Today was a good day. I got to surf all day. I am particularly proud of today's session and let me try my darndest at writing it down and sending my current thoughts to you.
I charged the big boy spot. This spot is a tier up from the waves I've been surfing this far. Up until today Luke and I have stayed strictly to beach breaks to relearn the fundamentals. Today was session 6 ish this winter, so juuust kind of starting to get it again.
(Aside: a big level up was two sessions ago, when Luke and I were at the spot informally known as “the drain pipe”. The drain pipe is a small section in the middle of Hampton Beach where a sewer drain flows into the ocean. I did my first cut back! Shortboard things! Seemingly out of nowhere! That's like turning 101, but I’m new to the shortboard life so just learning the glory of being able to turn on top of water).
Today was split up into three sessions:
The drain pipe again. Same spot as from the other day. Last time we rode there, it was as “on” as it basically gets, so I thought I'd look again. This time there was just one key difference. Tide. Today I paddled out during an outgoing tide, about an hour before low tide. Last time was high tide/in-coming. Peeping it from the road, my initial thoughts was “it looks pretty dismal and no one is here” and instead of taking that as a sign to find a different spot, I chose to believe I knew better than everyone surfing in New Hampshire right now and decided to paddle out anyway. This session leads to nothing but frustration. I got skunked. Spent about 45 minutes in the water.
I charged. The spot is known by the internet as Rye on the Rocks, and it gets pretty gnarly. People paddle-battling for barrels gnarly. Which is officially a life goal and secretly has been for a while. On all of New Hampshire’s 16 miles of coast, this is probably the most well known “proper wave”. It’s a proper enough wave to always have a crowded lineup and some resemblance of NH localism, even in the middle of winter. At high tide, it's a mushy longboard wave, but as the tide drops, it gets much hollower and steeper and can form a nice barrel. Steepness scares me, and at certain heights it appears to feel like doing a burpee while simultaneously dropping a cliff.
Today when I rolled up right at low tide, there were only four people in the water and the swell was around head height. Fresh off of getting skunked, this was a perfect recipe for redemption. I walked out like a kook over rocks that are only exposed when the water level has receded past mid tide to the shallow rock reef break (locals apparently paddle). Reef and point breaks are generally more predictable than beach breaks, with a takeoff zone about the size of Mom’s kitchen.
Sizing up the four locals in the water already, one looks a bit better than me and three are seasoned rippers. The wave is about at my max comfortable height, and maybe even a little over. It's a challenge straight away. My first time paddling out at a new break, I usually just go for the scraps. First scrap comes, I blow the takeoff. Second scrap comes, and I drop in and peel out quickly. Third scrap comes and I blow the takeoff again. I'm officially feeling anxious.
It'd be one thing to paddle out, wait a respectful 20 minutes, go for your first and rip it. And then my thought is that the others in the water will think something along the lines of “ok he can hang”. But with my start, not so much. Now I’m in my head, and thinking that I need some redemption.
The plan was simple. Paddle deep outside past the main lineup, let the two locals take their set waves, and if there happens to be a sneaky third (usually the biggest of the set) I’ll take it. And that’s exactly what happened. I caught a bomb, paddling well into the thick of the lineup before the wave started to crest. I felt my board catch plane, popped up, got my feet under me and the wave was officially mine! I dropped in closest to the peak, so I had priority. Two other surfers also trying to catch it on the shoulder yielded, and for the next 10 seconds all of the overthinking subsided, my mind enters a flow where the only focus was my body’s connection with my board, and my boards connection with the beautiful wall of water stretched out far in front of me. I was stoked. I paddled in immediately after that, being a solid 20 minutes late to a scheduled meeting and shivering uncontrollably.
I went back to the southern tip of Hampton Beach. I’ve been scoping a peak that lines up with a flagpole waving proudly on the shore. The tide was now incoming about two hours after low, and the peak that i've seen in days past seemed to be breaking. With no one else in the water, and my stubbornness to find a wave all to myself. I decided to paddle out.
That was a good choice. The waves were big enough to provide a good ride, but not too big to be scary. Just right for a bonus session. I caught four confident ones pretty easily. And then got impatient and tried to catch an inside wave, missed it, and then the set waves came crashing down on me and washed me almost all the way to shore. But that was all in good fun. It was nice not to have to deal with the social pressures of performing in a crowd and just be easy on myself and have fun. I met a dude who paddled out with a hole in his glove and only lasted about 15 minutes before I could see purple skin through the hole and he paddled back in.