Month: November 2013

This morning dawned kind of dreary. Overcast, a very light spatter of rain, kind of cold, and very little wind. Oh oh, I thought, this doesn’t bode well. But by the time Boyan showed up, the sun had come out, the wind had picked up a bit, and it had warmed up. Last night a new person showed up to join our little band – Magnus is a kayak dealer in Sweden who has recently started selling and paddling surf skis, and he came here with his wife and two very young children. They didn’t bring a car, so I’m not sure how they’re going to manage logistics, but that’s not my problem.

We headed out to our old familiar Punta Paloma. This time, we didn’t do a downwind to the hotel, because the wind was mostly onshore and the tidal current was going the other direction. Instead the four of us just paddled out and surfed in. It worked out pretty well, because you could start paddling out close in to shore in the wind shadow, then swing out past some breakers on the rocks near the tip of the point, and be in some fairly strong surf heading almost directly into the shore. I was in the red stripe V8 which is a bit lighter than the black stripe V8 I paddled so far. The lightness made a surprising difference in how easy it was to get up to speed when chasing the back side of a wave, which I think means you get more rides. I still think I’d rather have the longer and faster V10 Sport when the conditions aren’t overwhelming, but I’m here to learn how to catch waves, not set speed records.

At first I’d been buddied with Frank, and Boyan was giving instruction to Magnus, since he was a couple of days behind us. But after a few out and back runs, Boyan switched to giving instruction to Frank, leaving Magnus and I to our own devices.

Magnus turned out to be pretty good, considering his recent arrival to surf skis – he just plowed out into the wind without any hesitation, and rode them back in like a champ. I’d be paddling hard to get on a wave, and I’d look over and he’d be on a smaller wave but moving faster than me with no effort. But I caught my share of waves too, so we stayed pretty much together. It was heading into the waves that he seemed to really leave me behind. So we surfed in and out a few times, and went back in.

After lunch, the wind had gotten even stronger, the waves bigger, and the current was in our favour, so we went back to Punta Paloma to do a downwind run back to the hotel. Kassie was free of her early morning conference call and was able to join us. So it was me, Kassie and Magnus in the V8s, and Frank and Boyan in the V10 Double once again. With three of us buddied together, and both Kassie and Magnus having proven to be faster than me into the wind, I felt I had to make a real effort to keep up with them. Fortunately I was once again in the red stripe V8 while both of them were in the black stripe V8s, so they were handicapped enough that I was mostly with them.

When we turned downwind for the hotel, it was kind of surprising how well matched everybody was. Even the Double was right there in the mix. For the most part Kassie was taking the closer to shore line, Magnus was taking the way out to sea line, and I was in the middle – although there was some switching around. The seas were both bigger and more confused than any day previous. For the first part, there was a strong wave set heading back towards the beach where we’d launched, but smaller ones heading the direction we wanted to go, so it was a matter of picking the waves you wanted to surf and not being thrown off your stroke or your attempt to get on that wave by stronger waves coming from the side. Sometimes they’d break in and fill up your cockpit, which was disconcerting, but you’d soon get a bit of a push from a wave going the right direction and the scupper drain would empty out the cockpit nicely. (The scupper makes an amusing sucking noise when you’re fully drained and going with a bit of speed – it’s one way to tell that you’re on the wave.) As we got closer to the hotel, the waves going in the direction we wanted were getting bigger and the ones going onshore were smaller, which made it easier to get some really long runs. Kassie and I were both whooping with joy – Magnus was further out to sea so I couldn’t tell if he was making joyful noises that were being whipped away by the wind, or if the stereotype of the dour Swede was true in his case.

I swear I got on one wave that was worth the whole price of admission right there – it gave me a massive push, and it just never seemed to want to end, and when it did start to die, I spotted a wave front moving in a slightly different direction, used my speed from the dying wave to get on it, and got another long push. It was awesome.

When we got to the beach in front of the hotel, all three of us turned back out to have another go. We didn’t go too far, and Kassie said something about not wanting to leave it too long because of the breakers in the shore. We turned and surfed in together, dodging kite boards (and the kite boards dodging us as well). But then Kassie said she didn’t know how she was going to get in. Magnus gestured for me to go first, so I took off my leg leash, closed my scupper, and went to surf the last few dozen meters into shore. I immediately regretted closing the scupper as a wave broke into the cockpit, so I re-opened it, paddled a few strokes until it emptied, and closed it again (have I mentioned how much I love having a foot controllable scupper?) As I got close to the shore, I just angled the boat and jumped out on the wave side and grabbed it. Walked it down until I had the stern handle, and started pulling it into shore. This time Boyan was waiting to grab the front handle instead of Angel, and we got it out of the water and on the beach, no muss, no fuss, no bother. I followed his lead and banked up sand on the side of my boat like he’d done on the double so it wouldn’t go flipping down the beach again – having the red stripe boat, you’ve got the perfect recipe for disaster – a light boat so it lifts in the wind, but fragile and expensive if it breaks. While I was taking care of that, Boyan was catching Magnus’s boat in the surf line, but Kassie still didn’t seem to want to come in and was paddling parallel to the shore. I don’t know if it’s because she’s lighter, and not as physically strong, but she didn’t seem to want to chance it even after Magnus and I had done it with no problems. Frank and I carried the V10 Double up to the hotel, so I didn’t see how she eventually got landed.

