Waikiki's & Shorepound's

So I missed it the other morning.  After trying out my new Pug/Hull with the mini-Simmons fin set up in the mushy waist highs of the evening glass off the night before, I was keen to have another test run.  I’d set my alarm for the Dawn Patrol with full intentions of catching the morning tide.  Only I was tired.  Dog tired.  Bone tired.  Tiiirrrred.  And when the clarion sounded at 5:00 am, this tired old mutt…rolled over and shut the damn thing off.  The waves weren’t that good the night before so I had no expectations of them being any better in the morning.  That was my reasoning.  I could always hit the high tide later in the morning, after all, what was the sense of dragging my butt out of a warm and snuggly blanketed bed.  Mon dieu.  Classic surfer error: When you expect it to be junky and marginal, that’s when the gods will laugh and throw an epic session at you.

I crested the hill 4 hours later, sipping my large DD latte with whole milk and sugar…and nearly cried.  Lines.  Corduroy to the horizon.  Big, overhead lines.  Still sweeping in despite the tide being too high.  I’d missed it.  I’d reeeally missed it.

I parked, exited my car, and started on foot down to the bluff overlook.  The surfer trudging back up the hill to his car, when I asked how it had been, replied,  “FUnnn!” He smiled that glazed and sated smile of pothead after their third or fourth joint…that Chesire Cat grin that knows something you don’t. 

Fudge.  I’d missed it. 

Gazing out over the break, I witnessed 3 surfers still catching the bigger set waves that hadn’t mushed out completely.  It was overhead and glassy still.  The low tide session must have been epic; I’d missed it.  Damn.

Now, I’d surfed the incoming tide at this spot intermittently over the years.  As the tide fills in, the peak keeps shifting but if you know where to be, and get yourself into position you can still get some fun rides in the rapidly changing conditions.  It ain’t the long lines reeling down the sandbar across the real spot that you get at low-tide, but it’s a serviceable, if fickle, break.

Actually, it’s two breaks.  I like to call them: “Waikiki’s” & “Shorepounds.”  Two diametrically opposed personalities even though they exist on the same stretch of beach.

Waikiki’s is the outside cloudbreak that still tops off just inside the main break, at high tide on swells of chest high and up.  It’s a weird funky, often frustrating wave.  At first glance it looks beautiful when the big peaks start spilling over way outside.  But it is weak and mushy because of the deepening water.  Often it peters out, a teasing peak that just after you hit your bottom turn you feel all the oomph going out of it and the promising wall lined up ahead of you, just hits the deeper channel and dies.  On bigger peaks, if you catch the right one, you can use your momentum to glide through the dead section and hopefully catch up to the reform on the inside.  Sometimes the peak will shift as you ride it as it rolls over the slowly sloping bottom and different sandbars.  You might start off going right, then turn back and go left on the same wave as it rolls along.  Sometimes you might even go right, left, then right again.  It’s a weird, but fun wave…sometimes.  Most times it’s just soft and mushy and frustrating.  I’ve been riding a longboard there the last few years as the extra length and heft helps connect the sections.  With the SUP explosion of the last couple of years, it has become THE spot to stand up paddle.  Soft long, long, loooong rides as the wave slowly rolls in, like Waikiki, is perfect for a SUP. 

“Shorepounds” is a whole ‘nuther animal.  As the tide fills in completely, you have only the outside option of soft Waikiki’s, or the dredging, dumping, mostly closed out inside reform that slams on the inside sandbars.  This wave too, is deceiving.  Usually half the size of the outside peak, it packs three times the punch.  It’s a bit unnerving sitting in the deep channel, green water directly below you, as you wait for the next set, then upon turning, the wave jacks in a split second and you see churned up frothy sandy water boiling on the bar that might be only a foot or two under the surface.  It demands quickness.  That’s the odd thing about smaller waves that break hard and fast, they leave no margin for error.  You gotta commit, pop, and make the drop in less than a second, lest you auger and (usually) get bounced and slammed off the bottom.  The wave may be only waist to chest high and breaking on sand, but if you’re not quick, or you take the wrong one, it’ll hurt you.  Choosing the right wave is difficult.  Sometimes as they draw up suddenly, they look perfect…until you’re about halfway down and you look in horror to see the closeout section rear in front of you.  Now, for a quick and snappy kid on his little thruster, the wave might be really fun…but I’m no longer quick and snappy, or young, and the wave for me can be a little scary…yet exhilarating if I do catch the right one.

So I’d missed it this morning.  And the evening session was not an option as I had to work.  I made the best of it, and paddled out anyway.  Caught a few of the last large but gutless peaks at the main break, then paddled in a bit with the tide and started riding Waikiki’s.  My best wave must have been about three hundred yards, though it was mostly a just stand there and try to stay with the peak affair.  Still, it was pretty fun riding for such a long distance, not very common on the East Coast.  I could almost feel the breath of tradewinds and the dulcet tones of ukulele music wafting out to me in the lineup.

