PAYING YOUR DUES AT THE PASS

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Something you other surfers and watermen might enjoy reading just to to change our tack a little for the weekend
The Vich



PAYING YOUR DUES AT THE PASS
Driving back into town on the fringe of darkness, I’m still asking myself if it all was worth it. I’d already taken holy orders the previous day suggesting to a friend that I’d never go back. Such is the drug.
My upper arms ache from paddling for almost 2 hours and I can’t even moan to my best friend who has been whipped away out of town in a frenzy of pussy-whippedness. Normally he’d be here. For me. Bitching to each other. Why? Why did we bother going there? But I’m alone – comfortably numb.
I knew the swell was there; I even knew that it was a sweet 3 to 4 foot from the talk about the town. That’s enough. Late afternoon, the heavy dudes are done.....spent. What could go wrong?
Driving up through a Scottish mist settled in on the hills and dales of Suffolk Park, I start to fine tune my attitude. OK, cue in the goal set – take no prisoners and no surrender until I get at least three waves.
The rain is relentless and I’m soaked just doing a quick recce down the boat ramp. That’ll do it every time. Now I’m really committed. Crowd is about three quarters of the previous morning; Lennox is closed out on the beachies, wide sets that’ll smash you at the Point – life is all about choices and I’m grovelling down on the bottom line coming here. I hate this place, but only for the crowd, another ruined piece of north coast perfection. The Cape St. of the east coast and I helped to ruin it.
A sliver of opportunity sits between Love Rock and the mainland carpark. It’s the quick entry to the take-off area. Paddle through the shorebreak and if you’re lucky the rip will float you around the corner. Sweet.
There are 7 young guys beside me as we hit the shallows. It looks easy. It is easy. Punch through the double-up 20 metres out and you’re home free. I try twice. Bashed twice as the shore-break doubles up, I turn and retreat to go back around to the usual push off point and see the other seven cresting over the top of the unforgiving dumpers heading for the take-off point.
Walking around Love Rock I console myself with old stories. Rick at the Point and in the boat channel back at Lennox. Taking impossible drops, not making impossible drops. He’s a waterman I tell myself. Get back out there.
Strangely on the other side it takes but 60 seconds to paddle across the impact zone into the ravenous hordes. What was I thinking. This is what we come to terms with when we age. Think smarter do simpler. But show respect. Where once was bullet proof now there’s bullet holes. Where once was wave count now there’s wave quality. Where once was quantity now let’s qualify. This is my lesson for the afternoon.
Rip is savage, crowd is aggressive, no wanton waves survive. It’s a rock n’ roll circus on water. Dog eat dog. Paddle deeper, further out, push in closer, anticipate.
Flick off the first two waves, I’m tryin’ not to be that kinda guy. Many aren’t. The place does make you think though. I’m looking for the edge of a peak where one of the longboarders might catch a rail on the drop, or a WQS hopeful gets crunched in a sandy, sucking pit. It hardly happens. This crowd is so close we can touch, our personal space is 200 metres further down the line in flat water. It’s as if an ultralite has dropped a bag of human peppercorns at the edge of Love Rock. Leg ropes snag, guys are called off every wave, the Mal riders are dangerously out of control on the take-off but it gets big ugly when a dude stacked with a 6 pack and more refuses to budge on a smallish wall, eventually fading a screaming 20 year old into the void of the foamball. What priority!
They are still yelling at each other as I try yet again to paddle closer to the zone. Finally, in desperation at being burnt and worse still, being ignored, the younger of the two vents a God-awful scream that would wake the dead. It’s that ugly. As for me I have two other small offerings, non events to be honest. But I’ll take one more. Give me something, anything my basic instinct screams at me.
I get lucky when two guys take each other out off their bottom turns. Spin around, paddle fast and pull in. ‘It’s a wave Mrs Walker, it’s a wave!’ My profile, skinny arse, emaciated torso topped with a comb-over, is a walk-up start for one or two poachers and I have to call one guy off twice. Luckily for me it’s not ‘Mr Six Pack’.
Most surfers understand that euphoria of one good wave; it fuels the beast and pushes you for more. Around the hundred metre mark, I’m on my own, climbing and dropping, milking it and enjoying the glide. In the deeper water in the middle of the bay it starts to flatten. Is this it? Is it over? Crouch lower, trying to get some drive into the shallows. To my right I see an unbroken swell, bent like a boomerang, trying to link up with my once proud three foot wall. As the Aryan beauty merges with my mongrel child there’s a double up and a pocket forms that I slide into. Not huge but we’re going places. It’s clean with the ribs of a chicken skeleton caked with penicillium. Now the water is quite shallow and the wave is peeling hollow. I love this. Not a thing to do but trim. Quite quickly I see the lip curl over the top of my right shoulder and looking up I can see the split of sky and curved water. Just as rapidly it fades back behind me but it’s a pit of sorts and somewhere down the track I’ll claim it over more than a few drinks. It will get bigger too. At least double I’m thinking.
Such a drug this animal surf. I should paddle in but I can’t. Still a way from the beach after flicking out I go again. What the hell, there’s only a hint of dusk. Adrenaline has pushed the lactose riddled body into my memory. Those who know The Pass well will testify it’s a long paddle back, Mal or no Mal. Some light relief paddling back beside a young guy as we come up behind a struggling babe whose brown bikini bottom is a wedgie pencil line stuck in the crack of a perfect coffee coloured arse. I suggest to him that, ‘The view here is better than the crowd, eh?’ Just to let him know I come from Queensland where ‘Eh ‘ is Oxford ratified. Finally I sit out wide, on the edge for a breather. Closer in near the rock, it’s a rats nest of flapping ducks and drowning chickens. Angel on my shoulder tells me, ‘Don’t go there.’
As another sizeable set stacks up further out I sense that this is it. The last hurrah. No matter what. I can always pull off, particularly if he’s got a six pack. At least five surfers jostling each other in a frenzy of flying arms paddle for the first but I’m around ten metres wider out than they. This wall is bumpy as the larger waves here can often be. Up and accelerating downwards, I make a tentative turn off the bottom. Over to my left the lip has thrown wildly over and the foam chews at my legs. I look around; some pig dog has got to come flying out of that mess fairly soon. They always do. But there’s nothing, not a soul. I can’t believe my luck or is it perseverance. I’ll decide that later. For all its bravado it’s a good but not great wave and there’s to be no double up this time as it fattens up half-way in. Do I care? Life is good. There is a God. At this point though I have no perspective – that will come later on the drive home.