
I get a few of the old backwards head nods and eyebrow raises from a few blokes sitting in the shade of a tree so maybe it had looked cool. I talk to this other dude about what a great day in a great place it was. He wasn’t a surfer. Maybe fishing. “Blessed” I had said. Which is a word I hardly ever use. “Oh, kia ora bro, blessed indeed” he had replied. I got the distinct impression that the guy was Tangata Whenua and that he appreciated my understanding that I was very lucky to be there in that place at that time.
Now that I’ve actually surfed quality Raglan, I awarded myself as a kind of Scouts badge, a car sticker – that one you see that’s a line drawing of the points (which is actually a rip- off of one I saw for Rincon in California in the 80’s, but they’ve flipped it because Rincon’s a right), then I made some really shitty food decisions at the bakery and left town.
I’ve started a relationship that’s far from over. And if it can get better than this, well, kia ora bro, blessed. Who cares about shitty Saturday morning every now and then?
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