Grey Skies, Green Waves Page 5

  'What, like Job, you mean?'

  'Yeah, I suppose.'

  'Apart from the fact that Job is tested by Satan,' a friend of Phil's cut in.

  'True.' Phil smiled. 'That's beside the point, though.'

  'Go on,' I said.

  'Well,' he explained, 'it doesn't work to try and bargain with God – like saying, "If you send swell, we'll believe in you." That sort of attitude will guarantee no waves. Get me?'

  'Sort of.'

  'You see, there may well be no surf tomorrow – and if that happens I'll accept that it's for a reason.' He paused to check I was still with him. I nodded to reassure. He continued. 'Prayer cannot be a simple list of requests that

  all get granted – otherwise a person's relationship with their Maker would be like a spoilt child to a bad parent.'

  'I suppose. So is it everyone else's lack of faith that's keeping the surf away?'

  I got the feeling Phil wanted to say yes, but his self-restraint was unbreakable.

  'No. I don't know anything for sure, but I'm pretty sure of that one.' He leaned over to me, his voice a little lower. 'It's important to remember this,' he told me. 'God says no to some prayers for our own good.'

  'I see. Well, what if I said I'd prayed for Arsenal to beat Spurs earlier?' I joked.

  'You may well have,' Phil laughed. 'But it wouldn't have made the blindest bit of difference. I don't think the man upstairs interferes with things like that.'

  'What, you mean sports?'

  'Yeah.'

  'But surf contests are sports.'

  'I believe,' said Phil, deftly escaping my trap, 'that this year's conditions are a test of faith, and one we will pass. If, after we didn't get waves today, we still continue to believe that surf will come, then that's true faith.'

  'And do you?'

  'Do I what?'

  'Believe there'll be waves tomorrow.'

  'Absolutely.'

  Although it may be an extreme example, Christians believe that a strong enough level of belief can move a mountain. It's a concept I've always admired, and one that has a huge relevance to surfing, and most other sports too. You can't doubt that belief is the most important prerequisite for surfing challenging waves like Teahupoo in Tahiti (also dubbed the 'End of the Road' because for some people it literally has been) or Hawaii's terrifying Banzai Pipeline, for example. The theory goes that if you believe in your imminent success in a pressurised situation, then you're halfway there. It's certainly true of my experiences in big surf – when you know you're going to make a wave, you do. But on the occasions when I've had an absolute pasting, I can always remember doubt sneaking in just before the moment of impact.

  And Phil's lack of doubt was incredible to me. After a couple of beers I wandered back to the comfort of Simon's forsaken bed and started to entertain optimism. Maybe it would happen. After all, the only things forbidding it were the laws of oceanography. And what were they worth in the grand scheme of things? Maybe something had slipped past the wave buoys that forecasters, along with everyone else, had missed.

  As long as we believed…

  The following morning, as I should have foreseen, a mystery swell appeared on Croyde Bay's sandbars. I heard a few sceptics making their excuses as I walked to the beach to see for myself; several of them were scrambling to explain where these waves had come from.

  'There was a blip forecast for an hour, like. It'll drop by the time they get a heat in the water.'

  'Nah – September, man, long-range hurricane swells can creep in from the Caribbean. The Seaweed doesn't spot them.'

  Surfers, for such a bunch of spiritualists, really don't like it when nature pulls off the unexplained. I wasn't objecting though – a day's surfing was on offer.

  And an unorthodox one at that.

  Annoyingly, once (English) Phil put a call out, it turned out there weren't enough competitors left in town to run the main, all-age-range 'open' category (which he decided to postpone until October). The other categories – which would always run first in smaller conditions anyway – were all present and accounted for, and by ten that morning the longboarders were taking to the water in disbelief. The draw for that one had a no-show in its midst, however, and there would be no question as to who was going to fill it.

  Phil nodded his consent before I'd even asked. He instructed his wife, Annie, to move my open entry-fee over, securing me a spot in heat three. After borrowing a nine-foot noserider from one of the deputy beach marshals, it was time to take care of business.

  The wind that had been pushing any swell back out to sea overnight had dropped, allowing the day to start warming up already. With it being low tide, I could see patches of wetter sand denoting where the sandbanks would be as the sea rose through the day. I suited up to the waist and walked towards the water's edge.

  A series of peaks were breaking neatly across the beach at about knee- to waist-height. It would have been just a touch small for a shortboard but, with a nine-foot-six under my arm, the waves looked inviting. With no rips anywhere, the crisp lip-lines were peeling off symmetrically in both directions, thin curls of clear water cascading along the shoreline like dominoes.

  As I arrived at the small group of altruistic volunteers and judges stationed at the water's edge someone took off on a set, arching his back and hitting a speed line right in the cusp of the breaking curl. As his longboard locked in, its momentum allowing balance where there shouldn't have been any, he tiptoed balletically to the nose, dipping one foot over the edge. Hanging five. This was surfing's weightless feeling, a miracle of gravity only possible for mere mortals on the most accommodating of waves. As the wave slowed, the rider fed his board back underneath himself before dropping a knee and hooking the craft back towards the fizzling white water – an even, crystalline wake of spray flowing from the tail as he went.

