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Mission "Salt Crust" or "The best roll training in the world" - Muriwai Beach - September 2004
North Island of New Zealand, one hour's drive from Auckland, West Coast, Muriwai Beach
It's the end of September. A changeable day in spring, with chasing clouds and occasional showers alternating with patches of blue sunshine, has lured Anna, Guido and me to the beach, which we share with a few surfers and several kitesurfers. As soon as we arrive at the beach, we immediately realize that it's not the ideal day for surf paddling. The wind is blowing towards the coast, but we have outgoing water and everything is very "messy", meaning the waves are very irregular and chaotic. We don't care and get changed. Guido paddles straight out to the big breakers and we assume from the occasional sighting of his boat ends that he's having a lot of fun back there; he can look after himself. Apart from a polo session, Anna has never paddled before and with today perhaps not exactly the ideal entry conditions, but rather the ideal exit conditions. But it doesn't matter; she lets the first wave that comes out take her out a hundred meters and paddles over a handful of waves that come towards her before she looks around for the shore for the first time and decides to turn around. Contrary to all my expectations - she can neither roll nor support herself properly - she comes surfing in front of my feet shortly afterwards, grinning cheerfully, and I ask myself, depressed, whether I shouldn't perhaps switch to chess. Over the course of the next hour, she repeats the whole thing a few more times, and of course she swims several times too, but the surf eventually washes everything back to shore anyway, so apart from long arms from emptying the boat and sand between her teeth, no significant damage is done.
The fact that Guido enjoys himself in the four-metre breakers for quite a while and the fact that Anna, as a beginner, dared to go out on the water in today's difficult conditions and even managed a few surfs, may be taken by the reader as an indication that the following events are described from a purely subjective point of view and that the intensity of the experience is largely due to the mediocrity of the so-called author's paddling skills. Nonetheless, anyone may feel moved to head to the nearest beach with a few chaotic people of the same ilk and try this pleasure for themselves; it is very similar to whitewater paddling, and yet also completely different. And above all: what the climbing gym is to climbers, the surfing beach is to paddlers - everyone can paddle out as long and as far as they want and choose the size of their waves themselves, and the car and therefore food and liquid food are never far away. Highly recommended if the next creek is too far away or just too dry.
While Anna waits for her arms to shrink again, Guido and I go out on the water again. I sit in the boat and wait for a big wave so that I can paddle along with the water running out. Then I try out a bit where the waves are going today and where the small rip is going out, which is better avoided - unless you want to go really far out - and after I find the perfect spot for me, I do a few nice but still quite controlled and therefore not overly exciting surfs to warm up. I'm still not sure whether I really want to let it rip today, but the sea makes the decision for me. I lie at my spot, wait for the right wave and paddle over all the ones that don't look good. Then there's one that I think "cool, it's good, just over a meter high, green, just starting to break, I'll take it"; then I see one that comes next and is faster than the first. In a flash, I realize "oops, they're arriving at the same time and stacked on top of each other..." I turn around in a flash and brace myself for a violent ride. I always lie down at a slight angle to the right, because if the wave picks me up while I'm lying straight, the bow usually drills in and it becomes a rollover. When the wave comes, I let it hit me from the diagonal sideways to the right and at the same time I make an arc turn to the right to prevent a total rollover, and when I've been picked up by the wave and am surfing in front of it again, I turn straight in front of the mound of foam. I look expectantly over my right shoulder towards the two waves, ten meters before they reach me, the two waves have stacked up into one big one, and at that moment a third wave, which has also secretly stacked up on top of the other two from behind, says "kukuck" to me and looks down at me from above. Aaarrrrghhh!!! That makes about two and a half meters! This was neither planned nor desired and is about a full meter higher than I can normally control. Amazingly, I let myself be hypnotized by the sight and was turned around by the wind and water, I'm now lying almost head-on to the wave and have zero time to turn around again. Great. I decide to go "Norwegian style", paddle towards the wave with a few heavy strokes, lie all the way forward on the deck and reach far down into the wave with the paddle to maybe get over or through, even if that's a crazy, illusory thought. I make it the first one and a half meters up the green wall and still think "if I..." KA- HUUMMMMMMM the sea suffocates any further thoughts without asking my opinion. As it gets light again, I look over my shoulder behind me towards the beach and see that I've almost made it; I'm sitting a good two meters above the water on top of the crest of the wave, but I'm just starting to fall backwards in front of it again.... Well, that will probably be a backwards loop. Or two. I take another deep breath, tip backwards and fall into the big curler, all I can see is white and it roars and roars and booms... Strangely, even after a few seconds it still doesn't feel "overhead", and even more strangely, I can't see a thing, but I can breathe! I briefly think of Patrick, who once said that he breathes a lot underwater too; maybe I'm on to his secret here. The moment I realize that I'm in a pretty crazy backwards surf under the mountain of foam, which I would never have dared to do voluntarily, and that my head is probably in a small "tube" and I can therefore breathe, my stern catches some of the green on which I seem to be gliding under all the foam - and off the bow goes into the sky! Half an undeserved backward cartwheel and a desperate left prop later, I am unbelievably still more or less vertical, now apparently surfing forwards, still can't see anything, but now can't breathe either, and my bow turns sideways to the left. I put my head firmly into the wave, edge hard and counter-surf left, and I'm backwards again, which is definitely better than sideways. Then I suddenly look out of the chaos at the top, turn sideways again and laugh and laugh and laugh and almost cringe because I can't believe I'm still in the boat and haven't rolled once. I almost go for a swim after all because I've forgotten about the still quite powerful wave I'm in and haven't taken it seriously. I also laugh at the three surfers who are standing in the water up to their chests and who I'm surfing towards very quickly and crosswise, they laugh with me and are happy and I just manage to turn the boat straight again in a fit of laughter and take the paddle lengthways before I whizz through between them. One or two more flatspins, as the wave is still running and I don't want to waste any of it, and then I sit on the sand in my boat, wait for the laughing fit to subside, lean back, look up at the sky, bathe in adrenaline and still don't understand what just happened. But it was awesome!
