night surfing

[oldmansurfer]

Any of you have stories to tell about night surfing? Back when I used to surf in the 70's I was surfing a break called Horners and we were surfing the middle part because it was glassy hollow waves. There was no wind and the waves were so beautiful with 6 to 8 foot faces. As it started to get dark we talked about going in but no one did but eventually it was really dark and just a few of us still stayed out. It was just too good to leave. It got so dark you couldn't see the wave. It just suddenly appeared 10 feet away. You had to make split second decisions, take off, try to paddle over it or hang on and prepare to be hit or abandon ship and swim for the bottom. It gave a whole other level of excitement to the surfing. You could sort of hear the silence of the sounds blocked by the wave before you could see it. That gave you another second of frantic alertness waiting to see what was there. I stayed out for another hour and then I was getting too tired to surf. Never had that perfect conditions at night again. So any of you try it? I also surfed where guys shined their car lights into the lineup but that wasn't so great. It was just for the novelty of it.

[dtc]

Although I'm not sure that its based on evidence, in Australia they tell you not to surf at dusk and after dark because of the sharks. But over Christmas I was surfing at a nice sheltered rip and shore break free beach with fun waves (maybe chest high) and a full moon and there was a group of people on the beach having some drinks, so I figured that if something attacked me they would be nearby. There was no one else in the water, so I didn't have to worry about bumping into anyone

But it was pretty bright, I could pick up the waves fairly early on. So may not really count. Did it for about 45 min after sundown then decided my family might be a bit worried about me not returning at dark. They hadn't really noticed as it turned out.

I have surfed until I could barely see the beach many times (notwithstanding the shark issue), but generally come in about then.

[drowningbitbybit]

I surfed at Maroubra one evening a couple of years ago during an unexpected glass-off and had the place almost to myself. The conditions were too good to go in just because it was getting dark...

I couldn't see the waves coming, or where I was going once I was up - I could only see the broken white sections but not the clean sections.
The wave at Maroubra is often straight in the middle section and then can refract around the point at the south end so there's sometimes a kink in the wave, particularly around high tide as the backwash gets it.

So I'm surfing along a nice clean left face in the more-or-less dark when I see a big black area of nothingness in front of me. I carry on surfing towards it. Then I run face-first into a clean wall of water that was coming at almost 90º to the wave I was on and straight at me. There was spectacular wipeout as I had absolutely no warning at all that I was about to be pitched backwards and over the falls

I decided it was time to go in