  It was then that I realised the person riding wasn't a 'mere mortal'. It was Elliot – thankfully in a heat other than mine.

  It wasn't long before my fellow competitors appeared – two of whom looked deadly serious, carrying lightweight, state-of-the-art boards festooned with sponsor stickers. As they stretched, and psyched, I pondered the paradox of approaching a sport as graceful and aesthetically inspiring as longboarding with such aggression.

  'I'm keeping away from those two,' said my third opponent, as if reading my mind. Six-foot-tall, skinny and with a relaxed posture, he sat down on the warming sand and introduced himself. 'I'm Tim.'

  This seemed more in keeping with the spirit of things.

  'Tom,' I said, offering my hand.

  'Hi Tom. I've never done a contest before. Don't get too offended if I ask you for a few tips as we go along?'

  'Sure thing.'

  A few minutes later Tim and I paddled out onto the left-hand side of the sandbar, putting us in just the right place to take turns on the right-handers – about as ineffective a strategy as could possibly be taken during fifteen minutes of 'competitive' surfing where the object is partly to steal waves rather than to share. But, given that longboarding was something I only really did back home on near-flat days when a shortboard wouldn't keep you afloat, I hadn't entered the category looking to do anything other than keep it light-hearted.

  Although it may not be the kind of thing a surf coach would tell you to do, just having a surf without caring for anything else seemed to work wonders for my performance level. I picked off a couple of delicious waves – each of them with a wall running half the length of the beach towards Saunton Sands around the corner. Each time I paddled for another one I could feel this enormous, rising love for surfing coming from deep within me, a feeling I'd long forgotten.

  Tim, meanwhile, was cruising across a couple of glassy faces himself, and it wasn't long before I noticed the beaming smile of someone who was having a surfing epiphany. As the ocean calmed for a few minutes, he started pouring his heart out. He worked in London as a barrister, had entered the contest because the whole idea of surfing and faith going toge
ther interested him and now, in the soul-lifting sunshine of this Devon morning, he'd realised, on the spot, that he didn't want to go back to his old life. It happens to thousands of people every year – but I'd never dreamed such a moment could occur in a heat.

  But this wasn't any old heat. This was a heat that, by the laws of nature, shouldn't have been taking place.

  As if enough divine intervention hadn't already been needed to get these waves here in the first place, a second stroke of fortune was befalling me. I'd taken no notice of the other two surfers, jostling away twenty yards to our north, which was just as well because they'd clumsily taken off on the same wave together in the dying moments of the heat. It meant one of them had incurred an 'interference'.

  Interference is a dreaded term in a surf contest. Interfering with someone is every bit as dastardly as it sounds – and carries a suitably heavy penalty. It means taking off on someone else's wave – riding it when you've no right to and in so doing messing up the other person's scoring chances. It usually happens when people get over competitive and jockey too hard for position in the line-up before the wave breaks. Thinking the other one hasn't caught the wave, the interferer then gets duped into riding a wave he or she shouldn't. The punishment is that you have part of your best wave score chalked off. As most heats are judged on your top two rides in the given time, this means you end up only being able to access a portion of the points available to your competitors, which can severely hinder your chances of progression to the next round.

  What had happened between the two didn't concern me – or so I thought. As we all left the water Tim and I chatted, shook hands and promised to see each other around, while the sponsored pair were coming close to blows. The dispute was presumably over who had been at fault – who had interfered with whom, as it were.

  The outcome of this little debate, I realised, affected me in the best way possible. The guy who'd interfered had lost an eight-point ride – relegating him into third place (an elimination spot) and allowing me through to the next round! By chatting and cruising with Tim I'd just advanced past a seeded longboarder. Perhaps I needed to take this approach in more contests.

  Feeling rewarded for the faith I'd already shown, I tried to use the same doctrine of belief in my next heat a few hours later. As it happened, this second heat was slightly easier; the tougher seed having been (accidentally) dispatched in round one. Before I knew it, I was looking at a quarter-final berth. Someone was smiling down on me from above – it was the only explanation.

  Meanwhile the swell had continued to build, now defying even Phil and Phil's expectations. By the time I'd arrived in the car park, the junior shortboarders were getting ready to go out into playful beach-break surf.

  Reckoning I'd caught the belief that brought us the swell in the first place, it started occurring to me that perhaps the way to better my surfing did indeed lie in the spiritual. Maybe I should say a prayer before paddling out or make the sign of a cross. That was maybe a step too far for me, so I opted to sit down in the sand before my next heat, regulating my breathing and trying to hone in on the mood of the sea.

