Surf Trip September 1999

From ICCC

Trip Reports

As far as paddling goes, and surfing in particular, the Beach Boys' lyric "All Summer Long" doesn't exactly ring true, even on this windswept isle.

Our trip to the Alps aside, there had been precious little in the way of paddling since the last lonely gate wearily ground shut at Hurley back in May. No surf to speak of, all the Thames weirs dry, even canoe polo sessions had stopped for the summer. So, it was a huge relief to come into the office on a drizzly September Monday to read that the surf forecast was promising some decent-sized surf for the forthcoming weekend. A few emails later, and within half an hour I had filled all the seats in the car for the Friday night drive to Devon. At last, summer was over, hooray.

[1] Posing b*stards

Throughout the week the surf forecast got bigger and better. Board-surfers tend to measure waves "off the back": this way of measuring surf gives heights which are about half the "wave face" height that canoeists traditionally use. The "boardy" numbers were as high as 9 feet by Friday evening: this meant that we could expect wave faces between 15 and 20 feet high. (For the rest of this article I have used the "boardy" heights)

It was therefore rather a let-down when we rolled up at Putsborough on Saturday morning to find just 2 feet of surf. The weather was atrocious - a howling wind and driving rain. Not exactly Hawaii. However, beggars couldn't be choosers and so we got on the water, fighting for space amongst the hundreds of boardies bobbing out past the breakline. Diverting, but not exactly hard-core stuff. However, Rob managed to increase his swim-quota for the year by at least two more.

We moved a couple of bays along the coast in the afternoon to try and find some shelter from the wind and so some cleaner surf. The waves had picked up to about 3 or 4 feet, but the wind was producing a very "messy" break. Rob and Kirstie decided to leave their Kan'tDos (Kouldn't Dos?) on the car and wander out along the headland to watch the fun. Neil (Glide) and I (Alien) spent a couple of hours carving and spinning, and had a fine time.

The weather was eerily still when we woke up at our (illicit) camping spot on Sunday morning. No wind! Clean surf..? We piled into the car and headed for Saunton, usually the biggest break in the area when the wind is light. We were not disappointed.

The surf was well over 8 feet high. It was unrelenting: the struggle out past the breakline took more than 15 minutes, and invariably included several uncontrolled flipwheelings towards the shore. Neil was all for moving to another beach ("I'm totally fed up with getting a KICKING every single time I try to get out") but we stayed for a couple of hours before getting off for lunch. We did manage to get "out the back" a few times for some awesome rides, but most of the time we had to be content with surfing the re-formed waves on the inshore "second break", where the waves were "only" 5 feet high.

We sat around in the carpark for an hour or so at lunchtime. As we ate, lo and behold, the wind direction shifted to a light offshore. This made the waves very clean, green and glassy (until they broke, that is) but no smaller. The "lulls" between wave sets were more regular, so it was (often) possible to wait for a quieter period and make a dash out through the dicey rip current out by the cliff. This is a "fast lane" of water, moving out to sea, where the waves don’t break quite so ferociously. However, the drawback is that it is right next to the rocks at the end of the beach, so that you have to paddle so close to the rocks that you can touch them. If you are sufficiently brave and/or stupid, it is (mostly) possible to use the rip to carry you "out the back" past the break line without getting trashed too badly. However, it is dicey, VERY dicey indeed: a big set will take you straight onto the rocks - you have to be prepared to cut your losses, turn around and make a run for it, surfing like crazy away from the rocks.

Neil and I were making it out the back pretty regularly, but we didn't meet many other boaters out there. One group tried to follow us out through the rip, but got completely trashed when a big set of waves bore down on them and took them right onto the rocks. They got off the water very shortly afterwards.

There were half a dozen guys on longboards out the back, too. We recognised most of these guys from our trips to Devon in the winter - they are usually sitting in the same place in the sea, right through January and February, waiting for that perfect wave. They gave us some great compliments ("gnarly, dude, you're a brave man coming out here today in one of them") but they were definitely the real experts: of literally hundreds of boardies, kayakers, and boogie boards spooning around in the soup close to the shore, only a handful of souls were managing to get all the way out. From the breakline to the beach was a distance of about half a mile.

But the struggle out was worth it... 8+ feet waves as clean as you like, (for you traditionalists out there, this gave wave faces well over 15 feet high). I must confess to guessing the heights: some waves were HUGE. It was easily 8 feet but almost certainly bigger: paddling out over the unbroken waves, it was taking 5 paddle strokes to get over them; the biggest crests were more than 3 boat lengths high...

We had some great fun in the Alien and the Glide. On the paddle out we got some HUGE airtime, launching off the top of the waves with an offshore wind. I got a (completely unintentional, I might add) fully airborne cartwheel: I launched off the lip and threw the nose of the boat down... ohmygods, the water is about 8 feet below where it should be... over comes the tail, woo-hoo, airwheel! Flatspins, wave-wheels, "ollie-oops" (airborne flatspins), ooooh.

Oh, not forgetting the remorseless 5-point flipwheels whilst paddling out. Ouch.

Rob and Kirsty stayed inshore all the time, Rob adding to his swim total by another three.

Neil rescued one of the local boardies whose surfboard leash had snapped; he gave the boardy a ride to the beach (got him on the back of his boat and rode a 7 foot wave in to shore). With a bit of luck, this sort of thing creates a good impression which we can carry on for the rest of the winter: traditionally most boardies have a passionate hatred of canoeists. However, we can sadly surmise that when the next minibusload of spooners from Scumbag Poly turn up en masse and drop in, run over, insult and "utterly upset" the locals, this will very quickly outweigh any number of rescues...

See you out the back, dudes.