What's the Surf like?

Comment Share Posted on Thursday November 18th 2010 at 8:30 a.m. Tweet

I feel a weird kind of jealously towards people who enjoy the beach. I know it's illogical, coming from a surfer and surf-photographer and all, but there it is. Mainstream logic has never been a condition I've much aspired too anyways.

To be able to just gather the kids, pack a lunch, some beach-towels and toys, maybe a coolie filled with drinks, and head down to the seaside to relax with the only worry being that it might cloud over seems like such a simple, fun thing to do. In an island country like New Zealand, it's the most natural thing in the world. But I...just...can't...do...it.

My surf-addled, wind-and-swell driven corrupted surfing mind won't let me get anywhere near the coast without that familiar catchphrase carving its rails ever deeper into my neural pathways... "What's the surf like"? If you're reading this, chances are you're exactly the same.

I can, for arguments sake, and actually quite do, enjoy a summer afternoon sunbaking with a book and a good-looking girl down the local beach. Making sand-pillows under your towel, rubbing each other down with gritty sunblock, sharing luke-warm water bottles, friendly pats on the swimsuit-clad ass and regular dips in the shorebreak to canoodle are all good clean fun things to do.

But inside, up top, and down there, in those itchy surf feet, the synapses are popping. I'm here, but really I'm somewhere else. Actually, re-reading that last sentence, honey of course I was right there with ya. But you you get what I mean, eh?

If you're at the beach, and you're a surfer, the surfie inside is subliminally ticking its way down the checklist before you've even managed to lock the keys in the car. What's the wind doing? How big is the swell? Where's the best sandbar forming up? How many guys are out? What time is low tide? Etcetera etcetera...

To make things easier on yourself, it's better to head for a beach that gets little or no surf. But even then the surf-eye can't help wandering, checking the action, looking for clues. "Orr, imagine if you could shrinky-dink yourself onto that one!" as a miniature set rolls into the shallows. "Uh-huh, uh-hmmm" goes your beach-partner of choice as she surreptitiously eyes up the mullet-headed ruggo dude in sluggoes tossing his showermate a foamy ball in the flat ocean. Yahooo!! Forget about it. Surfing well and truly ruins the beach for a person. Forever. Thank God!

It's the best kind of irony I know - the one that you can live with - and the most essential thing in my life. Actually, to take it one step further (literally), it is my ocean of choice.

I feel sharper, cleaner, meaner, more of a man, by knowing that this wind is a southerly, that those clouds are the pre-cursors to a nor-east blow two days out, that those ragged five footers are leftovers from one of the biggest swells of the year.

I like the idea that that's neither right nor wrong. It just is. There's a need to gain a sense of place, an intimate knowledge of something, in order to feel grounded. Otherwise you're floating adrift. Aha, more irony of salts, more words and imagery from this unexpected sea life.

Rowan

Rowan Klevstul has been documenting and writing about surfing in New Zealand since 2000. If you're after a piece of eclectic surf photography, contact Rowan on 021 252 7970 or at rjklevstul@clear.net.nz.