As I climbed out of the car and grabbed my helmet Alice informed me that you lose "so much surfer cred" if you wear a helmet. I wore it anyway, figuring that A) being on a waveski, and B) this being my first time on a waveski, meant that I wouldn't have any surfer cred to begin with. Alice, John and I all paddled out together. John made it out past the break easily because he could go under waves. It took Alice about 30 minutes and me about 45 minutes. Really the only thing that kept me charging at big walls of whitewater was Alice in front of me doing the same thing.
You can pretty easily paddle over smaller crashing waves, but as the waves get bigger, you flip over, and assuming you can't roll consistently (a fair assumption for me at this point--waveskis are hard to roll) you get knocked off your board. You then pull your board back by the leash that attaches it to your paddle, climb back on, and try to paddle out again. Repeat 50+ times and you're where I was after 40 minutes. Seeing Alice make it outside finally provided the motivation to push through.
Immediately after making it out, a beauty of a wave rolled in and I took off on it, seeing how one of these waveski things felt compared to a kayak. Conclusion: they are fast. Much faster than a whitewater boat, much faster than a boogie board. here is a picture of my first ride on a nice small wave.
After an hour or so, a huge set of waves came in and both alice and I were washed in over a relatively shallow reef just down-current of us. I'll have a couple of nice scars on my right foot to show for it. time to head down to our place at Mirissa. The house that we stayed at was a nice house right on the beach in the sheltered area of Welligama bay where all of the fishing boats land. After a nice curry dinner (too hot for the aussies but perfect for me) and a fancy bottle of wine all of us crashed early in anticipation of our surfing the next day.
The next morning I woke up at about 5:30 am and walked down the beach looking for some hoppers (a local food) and a tambili (a very nice drinking coconut). I found both, and a nice fisherman whom I talked to for about an hour. He informed me that the rest of his family had been killed in the tsunami while he was out fishing, but that he had a new wife who was expecting a daughter. He invited me to come on his fishing boat for a day if I would help him work. He said that the day before he had seen 2 blue whales and another type of whale, and that he'd probably see more today. I declined, but told him I'd come looking for him if I was in the area again to take him up on the offer.
I returned to the house, had breakfast with the family, and then hit the surf. We surfed in Welligama bay after checking out a point break in Mirissa with a bunch of rocks that looked ominous. I had told the family that I got to surf so rarely that I would often stay out in the water for 8 hours or longer. They didn't believe me at first, but when I took a short break for lunch and paddled back out they had decided to take shifts surfing with me so that they could rest in-between sessions. I was learning the waveski fast, but the break wasn't great, only yielding 2-3 second rides before closing out. That didn't stop me from tucking into a closeout barrel before recieving a good thrashing. There's nothing like getting a little time in the green room...
We all rested that evening and had another delicious curry dinner with another bottle of wine. We planned to drive to Arugam Bay the next day which is a long 5 hour drive up around Yala national park. Robyn had to return to work the next day and was returning via train, which is apparently a little nice than the bus trips here. She advised us to go check out Yala on our way over to Arugam bay to try to see some elephants. To this John replied: "Mom, you don't get it, this is a Surfing Trip!" I like seeing wildlife, but I secretly agreed. The surf was good enough I didn't want to miss a day. Plus, I've already seen a lot of elephants. The plan was to go for a surf the next morning before dropping Robyn at the train station, but the surf was too big and David wasn't going to let John or Alice paddle out. I was ready to go take a beating, but (perhaps luckily) I didnt' get a chance. When we arrived at the train station a everyone but me had to use the bathroom and all came out saying numbers. Alice said "1", John said "6" and David and Robyn both agreed "4". When I asked what they were talking about, Alice happily filled me in. "It's a system for rating bathrooms. I'm happy to stay anywhere where the bathroom is above a 5." "What qualifies as a 5?" I asked. "To rate a 5, a bathroom must have a toilet." When I asked what the alternative was, she said "a hole in the ground. The one in the train station is literally only a hole in the ground. Not even a nice tile place to put your feet. No sink." I didn't get to check it out, but joined the family bathroom rating system for the rest of the trip.