  It was now mid-afternoon during a hazy day of gorgeous, plump late summer. The sand had warmed, families were out playing on the beach and dogs were chasing balls or sticks, while their owners strolled barefoot in the encroaching shoreline.

  And still the building tide pulled more swell in. This was like a surfing version of the feeding of the five thousand.

  Alas the feeding of my longboarding ego was at an end. This third time around every other competitor was adept at cruising, carving, nose riding, lip bashing or whatever else the waves allowed. But with a bit more size starting to show, I had run out of ideas – finding the board hard to control in surf that would now accommodate a good session on a shortboard.

  I convinced myself, however, that this was the consolation prize. With longboarding out of the way, and having already progressed more than I'd ever imagined, I came straight in to shore, grabbed my six-two from the car and ran back to the water without even considering waiting for the result. I was out of the running, and thrilled by the prospect. All that was left to do was surf the rest of the day away.

  With plenty of room to the side of the contest area, this was a chance to revel in the reasons why Croyde Bay, on its day, is one of Britain's best beach breaks. Wedged into a little promontory between the vast stretches of sand that make up Saunton and Woolacombe, the place siphons off the best of any swell running. Waves then rise out of deeper water, hitting the beach with an unusual amount of power for this stretch of coast – meaning that on a clean swell the place can become a real barrel-fest, especially at low tide.

  Closer to mid-tide now, the beach was just a constant series of clear-water, open-faced peaks, with sunlight glinting off them as they broke juicily towards an inside section that sped up before closing out yards from the sand. Given that the rest of the world had anticipated no surf this weekend, it was also unusually quiet for a Sunday afternoon in one of the country's most competitive breaks. Occasionally a youngster who had been knocked out would paddle over and vent his frustration by stealing a few, but it didn't bother me. I was full of surf stoke, and love for my fellow wave seeker.

  Feeling the rays gently spreading warmth over the back of my wetsuit, I sat staring at my hand through the glassy water and waited for another set – when a voice called out to me.

  It was Tim. He'd paddled up from the south end of the beach and I could see already he was still carrying the high from earlier.

  'This is the life.' He smiled. 'I can't believe people do this all year long. I need to get myself down here as soon as possible!'

  I nodded and then snagged another wave, weaving my way to the inside. Landing a little floater right on the shoreline, I turned to sprint-paddle back out for another one, energised and inspired by the ride I'd just had. I hoped I was one of the people Tim was talking about. I did spend most of my time living this lifestyle and right now the thought of feeling jaded or fed up with surfing – whether at home or not – was utterly alien to me. How had I ever allowed myself to get so ungrateful with my lot?

  Whatever the answer, it wasn't going to happen again.

  'We'd like to thank God, not only for sending his only son but for giving us surf in the end,' said English Phil at the presentation, as dusk set in around the car park and I towelled the life-affirming salt water of North Devon out of my hair. Watching from the open boot of my car, I spotted one of the two longboarders who'd argued in my and Tim's first-round heat making his way up to receive the second place trophy. The winner was a local lad – who'd seen off Elliot in a close final.

  My wave-count for the weekend had been higher than I could have ever envisaged before driving up here on Friday night amid predictions of flatness – or even yesterday afternoon, as a pub full of surfers-turned-football fans drank away their hopes of spending today in the water.

  Some may call it stubbornness, I thought, and some faith. But ultimately the decision of CSUK to press on with this event against such odds was impressive. I tried to think whether I'd ever seen someone as convinced of the improbable as Welsh Phil had been last night. His outlook had surely caught on – and it felt as if the collective goodwill of everyone who'd made it to the beach today had conjured this swell out of the doldrums of summer flatness. Maybe you could be so in tune with the ocean that things would just happen for you like that. Some of the world's most famous surfers were reputed to be able to pull such tricks. I remembered stories of Tom Curren paddling up the beach at Huntington in the US without reason, only to stroke into the wave of the day – not to mention his arrival at South Africa's Jeffrey's Bay back in the nineties for the ride that had inspired me to start travelling in search of waves.

  Whatever you read into it, the outlook of the two Phils was something I reckoned all surfers could learn something from. Although what that something was I was still trying to figure out as I pulled in for petrol and prepared for
the two-hour drive home to Wales – by which time nightfall would carry the earliest, chilly hints of the bitter months ahead.

  There's something else that driving away from a session at night does to you. It allows the surf you've just had to slide back into your memory, and you usually rise the next day to the feeling it had all been part of some other life, some twist of fate that you barely deserved.

  Was it any surprise, therefore, that when I made my way up to Porthcawl's seafront the following morning to check the surf that there wasn't a ripple in sight? Or that when I got back and went online to look at the swell readings every beach throughout England and Wales was flat? As I thought, less than twenty-four hours later, there was already the sense that perhaps this mystery swell had never existed. The late summer calm was back, as if to hush away any whispers of this preposterous, impromptu session.

  Well, even if it had been, its effects were still with me. And I knew that autumn, with its almost infinite promise, was just around the corner.