I didn’t get to blog about yesterday. In a way, it was just “more of the same”. We’d been joined by three German men who’d come with their non-paddling wives. They had been here before, and they were given the V10 Sports to paddle.
In the morning we went to the beach near town to practice going out and coming back through a mild non-dangerous surf. The Germans didn’t bother taking the van with us, they paddled down to the town to join us, and didn’t take any longer to get there than we did. It was Magnus’s turn to paddle today, and Frank was in a V8 as well.
I kept trying to catch a wave in order to practice handling the scenario that gave me trouble the other day, but instead every time I caught a wave it sped past me right at the beach leaving me coming in on the backside of the wave, which of course is the safest and easiest landing. So every landing looked like I knew what I was doing, even though I was doing the exact opposite of what I’d wanted to do.
After we finished, Magnus paddled back with the Germans. I guess we didn’t tire him out enough.
In the afternoon we went out to Punta Paloma for another downwind paddle. The conditions had looked relatively calm, but when we got out there it turned out to actually bigger and more confused that on previous days. I got some really good runs for a while, and then it started getting so confused I couldn’t find anything and over and over again found myself stalled on top of the wave I’d been trying to catch. I started telling myself out loud “catch the small ones, the bigger ones will come”, and that kind of worked. I started catching more waves, and having more fun. Frank appeared to be in some distress, and many times when I looked at him in the back of the Double he was leaning back in the cockpit to relieve his back. The Germans and Magnus were ranging far ahead, and Kassie and I were trading the Lanterne Rouge back and forth. I felt like I was getting better at my old nemesis – where you’ve got two sets of surf at about 90 degrees to each other, one longer and faster and the other shorter and steeper. Trying to pick out where the wave fronts are when there are interference patterns going on everywhere, and trying to stay on this wave when this other wave is attempting to crash over the side of your boat and fill it is a skill I’ve often felt a need for in Lake Ontario, and I think it’s coming along.
Afterwards, Frank said that his back was hurting and he wanted to spend tomorrow taking the ferry into Tangier. So we went into town quite early by Spanish standards, and he went to the port and booked a tour. Then we went to find the restaurant we’d been to on our first two nights was now closed, probably for the season, so we went down a nearby alley and found a really nice restaurant that was just opening up. The food was a bit pricy, on a par with the place we’d been the previous night, but unlike that place the portions were relatively big. And really delicious. And they gave us a free little appetizer – aubergine (zuchinni to Americans) and honey, and free glasses of Muskat wine afterwards. So I was completely impressed.
One last thought – I don’t really feel like I’m really on a wave until I hear the cheerful little burble that the drain makes when the cockpit is completely emptied. Is the empty cockpit the effect of the speed of being on the wave, or the cause of you being able to catch it in the first place? To me it seems like a bit of both.