Selim and I managed to get our boats wet on Saturday afternoon at Terrigal Haven. Where against all odds I managed to put myself in the path of a good sized wave. :) The haven at terrigal is a well protected anchorage sheltered by a rocky headland (The Skillion) and a nice breakwall. It's a nice dive site too. The haven is not the natural habitat of large waves but sometimes the refracted southerly swell feels the bottom around the end of the break wall and you get a nice wave that can be fun to surf.
Those of you who know me will understand that I am a surf jinx. Like Douglas Adams' "Rain God" but in reverse. Where I am, the waves are not. The waves do not love me or want to spend time with me. I have spent hours paddling back and forth across river bars with waves breaking all around me and catching nothing but a sweat. (OK, OK I know, there is a slight possibility that I'm just really bad at reading waves and even worse at catching them, but the supernatural explanation is so much better for my ego. Thanks for pointing that out, now let us continue.) This is very handy when doing surf landings as I usually paddle in to the beach and fall gracelessly out of the boat in a fairly sedate fashion. The downside is that I don't get a lot of practice at riding waves and getting trashed.
Anyway to cut a long story short, there were some nice little waves kicking up to about six feet as they refracted around the end of the breakwall at the haven, it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Nice steep, easy to catch waves with the option to peel off to the right into deep water. So I paddled out through them and was just turning around to line up when Selim kindly pointed out the one that was bearing down on me.
It had started feeling the bottom about 50m further out so must have been a far bigger wave and was already curled over with the crest slavering white foam in anticipation of the tasty snack in it's path. It looked about 14 feet high to me (although I will confess to the possibility of adrenaline fueled magnifying googles) and it was far too late to turn either way, I was broadside on to the beast. So I decided to roll and let it blunt it's teeth on my hull.
Usually in surf, you brace into the wave, and I automatically (that is without thought) in my innocence and naievety, set up and capsized on the seaward side, rolling into the slavering maw of the wave as it hit me. The result of this was that I found myself lying on my side in the wave, unable to capsize fully, but with the paddle oriented for a roll on the downwave side of the boat ie underneath the boat and catching the full force of the water, pulling me down while the wave pushed me up, it was all I could do to hang onto it. There was no way of getting the paddle back into position for a roll on the upwave side of the boat, so all I could do was hang on and take my chewing like a man. ie with all the good grace of a cat in a washing machine.
Happily the bottom drops off a bit as the wave clears the break wall and the monster soon decided it didn't like the taste of plastic so it was a fairly short mauling. Anyway, if you're going to roll to avoid a hammering, be smarter than me and roll away from the wave. Here endeth the lesson.
