Virgin Territory

One headland north of my standard break is a beach called Rockaway that I have never surfed. I peer down onto it from Highway 1. The waves look inviting, but I have heard rumors of strange circular currents, huge sets, broken boards. I keep on driving.

My surf buddy Matt said the swell was small today so he was going to give Rockaway a try. Why not? I paddled out just before sunset. Rock pinnacles stood in black against a sky of apricot and lemon. Seven guys were out, Matt and I on our longboards and the rest shortboarders, locals, whooping and catching every good wave and slapping the lip with their aerials.

As the sun departed all the hotshots did too, leaving me and Matt alone in the undulating orange and pink. I paddled for a wave, dropped down the face and turned and there it was off my shoulder: a wall of water, steely blue, with its lip about to drop on my head.

My eyes are wide. This is virgin terrain. I have been surfing smaller waves, but now am getting into overhead territory, where the wave is less like a countertop and more like a wall. There is some elegant way to manage this moment, sneak under the lip and enjoy a long glorious ride, but I don’t know what it is.

I am coasting at the bottom of the wave’s parabola, where, if you graphed the wave out, the x-axis would originate. In this flat spot there is no speed or power. If I stay here the wall will topple onto me.

So I lean hard on my back foot, hoping I still have enough speed to climb the wave and ride down the line. In my desperation, though, I make the turn a little too hard, rocket straight up the y-axis and go flying off the lip.

I have launched off the lip before, but never on a wave this muscular.  I go so far skyward that my arms start to pinwheel before I splash back down into calm water, the wave spending itself with a roar behind me.

Matt and I stay out until well after dark, navigating by the lights of the burger joint and hotel on shore and by the three-quarter moon blazing in the sky. When I catch a wave and can’t see its shape next to me, I know it’s time to call it a day.