Sunday, January 16, 2011

Surfs Up at Avalon






There is very little in life that scares me but the surf at Avalon was pants-wettingly terrifying. The tide was going out making the waves bigger but the water to clear them less and less.
Six foot surfs are uncommon at Avalon.
During my warm up I caught one of the waves which was a thrill until I fell off the front of the damn thing. I'm pretty used to getting dumped and normally don't mind it - but falling off the front of the wave and through air into the wash below is genuinely terrifying. Names of spinal injury cases kept flashing through my mind.
Alice and I, Can Too Twoers that we are, elected to swim together and so, having stopped to meet up at the first buoy (I'm always slower to start) we swam stroke for stroke together. The water was surprisingly calm past the break. We were incredibly lucky in our starting wave (25-29 female) which had a fairly calm start. The blokes ahead of us got smacked by a set beyond the break.

I have no idea how we managed it, but we stopped and surveyed the sets behind us and managed to get a clear patch to get back in the beach. We crossed the line hand in hand before I made my debut as a Can Too spokesperson.

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