How Does Sunset Beach Work? - Page 26
Anecdotes and Personal Experiences (Name Dropping) - 16
Nat Young Gets His Board Back.
Another one of those cyclopticly extra-large west swell days when the big outside peak has more or less completely detached itself from the rest of the break, and is pretty much
backing off farther outside than the standard
takeoff spot on a more "normal" day.
Just these insanely giant, tightly-compressed, exaggeratedly-teepee'd peaks of doom that would rear up into the sky way over, way left of center as viewed from the beach, way the hell outside and over to the left,
nearly outside of Kammieland for god sakes, and then pitch and fold over with an absurd level of violence, and then promptly fizzle out.
Just a big drop, and nothing more.
But at Sunset Beach, the drop's the thing (well... one of the things, anyway), so that's ok.
That's perfectly fine.
That's actually
desirable in fact, some times, 'cause really, do you
want something like that to keep chasing you down the line, trying its best to catch up to you? Trying it's best to
get you? And possibly succeeding in doing so?
No. No you do not. You do not want something like that to get you.
Remember, no safety net.
This was back in the olden days. This was back in
caveman days.
No flotation vest. No leash. No fitness consultants. No professional training regimen. No special diet. No Hawaiian Water Patrol. Hell, fucking jetskis hadn't even been
invented yet. Or at least not to the point where people were driving them around in Big Water on the North Shore. Nobody around to ask if maybe this was a good idea or not. No adult supervision of any kind. It's just you and the water, and it was all done bare-handed, pass-or-fail, come what may, and there was a fearsome elegance and beauty in the simplicity of it all. You just walked down the sand with your board under your arm, and you went out there and
did it, and that shit was not some fucked-up slogan, was not some fucked-up corporate logo, and was not some fucked-up poser instagram fake-life false pretense shit. That shit was
reality, in its barest elemental and most stripped-down form.
So ok. So you're paddling out and have almost cleared the bullshit zone of the fucking rip. Just getting past the ridiculous amount of surge, cross-chop, counter-waves, standing-waves, garble-waves, whothefuckknowswhat-waves, and all the rest of the things that piss you off when you're having to deal with the goddamned thing on a big day when the rip is really rolling right along, trying to get outside to get set up and catch a few waves, and a little ways outside and off to your right, over there in the middle distance, here comes a surfboard, deck down, disappearing and reappearing as the surges and low mounds of water pass beneath it, bouncing along with all that jumble and chop, and you're the only guy around, still paddling out, and you know that if you don't grab the damn thing, then it's a goner, lost at sea, never to be seen again.
So you alter your course to the right a little bit, and give it some extra slog, so as you can intercept the wayward board, keep it from turning the corner, picking up a little speed with the tradewind backing it, and then disappearing over the horizon forever.
Ok, got it.
Weird-looking board.
It's a gun, of course, but it's a little short. Especially for a day like today. Maybe 8'-6" or so, but that's just a guess.
And it's made out of balsa. Which is something you don't see all that very often.
Balsa guns could still be seen, here and there, back in the early 70's, but for the most part, balsa surfboards were already a thing of the past.
That said, the extra heft of a balsa surfboard was not necessarily a bad thing when it came to dealing with the rugged contours and edges of things that you might expect to encounter with typical tradewind conditions at a place like Sunset Beach on a respectable day.
You lose a little something in responsiveness, but you get a little something back in being able to cut through chop. In being able to hold a line. The inertia and follow-through could be quite useful, at times. But for the most part, no. Nobody bothered with balsa anymore. It was an inferior relic of the bygone past. In addition to being heavy, it was expensive, hard to work with, dinged in an unforgiving manner that caused it to want to drink up water like a dry sponge, and once-damaged, was a bitch to repair properly. More fucking trouble than it was worth, in general, for the occasionally-serious business of
riding a wave.
Nice board, though. And this one was pretty fresh and new. Recent vintage. People were still occasionally making them. Now and again. Here and there. Once in a while.
And holy shit, but wouldja get a look at that fin?!?
Rakeless. Stuck straight-down from where it was glassed on back near the end of the pintail it was attached to.
Couldn't really call it a "keel" fin, but that's closer than anything else I can think of. Was too tall to be any kind of keel. Not that it was tall, but it wasn't a keel, by any stretch of the definition, either. The outline was perfectly symmetrical, front-to-back. Same shape on the leading-edge as the trailing-edge. Goofy-looking sonofabitch. Didn't look very functional at all. Especially on a day like today. Some kind of experimental job, I guess. An experiment that never panned out, it would appear.
I dunno what the hell it was.
It was a weird fin on a weird board.
That's what it was.
Ok, where's the guy it belongs to?
Where's our missing surfer?
Was he way the hell over by the point somewhere, already almost to the beach? Was he still outside somewhere, with Large Sunset Beach working diligently, trying to drown him? Was he in any kind of trouble in some unseeable place with nobody around to offer help or assistance? Wherever he was, he sure the fuck didn't have a surfboard anymore, and on a big day at Sunset Beach, not having a surfboard is a definite drawback.
Was I now stuck out here in no man's land with a fucking extra surfboard?
Am I going to have to turn right around, and do that whole goddamned miserable fucking paddle through the rip deal
again, right after just having done it once already? With one leg awkwardly off to the side, with the side of my foot down on the deck of somebody else's surfboard, a little forward of center, but not too far forward of center? Trying to keep sensible contact with the thing as the rip does its best to take it away from me every two seconds or so with the nose of the board alternately lurching toward the sky, and then poking down into the next chop that's coming while it yanks it from side to side just for good measure? Trying to keep it from banging sharply into the rail of my own board, dinging both boards significantly in the process? Slogging away in slow-motion, trying not to whack my right arm into it while taking the next paddling stroke, grinding it back to the distant shoreline? Trying to get the hell out of there in time and not to get dragged over into the violently unpleasant chaos of inside Kammieland? Who the fuck wants to do that shit?
Fuck that shit.
But we can't just leave this thing bobbing along in here, either. Otherwise, it'll be gone for sure. Lost and gone forever.
I might be a lot of things, but one thing I'm
not is the kind of guy who could just shrug his shoulders and abandon somebody's surfboard in the rip at Sunset, knowing that it would definitely turn the corner, and head out to sea, never to be seen again.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
Ok. There he is. There's the guy. Coming in from the outside. Swimming doggedly along through the stupid rip. Ok. And now he sees me.
Ok. Good.
Paddle over to him with the board, and lo and behold, with a facial expression that, as you might expect, contained just about equal parts pleasure with being reunited with his surfboard, and deep annoyance at having had to swim this far and endure who-knows-what as a prelude to that swim, here comes Nat Fucking Young, 1966 world-champion, genuine Australian Surfing Icon.
Look back at the board again, look over and verify it's really Nat Young again, and yeah, that just about figures.
So I give the board a little push in his direction, and he grabs hold and climbs back up on it as we continue to bob and weave with the rip.
And he thanks me, and then asks about maybe do I have any wax?
Which in fact I do.
And I toss him a whole bar, tell him to keep it, and paddle on, outward bound.
And that was the end of that.
As I resumed my interrupted journey toward the far outside, he was sitting there futzing around with the wax as he disappeared from the corner of my eye.
Never laid eyes on him again, from that point forward.
Sunset's a big place, and there's plenty of room to disappear behind no end of irregularities in the surface of the water, grading in size from small to very large indeed.
Caught a few for myself, took some drops, did not fall and have to swim, and called it a day, mid-afternoon.
See ya.