The rest of the day was occupied by driving to Arugam Bay, which was a long haul. We got a flat tire about 300 meters outside of Arugam bay and had to change out for our spare (full sized, fortunately). That killed our chances of surfing that night, but we all went for a sunset swim and body surf, which was really nice. We decided to stay in one of the more expensive hotels in the town ($12 per room per night) and walked off down the beach to find dinner. Interestingly, everywhere in Arugam bay has the same menu, all of which appear to be modeled after the menu of the european run "Stardust Hotel". Fortunately, all of them offer some very good curries as well as fruit plates and fruit drinks. I woke up early the next morning and did the 15 minute walk up to the main point break there where I discovered about 10 surfers out just after sunrise getting good 10+ second rides on beautiful 6-8 foot waves. I was joined after a bit by David, who also woke up pretty early and had the same idea that I did. We walked back together to find Alice and John still in bed. We woke them up for breakfast and headed off in search of a less crowded break called "Peanut Farm". The town of Arugam Bay in broad daylight:
Peanut farm turned out to be an adventure. It was a nice right hand break, but there were lots of rocks. I don't have any pictures because we had to paddle out to the break, but the shoreline was rocky, and most waves took you right between two large rocks that jutted out of the water when in the trough of waves and over a shallow section that looked scarily up at me through about 6 inches of water on most rides. As soon as I caught a wave my only goal was to go really fast so I didn't wipe out over the reef or get tossed up on the rocks on shore. I was almost entirely successful with this strategy. The family was waiting for the large parts of waves to break, and then taking off past the jutting rocks and away from the shore rocks. I decided that some rocks weren't going to stop me from having a good time and took off at the big peak. This led to some fantastic rides, and only two scares. The first was when I launched off on an enormous wave and looked 10 meters in front of me and saw one of the rocks that I had been easily avoiding because the waves were smaller. I turned as hard as I could for the top of the wave where I could get off, launched, got a few feet of air, landed upside down, and rolled up about 5 feet from the big rock. The whole family was watching as this happened. The dad said that was close, Alice gave me a long disapproving look, and John paddled over to tell me that was "wicked cool".
Nobody saw my other close call. I took a really long wave that eventually closed out. I tried to turn off the wave, but it pushed me all the way in to shore and up between a couple of rocks. I got the board (which I was still seatbelted to) out of the way of the rocks, but the resulting shift in weight tossed me right up among them, and I scraped about a third of the skin off the back of my hand. I paddled in after that, deciding that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, and that I would probably eventually miss a takeoff and end up on the shallow reef if I kept surfing there.
The beauty of surfing safaris is that the best surf happens early in the morning, but once you hit lunch time the wind has come up and the waves aren't nearly as good. This means that a day's schedule looks like this:
5:00-wake up
5:30-paddle out
7:30 david paddles in because he's tired
10:00-the rest of us paddle in
10:00-1:00 breakfast then lunch at the same restaurant, a game of chess, etc.
1:00-4:30 siesta, read, watch a movie, etc.
4:30-6:00 swim, surf if the wind has died down
6:00-dinner
8:30-sleep
After our lunch and Siesta, Alice and I paddled out to the main point for a surf, surfed right through the sunset, and had to paddle in when it was too dark to see the waves coming. Here's a picture of Alice on a wave from that evening.
I was able to convince the family to get up at 5:00 the next morning despite the kids' affinity for sleep to get the main point before it was crowded. Walking down the beach at the crack of dawn or catching a wave as the sun comes over the horizon is an indescribable feeling. At first the surfers were wary of us, but as I improved and they saw the skill of the others I was paddling with they started getting more interested. I met a guy from London who has been surfing in Sri Lanka for 6 years now and has dreads down to his waist. He makes money by taking photos of vacationing surfers and selling them. Brilliant. I met another dude from San Diego who had been doing a similar thing. His beard was long enough that he tied it in a knot to keep it out of the way.
Over the next 3 days I improved by constantly wiping out in spectacular ways. If I was trying to do an aerial I would go over the falls on my head. If I was trying to do a re-entry I would go over the falls on my head. If I was trying to do a floater I would piton in to the water at the bottom of the wave and get tossed. If I was trying to do a cutback I would simply flip over trying to turn back towards the wave. By the end of the third day I was sore and tired, but successufully doing most of the forementioned moves, except for cool aerials. I caught air on a couple waves, but never landed it. There weren't any great pics of me trying to do any of these moves, but here's on of me setting up for a re-entry:
By the end of the last day, 3 different people had asked if John was my son (I was 10 whe he was born), several more if Alice was my wife/sister, several people had told me that I was brave to be paddling the waveski after seeing a particularly bad wipeout, I had gotten a couple of "gutsy move, dude" comments, and I was feeling like I had the hang of surfing a waveski. If you are a kayaker on this list, come visit me, I'll take you to Arugam Bay and we'll go rip it up out there. Easily as much fun as any day of paddling whitewater. The drive back to Colombo was long (8 hours), but greatly helped my confidence when it comes to navigation as I was able to get us back without any wrong turns. I really liked my australian family, and hopefully I'll get to surf with them again soon. Or, maybe I'll take them kayaking and show them what their inland brethren do for fun on the water.
Anyway, I've loved hearing from you, keep me updated on your lives. Give me a call on skype, my SN is lukesanford.
Cheers,
Luke
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