A very slow start to the day for me - lost to drink on the infamous birthday, body a bit racked after the effort expended! It takes a long time to loosen up in the mornings, for both me and the fog, but today was clear from the off - if only I was the same!
There's a group of friends from LA here, and a couple of other guys who had been staying for 10 days and planning to leave today. Each of them is like some stereotype from a typical US crap TV show, like Murder She Wrote or Diagnosis Murder - the retired aeroengineer, the Chinese doctor who fancies himself technically and keeps a blog, the tall skinny rugged silver-haired surfer, the keen naive-seeming "nice" lady, and the comedy Japanese ex-dancer who at 4' 11'' sails 75l boards all the time. And they all talk just like you'd think they should. Amazing. There's a lot of apparent competition too, someone always knows more than someone else...
After the video session, which Guy came to a bit late to find us watching the Jem Hall Winner to Wavesailor DVD (which is pretty pants actually, although maybe it has some redeeming features we didn't get to), Guy decided we'd have a quick jumping session in the freshening wind. This is about 12.15, with lunch planned for 1, so not too clever methought. That and the proposal that we head out to the Bombora which is a monster peak so we can jump off it.
But it turned out well, 5.5 95l FSW, had a quick hit until 1.30, with lunch postponed officially. Got some good waves but the jumping was pants - not enough wind, not enough ramp waves on the way out. And lunch was good - tasty hot dogs and amazing lentil soup. I wonder what happens to all the food we don't eat?
The afternoon's session kicked off about 3.30, and was pretty good actually, 5.0 and 95l got progressively harder to handle in the increasing and very gusty wind. Because it's cross-off, it comes over the land and island, which makes it very turbulent - no wonder pelicans use swell lines to get upwind to the island! I stopped a couple of times for a rest which was a good idea and acquitted myself well with Mr. G who said I was the only person doing what he'd said i.e. stay up upwind to get the wave peaks - yay! I tried hard, but got caught out on the ledge once, cracking it at a high speed and dismounting violently, which slightly put me off on subsequent attempts. Ah well. I did get one good jump in, as the wind picked up.
The evening offered the customary entertainment, playing Spoof for a forfeit. You each have 3 bottle caps, and on the call you hold 0-3 in your right hand. Each then guesses the total caps held, and the winner if any drops out. The last person not to drop out has to perform a forfeit - the Swede Juke had already "won" twice, having to be buried in seaweed and wear a pair of giant pink underpants all day. Amazingly he didn't lose again! It's pretty random in early phases, I stick to the average, but when down to the last two it gets pretty tactical. Tomorrow's forfeit is to oil up the large hairy person Clark on the staff for the proposed wrestling match with Guy - another long story, involving Guy not showing for the afternoon photo session with Clark's remote controlled mast-attached camera. I retired tired - the fresh and burgeoning stye in my left eye is getting to bursting point and very painful.
No comments:
Post a Comment