Stealth Swell

It takes a special kind of talent to be caught out in 2012. There are apps that tell you what the wind and swell is going to do every hour for the next five days, surf forecasts are updated every two days, swell models every twelve hours, and you can watch live video footage of most beaches 24/7/365.

That's not to say it can no longer happen though. With everyone expecting a paltry 1ft (maybe 2ft at the outside) most people opted for the lie-in and Saturday morning recovery. Here's the chain of events;
6.34am; text from Marcus. Much bigger than expected. Very few people out. Offshore.
6.45am; fire up the iPhone and check the reports. Way more swell that expected. Nudging 3 ft on the odd rouge set.
6.50am; pack wetsuit, grab keys, out the door.
7.00am; on the road.
7.20am; changed and sand between the toes in record time. And.....

....looks like the world has arrived before me and been far more efficient about it. Just about the same time as I was checking the reports a large chunk of the rest of the surfing population was doing the same. And probably mirroring the sense of anticipation of scoring fun waves with very few out. At least everyone in the line-up was friendly in their mutterings of "it'd be perfect if there wasn't anyone else here". But as the swell died away, the tide got higher and swallowed up what was left of it, and most waves were a gauntlet of drop-ins or dodging around people, the hope evaporated.

It bought back memories of Uni days when our sole source of surf data was the very dodgy, accurate to within 100 - 200 miles, synoptic charts on the news. We'd sit faithfully in the Student's Union at 9am, lunchtime and again at 6pm, to maximise hope and squeeze as much out of the 15 seconds or so of visual information provided. Desperately trying to work out if a kink in a low pressure system was pointing enough in the right direction to generate some decent swell.

We often got it wrong: a painful experience when you have a 4am start, wrapped up in as many old jumpers as you could find to stave off the cold. Followed by a one hour journey rattling around in the back of a van (or the trusty Astra Estate, or being slightly terrified in the be-stickered mini), all the while thinking about how much the petrol cost was eating into your meagre student budget. When you eventually rolled up to a carpark being circled by 50mph offshore winds that had battered the ocean flat it was frustration and disillusionment rolled together into a ball of disappointment.

It'd all be a painful memory that you think you'd be desperate to forget, but for those moments when your hunch, the collective wisdom of the pack, and the TV weather's accuracy all combined. And then you'd find yourself creeping, ninja-like, through a beachside camp of surfers, the only ones aware of the perfection you were about to experience, shushing each other in an almost comic bid to be silent and avoid waking the beast-crowd so you could keep it to just the five of you for a few golden hours.

As you paddled out, with a new swell bumping the horizon, shaving your way over the shoulder as a mate dropped into an unfettered peak, the optimism and faith returned and you'd be ready to go back to the 4am disappointments and silent journeys back home just to experience being lifted out of it. The combination of your superior forecasting (or so we thought at least), and tenacity being rewarded by scoring perfect waves with just you and four others.

Somehow the disappointments made the days you got it right seem even sharper and more valuable. In many ways I'd prefer my disappointments that way round. It's a far better fuel for the optimism than realising the skill and chance has gone and you're going to end up at the beach at the same time as everyone else.