The third day in paradise dawned with a stiff breeze blowing down the beach. One lone guy was out kite surfing – based on the sleep habits of Spanish people, I’m guessing he was a tourist. Boyan arrived and gave us a bit of a talk about the theory behind waves, and also some practical information on how to find and ride them. Then we drove out to Punta Polomes for some paddling – this beach is about 6 or 7 km from the hotel, which means we get an actual downwind run without it being so long that it starts turing into hard work. Frank and I were in V8s, Boyan and his brother were in V10 Sports. I didn’t object to being put back in the V8 after using the V10 Sport yesterday because the waves were bigger and I needed to be thinking about catching waves, not about staying upright.
We did a couple of turns into the beach, then paddled out past the point and headed downwind. I was starting to get the hang of chasing the backside of the wave in front of me instead of waiting for my stern to lift or looking behind me – the waves were coming in all directions and you couldn’t make sense of the big picture, so you just had to concentrate on the wave in front of you and the one under you, and on catching the ones that were going the right direction and leaving the ones that weren’t. But in my enthusiasm, Boyan came up and reminded me of my duty to the buddy system, so I had to circle back and check on Frank occasionally. He didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much. He doesn’t have much “pop”, so he didn’t seem to be able to throw on a burst of speed to catch the wave. Plus he was bracing and losing speed when the wave broke on his cockpit, which is when you need to start accelerating.
I was starting to get it all together, really linking the runs well, and we came into the the area of the hotel. There were literally dozens if not hundreds of kite surfers out there and I had to change course once to avoid one, but mostly they went around us. As you come into the beach, you have to remember to take off the leg leash, close the scupper drain, and get ready to jump off on the upwind side (so the boat doesn’t run over you) as it gets shallow. Then you have to catch the rear handle – Boyan said something about pulling it onto the beach rudder first, but in reality his assistant Angel is always there and he grabs the front and you carry it up together. You carry it up just above the surf zone and then put down the boat while Angel goes to help the next boat coming in. I can’t remember if it was the morning run or the afternoon one, but at this point I wasn’t watching the boat and the wind started it flipping down the beach as I chased after it like an idiot. I barely caught it before it ran somebody down.
After the morning session I discovered that the sand and salt had taken their toll and now my GPS would charge but it wouldn’t upload, and my camera wouldn’t charge. Fortunately I have two more batteries for the camera, so I might be able to get some more video before we go. The hotel WiFi isn’t up to uploading them, however.
For the afternoon session, Kassie joined us again – she’s been in Spain long enough that she’s adapted to their habits of staying up all hours and then sleeping late, so hasn’t yet joined in the mornings. We went out to Punta Poloma again for another downwind run to the hotel. Frank wasn’t feeling stable in the waves, so Boyan went with him in the V10 Double, which meant that Frank and he were buddies and Kassie and I were buddies. After the preliminaries of getting organized on the water and explaining the plan, Kassie started heading out to sea. In the wind shadow of the point, I was about even with her and she remarked how it was times like this she wished she was a bit heavier to handle the waves better, and I said I wished I had a lot less frontal area so I wasn’t blasted by the wind so much. Once out of the shadow of the point, I wasn’t as fast as her, so I just had to hold on and see where she was leading. And lead she did. It seemed like she never wanted to turn downwind. I think we ended up going at least 500 meters and maybe a kilometer further out that where Boyan and Frank had turned downwind. I was getting waves coming over the boat and hitting me in the chest and stomach – (note to self, in the future try to remember to close your mouth when that happens). And then instead of turning straight to the hotel, she then turned back to the beach we’d come from, because the bigger waves were going in that direction. Again, she was way faster than me so I had no choice and no way to communicate, so I just followed her down. Boyan had said that we should all circle back together every 5 minutes, and after 15 minutes of paddling out and surfing back, we headed back out to where Boyan and Frank were waiting for us.
Everybody checked in ok and happy, so now we headed directly to the hotel. Kassie was closer to shore than I was, but we were about neck and neck so we could see each other and be real buddies to each other. Frank and Boyan surged ahead and fell behind as they were doing exercises to try and help Frank’s confidence and technique. It is a bit more of a challenge to find and surf just the waves that are going in the direction you want instead of taking the big ones back to the beach, but I managed to get some really good linked runs, using the speed from one wave to search out and get on the next one as this one died. Basically the technique is to watch the backside of the wave in front of you, decide if it’s going in the right general direction, and chase after it. I seemed to get better results if when I was actually riding the wave I kept my paddle stroke with no power behind it instead of resting in a light brace like you see the big guys doing in big surf. As we got to the final bit of surf near the kite surfers, I thought I heard Kassie say “I’m going in”, and I turned in as well, but then I looked behind me and it looked like she’d turned out for one more run. Sneaky. But I was in the surf zone with my leg leash off and the scupper closed with Angel waiting patiently to catch me, so I was commited to go in. Not that I minded – it’s good to end on a high note and I’d had some really good runs towards the end.
So thus ends another day in paradise. Frank and I went out for dinner afterwards and we ended up going to the same restaurant as we’d gone the night before because I wanted to try the Tariffa Red Tuna steak like he’d had the night before. It was *awesome*. It’s a bit of a challenge finding a restaurant that
- Opens at a reasonable time (ie. 8:30 or 9 – yes, that’s early by Spanish standards)
- Has English on the menu
- Isn’t full of smokers
- And doesn’t look like a filthy dive
But this place fit the bill, and like I said the food was unbelievably good. But by the time we finished and got back to the hotel, and I patched up my poor mangled hand, I was dead tired.
Oh, did I mention the mangled hand yet? On the first day, we were giving Epic paddles, and Boyan gave us some wax to rub on the grip zone to help you hold onto it. But I found my hands wandering all up and down the shaft. I’d brought some bicycle tape so I could tape up my paddle like I do at home, and so I did that after day one. But by the end of day two, I had a massive open blister in the web of my thumb on my left hand. I put on some “second skin” and molefoam that Frank had brought along, but it didn’t last in the water and my the end of today I had even more blisters on that hand, as well as worse sores in the web of my thumb. I decided that the bicycle tape has too much friction in salt water, and since my right hand is my control hand, every time I twisted the paddle in my left hand I was rubbing it raw. I removed the bicycle tape on the left hand and I’ve now got some water resistant bandaids on the hand, and they survived this morning’s session, so hopefully that will take care of things.