triplog

Does it get any better?

… and I surfed in boardies. Sorry, Jane.

I ended up staying the night in Byron, but the pulse of swell from the afternoon before didn’t hang around until morning. So I started making my way south, stopping in to check first Tallows (nothing doing - still some size, but very messy) and then Broken Head - bingo! It looked pretty good when I first got there so I went out for a wave, but it rapidly deteriorated - mainly closeouts.

I’ve spent the last few days in limbo, otherwise known as the Gold Coast. After hanging out in Burleigh on Sunday night, I’d headed further south, all the way to Tugun (about two suburbs away), when I got a call from Keenan - I’d thought he was living somewhere just south of the border, but turns out he was one suburb back the way I’d just come, in Palm Beach. So we hung out for beers and dinner at the local surf club on Monday night - it was good to catch up, we figured out the last time we’d seen each other was around 5 years ago - then on Tuesday morning I bid him farewell and was all set to head south into NSW.

I made it as far as Tweed Heads, when the clutch on the troopy decided to give up the ghost - it had been threatening a caper like this for a while. So off I went to Keenans mechanic, Roger, where I was told I couldn’t the car back until Friday. Keenan kindly put up with me as a house guest for the rest of the week (I owe you, mate) while I waited. And waited. With no surf.

Anyway, this afternoon I finally got reunited with troopy (and dis-united from over a grand), and hit the road south. I intended to drive through Byron Bay, just to see what had changed, and then keep going further south until dark… but lo and behold, as soon as Main Beach hove into view, those plans went out the window. There was surf. My home state (sorry Jane!) had laid out the welcome mat.

I managed to keep it together long enough to snap off the pictures above, then bolted for the water. It was offshore, warm water, head high and getting glassier with each passing minute. Oh yeah…

Yesterday I went board-shopping. It’s not a frivolous expenditure, seriously - after all the west-coast surf-lovin’, my quiver is down to a solitary 6′6 Dahlberg. I’ve managed to destroy 4 boards since the start of this trip, including a (supposedly tougher) Salomon S-Core. So I figured I’d get back to basics - a simple, traditional fibreglass all-rounder. If you’re not into surfboards, feel free to tune out now.

I’d been keeping an eye out in various surf-shops over the last few days, but was getting hampered by the ’surf-as-fashion’ scene. (Start grumpy old-man rant here…) What is it with modern surf-shops? Most of them appear to have become pure fashion outlets, with a few token boards displayed in an attempt at credibility. So it was with delight I spotted an ad for Alex Surf Shop, an honest to goodness board store, on the back cover of a local free surf mag, the ‘Sunshine Coast Surf’. And as promised, they did indeed flip the modern surf shop paradigm on its head - racks and racks of boards, with a couple of racks of boardies and rashies crammed up the back of the store almost as an afterthought. Woohoo!

Given my track record, I’d intended to maybe get a cheap secondhander… but this is Queensland, everyone’s on small wave boards, rounded square or swallow tails, so the second-hand range was a bit limited. I wanted something a bit more suited to a larger range of surf, including WAs powerful waves, with a round tail or rounded pin. So it was to the new boards my attention turned… anyway, long story short (geez I manage to waffle, Jane thinks it’s because she’s not here so I’m starved of conversation - taking it out on the blog instead)…

Where was I? Oh yeah, long story short (sorry), I narrowed it down to 2 Simon Andersons from his off-the-rack range - both 6′0 rounded pins. It came down to the classic under-arm test. The SXE model (sexy!) just felt better, plus had a little more tail lift and thus maneuverability.

Oh, and the other photo? I did a surf-check out along Noosa headland (through the National Park) this morning, and despite what I said about the town itself, the park is actually really pretty. And there’s koalas!

Ok, here’s some of the choice shots from our time at the Bluff (all photos taken by Jane, just to give credit where it’s due). First up the surf…

The first shot above is an unknown charger on a big day of swell, the second one is Gray doing the kneelo boogaloo out at Turtles and the last one is yours truly either about to get slotted or hurt at the Bluff (small wave on the big Thursday of swell - triple overhead on the bigger sets). My last wave of that session (I was out for over 4 hours) was easily the biggest (unmade) barrel of my life. Unfortunately, not caught on camera. It went something like this:
(set looms, starts paddling) “… wow, this is gonna be big”
(takes drop) “woah, get the nose down, get the nose down”
(bottom turns) “easy does it, easy does it, keep the rail gripping”
(looks at wave lining up) “wow, that’s a massive expanse of vertical water ahead of me - get high, get up high, remember to take the high line”
(sets line, wave barrels) [SILENCE] “ohmygod this is huge. there’s room for 2 of me in here. how quiet is it all of a sudden, look at that massive tunnel of water. ohmygod.”
(pumps for speed) “wow. there’s the exit. it’s huge. i could drive a car through that. i can’t believe i’m gonna make this. i’m actually gonna mak…”
[ANNIHILATION]

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The people - we had some incredible company up here. First Gray came up, then Wes and Jess. Awesome spending time with you guys.

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And the natural environment is just awe-inspiring.