So now I’m sitting here in the bar/porch (because there is no wifi in the room) looking at the sliver of moon and a very bright Venus (thank you, “Night Sky” app), the lights of Africa across the Straits, and listening to the surf come in. It’s only 7:30 so it’s probably too early to go to dinner – Spanish restaurants rarely open that early, so a bit more web surfing. Today was a great day.

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.

This morning we did some technique drills. Mostly concentrating on trying to use hip rotation to move the paddle. I’d always thought that you start with hip rotation, but you then rotate your torso even further, but that’s not what they’re teaching here. After a bit of classroom time and practicing the drills on the erg, we drove into town and did the drills out on the water in the harbour. The town is a mixture of very quant old buildings and massive tourist tackiness. It all seems to work, somehow. There is a wall at the edge of the beach we launched at with a rather too graphic painting of a man’s backside and an admonition not to poop in the water. In this same harbour there were a number of swimmers, including several doing laps back and forth, a few SUP paddlers, and a large number of SCUBA divers – there are a number of signs offering courses, and I don’t know if they were all one course or several. And the gigantic ferry boats kept leaving and arriving, preceded by a pilot boat who would come over and park between us and the boats. He was probably worried we’d get in the way or try to surf its wake.

After doing the drills a few times, we also practiced remounts. For some reason my remounts didn’t go as easily as they do in my own boat, but I think I did well enough to qualify for a chance to paddle in the bigger stuff.

After eating a bunch of fruit for lunch, and a short nap, we went out this afternoon to do a bit of surf practice. The waves weren’t huge, but they were a nice intro. I got to try the newest V10 Sport, which I like a lot. The foot operable drain, the carrying handles, the sharp angled “cut outs” for your paddle, etc. I really want one. But what I really want is my own personal wave coach – somebody to go out with me and say “ok, this one is passing, now get up to speed, now really punch it, now relax and ride it”. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be better at judging where I am on the wave – that seems to be my biggest problem.

We were joined this afternoon by Boyan’s brother and by an Australian woman named Kassie who was wearing Vaikobi gear – first person I’ve ever met who also uses the stuff. Turns out she’s friends with Pat, the founder. After using Facebook’s “show me all the people who are friends with this person and that person and that person” feature, I found her blog – she’s way better at this than I am. And no, I’m not a creepy stalker, I’m just good with a search engine. Sheesh.

So like all travel stories (it seems) this one starts with a near disaster. At 10:00pm the night before I was due to leave, I received an email saying that the first leg of my trip, from Rochester to Newark, had been cancelled due to weather. No alternatives offered, no automatic rebooking, just “hey, fuck you and your trip”. I jumped out of my bed and to my computer.

The flight had been due to leave from Rochester to Newark at 4:23pm. I looked on-line and saw that there was an earlier flight leaving to Newark at around 2:00pm. But remembering the disaster that was my last trip that went through Newark (where they said my inbound trip was going to be late due to weather, but said the outbound one was going to be on-time, so I rebooked the inbound trip to an earlier flight, only to find the outbound one was horribly late as well so I ended up spending more time in Newark than it would have taken me to bicycle to my original destination), I thought that rather than taking care of this on-line I’d call a United rep.

It took a few trips through the automatic voice response menu before I got to a rep, and she rebooked us on a flight at around 2:00pm, but instead of just changing the flight to Newark like I expected, she switched our first leg to Rochester to Dulles, and our second leg from Dulles to Zurich. We ended up booked to arrive in Zurich just a bit earlier than our original flight would have, so there was no need to change our flight from Zurich to Malaga. I had to call Frank with the new information and arrange a new rendevous at the airport. Of course in the rebooking, our pre-assigned seats got scattered to the four winds, and Frank’s vegetarian meal preferance was lost as well. (As a fun side note, when we got to the airport, the display was showing the 4:23pm flight to Newark as cancelled, and the 2pm-ish flight to Newark as delayed to 4:30-ish. So not so much a weather cancellation as “let’s use this as an excuse to combine two undersold flights”, I’m betting.)

