I went out yesterday promising myself to take it easy to the max, that worked out differently.. I was out of the water for 17 days for a bit of sickness and it was the first day my body felt like surfing again.
I had hoped for tiny waves so I could bring the 9'4 single fin for relaxed paddling, but MSW told me it was 5-8ft faces at 15 sec and a medium low rising tide. I decided to bring the 8'2 Submoon, that board can handle that size and steepness effortless and is not too bad to paddle around with.
Conditions looked good with a little onshore wind but not too choppy and nice lined out sets. I choose the outside right as the place for takeoff, but to get there I must paddle out thru the channel around the outside Left, it's about a 3-400 meter/yard paddle and I did it slowly and took plenty of rests before any tiredness could spoil the shoulders.
It was not crowded, well for this usually extremely crowded spot. There was a lokal coach with his beginner/intermediate student (on a board that seemed a bit small for him, I always take good note of that..) sitting by themselves at the outside Left shoulder. The other surfers were on more inside positions all over the place. I aimed my paddle out at the two guys to go in a wide turn around them keeping on the outside, too often I was surprised there and caught by the big outside sets.
But just when I reached them and was up for a good rest, the horizon showed a big set coming. The coach urged his student to paddle more outside, and I tried too. But I didn't want to exhaust myself so when the set arrived I could still get over the first few but the bigger setwave was just too good to let go. Even though I was still a bit too much on the inside/late for this wave I decided to ignore my energy saving plan and go for it, I turned and had a late takeoff in the crumbly lip. I stayed down until the board settled and had a nice ride, but I fell off when I did a turn. It felt like my body had forgotten how to do that, only 17 days out!
The good thing of an early wipeout is you don't have to paddle back so very far. But still a decent paddle out.. But the thing is, everytime I reached that outside position and wanted to take a rest before I paddled to the Right takeoff spot, every time there was a Left so good in size and shape with me in perfect position, that I just couldn't resist. So instead of taking it easy and doing a lot of in between sitting breaks it was just constant action of catching, riding, falling off, paddling back, redo..
Then finally I managed to paddle further outside and to the left of the instant crowd, growing rapidly in that position. When I caught a big left with an initially soft crumbling lip so I could cutback and go right under the whitewater for 50 meters or so for it closed out. Now I was inside of the Right takeoff and had to fight thru the whitewater to get outside.
Getting seriously tired now I reached the position I was aiming for all that time, and what do you know!? No time to rest! There was the perfect Right just arriving, the size, shape, and my position just right. It wasn't even a conscious decision, I just turned and took off. The popup was perfect this time and I was stoked to feel my thin tailrail zip thru that steep clean moving beast feeling completely at ease and making more speed. But then I hesitated at the section, shoot up and do a floater or was I too late for that. Just that split second of hesitation decided the situation for me and I had to steer down to avoid the pitching lip.
I felt super stoked diving into the white water, ready to paddle out 1 more time, for just 1 more wave, right?..
Then it happened, I felt the snap I felt too often before and I really really don't like, my leash broke and I saw my board dancing away in the distance.. And then I felt how out off breath I was, and got a sense of panic, afraid my body wasn't ready for the swim.
I looked around and saw just one surfer around, I called out "Tolong!" I asked him too just keep an eye out for me swimming back. And started my swim in energy saving mode and it felt good, I could stop the heavy breathing almost immediately and find a nice relaxed rhythm, knowing there was no nasty rip in that area. I gave a bit of extra push to make the most of whitewater walls passing by and saw my board floating still far away.
The lokal surfer outside warned his friends on the inside and they started chasing my board and soon I was reunited with it. Never was I this happy with the lokal coaches
The leash cord had just broken somewhere in the middle, that never happened to me before, it's always the attaching things that fail. There must have been a bit of damage that I didn't notice. Hmm, more precise pre surf inspection next time.