An attempt at objectification
- The whole process must have taken less than thirty seconds on the watch of an uninvolved observer. For me it was a small eternity. Isn't everyone always complaining that they wish they had more time? Here's your time machine, folks. Get in and drive off, a compression factor of at least 1:1000 and more is possible.
- Of course, as always, there are no witnesses, as most of what was interesting for me took place underwater. Maybe the three surfers saw one end or the other of me and could have guessed the rest. There are no photos and they would be very unspectacular as most of the time you see almost nothing of the boat and paddler. I myself don't really know how to use the camera safely while I'm being wrapped up, but you can work on it...
- Apart from that, I'm sure two dozen other paddlers, kitesurfers and surfers had several other experiences of this kind that day. And I don't want to know what stories Guido would tell if he didn't consider what he did in the really big waves at the same time as my experience to be almost normal.
But does it all matter? At the end of the day, the personal adrenaline level and grin factor are the measure of all things. All three of us had enough of both today and are completely satisfied.
We spent the rest of the day lying on the boats in the sun, washing the sand out of our equipment and scraping the salt crust off our faces. Rating: Highly recommended for a repeat trip. - - -
A brief beach usage guide for newcomers to whitewater paddling
- If you stay far enough away from any rips and provided that there is no really strong outflowing water, the basic rule is that everything will eventually wash up on the beach. This is quite pleasant; swimmers just need to hold on to their paddle and run after their boat. Caution: Never let the boat get between you and the approaching breakers, risk of hydraulic stoning, a variant of hydraulic crucifixion (details can be found in "Nealy's fun whitewater school").
- There are almost always plenty of breaks between the waves where you can roll in peace and reorient yourself. These breaks are longer than in many rapids in wild rivers, where you often barely have time to roll before moving on. If the wave has run over you, you have a good 20 seconds of rest time.
- But: there are no eddies, so you can't stop the action by hiding behind a rock. Once this grace period has expired, the next wave is unstoppable! If you haven't used the breathing space to regroup, you will be punished and have to start all over again.
- With every wave you paddle out over because it seems too big to surf, the likelihood that the next wave will be even bigger increases. However, the problem solves itself at some point, at least in strong surf, because sooner or later you will come across waves.
sooner or later you come across waves that "surf you back in", forwards, backwards,
sideways or overhead and whether you want to or not.
The big waves further out can knock you deeper into the water, but on the other hand
the water *is* also deep there. In the shallows, you are more likely to roll over the sand - always
always make yourself small!
- Once overhead, it is often enough to carefully stretch out the paddle and start rolling, and before you know it, the rotation of the wave has grabbed the blade and turned you back up. It's not uncommon to still be in front of the wave, get wrapped up again and then be allowed to roll again behind the wave without its help. If you are lazy, you can also simply wait for the next wave to help you.
- For all the reasons mentioned above, the beach is the ideal sparring partner for roll training. If you have even a rough idea of how a roll works, you can quickly achieve a bomb-proof roll here in a challenging but relatively harmless way.
- Keep your eyes open: Not all good, but surfers and other paddlers come from above, kitesurfers usually from the right or left, and all of them are faster than is comfortable in the event of a crash. Kitesurfers in particular can spontaneously change direction by only a few degrees, try to make it clear to them early on which direction you are going to move in. If the crash cannot be avoided: Capsize as quickly as possible. The kitesurfer will lose his fins on the bottom of your boat, but they are much easier to replace than your neck. This also works for all other (small) watercraft.
- It's a good idea to constantly monitor the water and your own position relative to the shore. Many beaches have one or more "rips" where the water that comes in with the waves elsewhere runs back out to sea. These rips can take on the dimensions of a real river that you can no longer paddle against, let alone swim against. Normally, the best way to tell where a rip is is to observe whether you are being moved parallel to the shore over time; you usually drift towards the rip. When you reach it, the water becomes "somehow different", the waves are stronger or often weaker and it is often easier to paddle out than elsewhere. If the rip is strong, the water is often brown and the wave fronts break last at this point because they are flattened by the rip. If available: Ask the locals.
- You can only get out of a rip both in a boat and as a swimmer by swimming out to the side and surfing or swimming back in with the waves. If possible, as soon as you realize that you are on your way out, alert someone so that they can call for help if the person you lost doesn't come back soon. Then keep your nerve and save your strength in any case, move slowly sideways in the breaks between two waves and keep doing this until the waves bring you back in. It makes sense to keep an eye on each other and make them aware when the other is moving towards the rip.
- It's also a good idea to have a phone on the beach or even on the water. In the event of an emergency, a chopper is simply everything, and if necessary you can even call it yourself once you've gotten behind the surf zone with the rip - and if the phone is operable in its waterproof packaging. Save the right phone numbers beforehand! Only those who have the nerve to call the information line while the mainland disappears on the horizon can save themselves the trouble.
- There are web cams for various beaches on surf homepages, which often update a daily description of the wave situation. This allows you to find out in advance whether the location meets your requirements and is worth the journey. In New Zealand: www.surf.co.nz.
- Don't forget food, sunglasses and sunscreen! Have fun on the beach!
Matthias