The flight to Dulles was mostly notable because the guy beside me’s head started dropping and jerking up before we even left the gate, and when we arrived there he didn’t want to wake up to let me off the plane until I gave him a quite hard shove. There were bouts of moderate turbulence on both flights and I was completely unable to sleep on either. But at least on the long flight there was a power plug under my seat so my iPad was kept fully charged during the flight so I could read. I’d left the data/charging cable for my phone in my checked bag, so I don’t know if the USB port on the entertainment center would have charged it. It was down to 20% charge thanks to using it for tethering in Dulles, so I kept it fully off.

In the Zurich airport, I attempted to connect to the wifi to let Vicki know where I was (and get a 4Square check-in in a new country), but in order to connect to wifi, you need to be able to receive a SMS message with a token. I reluctantly decided to accept the roaming charges and turned on my phone, only to find it couldn’t get service, no doubt due to AT&T’s lock-in. So no wifi in Zurich.

The flight to Malaga (on Swiss International Airlines) was uncomfortable – the seat rows were way too close together, and they didn’t provide a pillow or anything. I was fading fast and I attempted to sleep using my rolled up jacket as a pillow, but I couldn’t get comfortable. Frank had an inflatable travel pillow – one of those neck collar ones – and I think he had a better time of it than I did. On the other hand, they did come around and give us a little Swiss chocolate bar.

In Malaga, I got 15 minutes of free Wifi by giving them my name, email address, age, and home country and postal code. I might have also given them my first born – it was all pretty blurry. But with that I was able to let Vicki know how I was doing, and post to Facebook about the stupidity of Zurich’s wifi, and check into 4Square.

We hunted down an ATM and got some Euros, and then collected our bags and headed to the rental car counter. We ended up with a SEAT, I think the same sort of car Vicki and I had in England. As we pulled out of our parking space, it was so quiet that I thought I’d stalled it when I’d had to stop, but it continued on again so then I wondered if it was a hybrid. But no, I think my hearing was just so shattered by all those hours on planes I couldn’t hear it.

The drive to the destination was straight forward except for a bit of confusion at the second toll booth where Frank handed me a handful of change consisting of various different Euros and an American dime. I think we were a bit punchy, but I’m also not entirely convinced the toll taker didn’t rip up off there because the toll was 3.05 and I handed him one bimetal coin which I think was 2Eur, and two gold coins which I thought were 1Eur, and he said I was short. But there was a lineup behind us and I didn’t take the time to do more than glance at them as Frank gave them to me and I gave them to the toll taker, so I don’t know. Frank handed me another coin, I handed them to the toll taker and he gave us some change and we were on our way. But we got some spectacular views, including some good ones of “The Rock” at Gibraltar. But, there are no signs at the road where you turn into the hotel – it looks like you’re driving through somebody else’s beach party and a camping area, but then there is that ugly purple building, and then you look down a gap between two buildings and see somebody prepping a couple of surf skis, and all doubts vanish.

The room is a bit of a pit – it’s got a tile floor, an ancient tiny TV sticking out of the wall at just about the right height to give Frank a nasty bump on his forehead, and two single beds pushed together, and that’s about it. Not very good light or ventilation. But we didn’t come here for the room, we came here for the view. And what a view! The beach stretches out for miles on both directions, and there across the water is Africa. There are big ships coming and going through the straits of Gibraltar, and a fast ferry between the town of Tarifa and Tangier. There are kite surfers all up and down the beach, and fishermen casting into the surf. Steep hills with scrubby vegetation and some trees in careful rows rise up behind us, with clusters of wind turbines so you can tell which way the wind is blowing. The hotel is painted a rather startling shade of purple and there is folk art on the walls all over the place. There are big day beds and lounge chairs in front of every room, and a fairly busy bar on the ocean side.

At about 4pm local time (over 24 hours after I woke up, and with maybe an hour of naps on planes in between), we went out for a little paddle. Boyan wanted to get to know us, and see what we were doing wrong and what we were doing wrong. It was a lovely evening. A bit of surf to play in at first. This was my first time in a V8, and it’s a nice fun little ski. Very stable, but it turns well and you feel like you can lean and carve almost like a sea kayak. We headed towards the town of Tarifa, which was into the light prevailing wind. I was looking forward to turning downwind, but of course the wind died before we turned. About half way back, my lack of sleep and dehydration hit me all at once and really hard. I found myself lagging far behind, and barely able to put one stroke after another. The sun went down while we were still on the water and it was absolutely gorgeous, but I wasn’t appreciating it as much as I should because I was so tired.

After paddling, I finally found some wifi and was able to talk to Vicki for the first time since leaving the US. We ate at the hotel, and stumbled into bed. Woke up at 8am local time, still feeling a bit tired and sluggish.