OK. It probably won't make platinum, but around the campfire last weekend with me on rhythm, Saul on lead- it grooved! It's a hedonistic ritual these days. All misery, work and obligations remain in Carnarvon, and during the long and rocky ride up North my thoughts of these also waft away with the wind...
Last weekend was a good one. Ed's come over from Sydney to do some decent surfing at Gnarloo and was marooned in Carnarvon when the Ansett Airline went bust this week. Which opened the possibility of another Gnarloo session, and between patients on Friday afternoon I rushed to the shop for supplies while Ed loaded four sails, rigs, five boards, kit, bits, bobs, food and booze and half the house on the groaning Pajero. A quick drive over the beach to collect driftwood and off we went!

It was after dark when we arrived at 3-Mile Camp... As an incidental bit of Australiana, the Ozzies don't have much imagination when it comes to naming things. Every other guy's called Bruce, and on this bit of coast, there's a 2-mile beach, a 3-mile camp, a 6-mile beach, an 18-mile beach and so on. Sometimes the name reflects the size of the thing, other times it indicates a distance from something else.
Anyway... we cracked open some more beer, invited some friends along, made a huge fire and roasted a lamb's leg on the glowing embers. Slowly the Carnarvon crowd trickled in- Nathalie and Lisa, later Saul, Sonya and Karyn. The usual inebriation and free-flowing conversation followed and the next day I thought I should try my hand at wavesurfing to clear my fuzzy head.

Now this surfing business has never really appealed to me. For starters, you have to paddle out in a backbreaking position on the board. Within minutes my neck cries uncle, and my arms go limp. Secondly, you have to dive under breaking waves- sandwiched between the tumbling foam and the staghorn coral- rather than trying to jump them like a windsurfer. Thirdly, it's bloody difficult- in the process of a wave breaking there's only a second or so in which it is neither at too low a slope nor actually crashing two metres down. And the location where this magic moment occurs is up for grabs! Getting up is a hassle too. Never mind riding the board in graceful waterspraying arcs down the line.
The end result is, that even skilful surfies spend hours teabagging it on their boards behind the breakers, getting wetsuitrash and looking appealing to the sharks and other bities. To me it looks like the Paralympics- poor victims of fate who've lost the sails on their boards but battle on regardless.

Sociologically, I also have my doubts. Unlike windsurfers, surfies NEVER come up to offer help when you're struggling. Amongst themselves, it's an aggro rat- race with who's next in line and who's dropping in... to the point that some groups of local surfies claim bits of marine real-estate as their posession. Their magazines are the beach-equivalent of the Cosmopolitan, filled with 'real cool and way-out' sunnies, sneakers and T-shirts and helpful tips on how to act like a hard-core surfie. But having said that- it certainly beats a morning swim for excitement! I caught my first waves and decided to buy a board.

The wind started howling after midday and I was getting the heebie-jeebies... it was low tide, with the reef exposed but the swell was mercifully small. I rigged, went out, was overpowered and lent my Baby Blue Carbon Art to 95 Kg of Ed. Who stacked it into the coral, ground great gashes in my board and left me deeply depressed. With one sail already ripped to bits, it's getting to be an expensive hobby.
With tears in my eyes I resorted to kitesurfing. No beaches in Gnarloo, so I found myself in some sort of a gully in the coral, holding the kite with one hand and using the remaining limbs to brace myself against the rocks while the kite was trying to flay me alive by dragging me over it. A tail would've been handy to keep the kiteboard under control, which came scything into the gully with every wave and hurtling back on the backwash. It's 6 kilo's of razor-sharp fins and edges and aimed itself at my neck.

Once out of my predicament, with a couple of cuts and bruises I found that the offshore wind didn't allow for any decent kiting. I sailed back to camp and drowned my sorrows in beer. Meanwhile Sonya and Saul were ripping up the waves, howling with fun while doing 360's off the lip. I resorted to cheap red wine after droolingly watching them....

Back at camp, a whole crowd of people sat around the campfire. We barbied this and that, Saul and I played some songs, we brewed a vicious mulled wine, had banter and yarns and laughter... it was great. The next day the wind was offshore, and the chick-pulling powers of the new bright- red Jeep that Andi lent me for the weekend were put to the test. Loaded with toys we managed to squeeze two very attractive women in the back and drove off to the bay. Bit of kitesurfing, snorkelling and lazing on the bright white beach.
Thinking of Gerard Reve I considered that I might unknowingly have died, and entered heaven. It truly is a bit of paradise out there.

So I've just spent an entire week in Maison Roofrack. For more of the above! The weather was kind and the sea produced only 'Keeswaves'- the largest possibly 3 metres and most only head-heigh. Everyone moaning and groaning about the terrible flatness not worth the flight from Sweden... I had the greatest time coming to grips with them. Windsurfing on a short board is hard enough, but when walls of water and foam try to chuck you back on the reef, it gets really difficult. The idea is to use the wave face to get speed, then carve some sort of a half-gybe just in front of it which launches everything straight back uphill. Near the top of it, another hard turn down and so on. It's tricky -believe me!- and half the problem is getting on a wave. I had some frightening moments staring three metres down at exposed coral, with the roar of crashing water approaching. And orgiastic fun with blue below, blue above, racing across the swells at breakneck speeds. The tally so far is :

Kees: 4 bottom turns on a tiny wave and 20 litres of adrenalin. Sunset Boulevard conceived at the campfire, the Bloody Blues and Carnarvon Nights written with said fire in mind.

Gnarloo: 1 board damaged , one mast broken and two sails written off. Self-healing coral cuts everywhere.