As the tide pushed me into Shorepounds though, my focus changed from carefree gentle long rides, to trying not to hurt myself on the shoulder high slammers that were whumphing and boiling on the inside bar.  Scary that the bigger sets were actually safer, as they allowed a little more time to get into and to the bottom, yet as they drew off the sand and stood up and began to heave over in the thigh deep shallows, my heart would creep up into my throat. Yikes!

I survived somehow though, caught my last wave, an air drop to closeout thumper, then let the soup and the tide push me the rest of the way in to the beach.  Walking back to my car, I thought, well, okay, so I missed Epic Dawn Patrol cuz I was too old and lazy to drag my butt outta the bed.  But, I did get to experience an adventurous and ephemeral session at two fickle and challenging breaks that I’ve been surfing on and off for nearly 40 years.  And other than those two SUPpers that paddled out at Waikiki’s, I’d had the entire session to myself. 

It was sunny and warm and glorious day and on the bluff overlook I paused to watch the paddleboarders catching their long rides, thinking, I gotta get me one of those.  But I’d had my fun.  Heart warming Waikiki’s; heart thumping Shorepounds.  All in the same session.  Not bad. 

I could post a picture, or tell you exactly where these two waves are, and when they break best, and the right conditions and all that…but then, you know what I’d have to do to you…

Ohana

I used to take the kids, my own and my nieces and nephews out in the water every year to watch the July 4^th fireworks.  The town of Ogunquit ME used to shoot them off right over the beach from the Main Beach parking lot.  Thousands of people would line the Marginal Way and dozens more would anchor their motor and sailboats just offshore.  But we figured we had the best spot in the house, sitting on our surfboards, directly under the exploding lights.  If we were lucky enough to have some actual surf, we’d try to catch a wave while the rockets’ red glare were bursting overhead.  The experience was pretty awesome and the kids thought we were the coolest family ever for being out there where nobody else had the imagination to be.  One time I even dove under water and opened my eyes to look up as a firework burst into color and streamers lit up the sky.  It was like looking into a kaleidoscope, only way, way, cooler.  I told the kids to try it and I’ll never forget their squeals and cries of how it was the coolest thing ever. 

            Surfing is usually a solitary pursuit. Self-absorbed and single-minded, surfers will hyper-focus on the incoming sets and jockey for the best position with sometimes cut throat tactics to catch the best one at the same time they are out maneuvering their fellow surfers in the water.  You could be out there with your best friend, but you’re not gonna give them your wave. 

            But something happens to a surfer when they have children of their own.  Suddenly they want to share.  Not just waves, but the whole experience of being a surfer.  Look at any surfer Mom’s or Dad’s photo album and there will invariably be a shot or two of their infant child, perched on the deck of a longboard on the living room carpet.  There’ll be another shot of the toddler, on the same longboard, only now out in the water.  And of course there’s the requisite shot of little Timmy or Sally, stinkbug stanced on a board as they glide straight in on broken whitewater, on their first wave. 

            Moms and Dads, whether they surf or not, will spend countless hours, standing knee deep in the shorebreak, lifeguarding as Timmy or Sally paddle out on their own to ride mushy closeouts.  Neither of my parents surfed but I will forever remember two visions of their participation in my early budding passion:

  The first is of Dad, the time he grabbed my little brother’s board and stood with me in thigh deep water, as I tried to work up the courage to paddle out into overhead hurricane surf for the first time.  I don’t know how long we both stood there, but Dad never said a word as he waited.  Waited for me to decide what I was going to do.  He didn’t even say anything when I ultimately turned away and walked back up the beach, too humbled and scared to go out.  I always wondered what would have happened to Dad if I had decided to go.  Though he was a former lifeguard (in Walden Pond in Massachusetts) he had no experience in big surf, and certainly not while paddling a skinny 6’8” swallow tail.  But he stood with me, ready to go if that’s what I’d decided.  Because Dad loved me and was going to stand by me no matter what. 

            Then there was Mom.  Good old Mom.  Mom had a passion for photography, well, for snap shotting just about everything she could that pertained to us kids and her family.  She was a terrible photographer and usually leaned towards posed pictures and phony, “say cheese!” smiles.  She was a master of bad lighting, usually having us positioned in group family shots, squinting into harsh, front-lit, noonday sun, taking multiple snaps until she either finished the roll or we were blubbering for her to stop and my dad said, “Enough already, Helen!”  But when my brother and I started surfing, good old Mom was there to record the action.  Her camera was usually a cheap plastic, Kodak Instamatic.  It was a piece of junk with a cheap, fixed and fuzzy plastic lens, cartridge film, and no controls other than a shutter button. Mom loved it for its simplicity.  She used to put it in a plastic baggie to protect it from the salt-water, then wade out to snap shots of us surfing.  Later, after she’d had the photos developed at the drug store, she put the prints in the photo album and we’d pore over them.  Only they looked nothing like the glossy Kodachrome images we drooled over in the surf mags.  No, in Mom’s shots, all you saw was sky, water, and some indistinct black dot that was allegedly one of us.  And to assist us in better identifying which of us she’d captured in action, she would draw a big arrow with a pen that pointed to the black dot, with the name of which one of us she was certain it was.  I know for a fact that Mom captured a few black dots that later turned out to be neither myself nor my brother…but we appreciated her effort.  Good old Mom. She loved us too.

            Last night, and again this afternoon, I watched two of my surfing buddies, mentoring their kids’ in the water.  I sat on a rock eating Chinese food, while I watched Brian watching his two girls paddle out into the closed out but glassy surf.  Then this afternoon on my way to work I swung by the Rivermouth and saw Rachael paddling out with her kid into sideshore and mushy little waves.  It brought the memories back of when I’d taken my own kids into the surf, so many years ago.  I had to smile.  It was good to see another generation being introduced to the surfing lifestyle.  I smiled even wider when I remembered what another of my surfing friends used to say each time he saw me bring one of my boys out for their first surf: “Well, there’s another kid that’ll never grow up to be President!”  I don’t know if Brian two daughters, or Rachael’s girl will ever be president, but it was nice to see that the concept of Ohana, family, was alive and well with these surfers, here in Maine. Because Ohana is really what it’s all about…

Moth to the Flame

            I do it to myself, really.  Like a moth to the flame, I can’t help my propensity for persistent self-immolation.  Always doing things the hard way, stubbornly independent, I make mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder, because that’s the only way I know how to learn.  But when it comes to my writing, I apparently haven’t learned my lesson.  I never learn my lesson.  I try not to keep making the same mistake, the mistake of getting my hopes up, and most times I’m pretty successful.  But then there’s those times when I relax my guard, when I leave my heart open, and I allow the notions of “hope” and “faith” and “belief” to shove cynicism and pessimism aside, when I let blossom the dream that got me started oh those so many years ago.  And inevitably, always, always, always, my open heart is crushed and pureed, as I flutter stupidly into that flame, thinking that this is the time, this is the time when my ship will finally make dock in the harbor of my aspirations.

            My ship did come in the other day…only once again, its name was “Titanic.”   Sunken dreams.  Holed hopes in the hull of my belief…in myself.  You see, I got a nibble from a literary agent last week.  She had read the first two chapters of my children’s book; said she really liked it and wanted to read the rest of it.  In the parlance of writers and agents, she’d read a “partial” and was requesting the “full.”  This is significant.  Most times agents don’t read beyond the first paragraph of a query letter before they decide to reject you.  Actually having someone express interest in your work and seeing more, is just the opening your writer’s heart needs to assert itself against the cold hard reality of rejection after rejection after rejection…  And I got sucked in.  I started daydreaming that this was the time, it was MY time at last, that once the agent read my entire manuscript, she would be so dazzled that she would phone me with an offer of representation.  That she would so love my story and my writing that she would just HAVE to go to bat and advocate for its publication to editors at publishing houses.  Because you see, the truth of publishing is that editors won’t even LOOK at your work if you don’t have an agent representing it. 

            So the agent in question had asked to see the “full.”  And all I had to do was wait, over an interminably long weekend, for her to get back to me this week.  And she did.  Only instead of a phone call, she sent an email.  Kiss of Death.  An email could only mean rejection.  I stared at the message with her name, unable to open it for minutes.  I knew.  And sure enough, when I finally clicked on it, there was the usual: “Thanks but no thanks.”  She thanked me for the “opportunity” to read my work.  She “admired my creativity” but she didn’t “fall in love with it enough.”  She assured me that her opinion was “entirely subjective” and that “another agent might feel different.”  She then “wished me success” in placing it elsewhere…  Please, spare me the platitudes.  I’ve been at this long enough that the romance is long since over.  I’ve been this close before, only to have my work ultimately turned down.  I don’t need encouragement or kind words; I need a fucking sale!  I don’t write to make a name for myself, or boost my ego, I write because I have to.  It’s something I’ve always done, something I always WILL do, and in the deep recesses of my bruised and battered heart, I KNOW I am a good writer.  And yet, there it was, once again, staring at me, another cold slap of rejection.  God I hate that word.  Rejection.  Bite me.

            So where do I go from here?  Well, I’m a moth.  I will continue to stupidly flutter to that flame.  I can’t help myself; it’s what I do.  I’m a writer, a good, but hapless writer.  Like Mr. Holland and his opus, my brilliance will probably never be validated or acknowledged; I will make my name, my mark, for things other than the one passion that drives me.  I’m a writer that writes, that has written thousands and thousands, hell, probably millions of words, that nobody will ever see…and I will suffer and cry and vent…and cry some more…but I will still fly to that flame.  And burn again.

3 Days at the Bunk

                                                   Day 1; sideshore and inconsistent

Day 2; more offshore but funky with the too high tide

                                                                         Day 3; cleaner, smaller, still funky

                       Then there was this guy, doing the drop knee on his boogie board; he was ripping