El Mar, Mi Alma

The sea, my soul......................a very cool name for a new Chilean surfing movie. El mar, mi alma. I like it.

I read a beautiful article by Australian surfer, Belinda Baggs in the Australian Longboarding magazine. Belinda is about to give birth to her first child. Some of what she wrote really resonated.

'The winds that bring us someone we love are the same that bring us something we learn to love. These are the same winds creating swell that travels thousands of miles to our shores. These shores give us a sense of belonging, a strength, a heart and a quiet calmness for existing in place and time. They lead us to wander in amazement, see and appreciate all the things beautiful that the oceans and the earth encompass...................to be led by the wind and the sea, to be led by the wind and the sea.'

I've struggled with surfing for the last four years. Its only over the last few months that I feel like I've had a major break through. I'm heading down the line - both lefts and rights - and I'm starting to turn, to look down the wave, my stance has improved, my rhythm is better, my footwork is getting there. I almost feel like a real surfer - even though I've created my own breast stroke style duck dive!

Getting out into the water over the past four years has been tough. To consistantly turn up to a break and know that you are the worst in the water, is a huge hurdle to overcome. To do that and be a woman. But something about this sport gets me right in the heart. Despite the fact that I will never be any good, I love it.

My friend talks about the serenity he feels when he is the water. Others talk about the sensation of catching a good wave. I know many who will leave the embrace of a beautiful, warm women (or man)  to drive 60 minutes, put on a 4/3 wetsuit and just get wet. I just feel at peace, in the moment............like nothing else matters more then bobbing around on a board waiting for a wave.

Going right

For some reason I really struggle going right. I live in WA at the moment (lefts aplenty) and spent my formative surfing period in Indo (even more lefts)...........it was my goal this recent holiday to work on my rights, sort out my duck diving (and I didn't actually realise I had created my own style of duckdive until I watched a few you tubes last week) and tidy up my foot work.

I'm pretty happy with my progress - I surfed three weeks solid with only two days off, practised yoga everyday, made some new friends and relaxed. I didn't sort out my rights, my duck diving still sucks but I am on a smaller board (6"2, 2 3/8 and 19 1/2). My timing (on the left) has improved out of sight and I am now ridiculously addicted. I managed to surf four times this week - Hu'y, god of the waves has blessed Perth with waves a plenty the last few weeks and the banks up at Scarborough are so fun!

This morning, my friend John and I surfed at Brighton, sharing the waves with just a few others. It was so pretty. My mind couldn't help stray to thoughts of the 2metre tiger shark I paddled over 6 months earlier around the same spot but not enough to get me out of the water! Its those sort of surfs that make all the other ones, when I'm getting hammered or really scared or surfing 1 foot mush with 50 others or when I am the worst out in the water by far (hello, Mentawais!) - all worth it!

The Chimpanzee Theory

My friends and I had been surfing all day at Phillip Island, Victoria.........a beautiful island, east of Melbourne and pretty much where I learnt to surf. We were staying at my friends shack in Ventnor....a perfect, unpretentious, true Aussie holiday shack in every sense of the word. Brown water, asbestos, brick and tile, old family treasures...........run down, ram shackle and right on the beach.

Whenever we headed down to the island, our days were always the same.......up early for a quick bite to eat, surf where ever - Woolamai, Anzacs, YCW, Smiths, early lunch at Dr Food (I will never forget those sausage rolls), more surf, a nap, another surf if we were lucky and then dinner followed by movies, tv shows, lots of guitar, a little beer or wine and a David Attenborough documentary or two............

On this particular Saturday night we were watching a documentary on chimpanzees. The footage was of a troop of chimps in captivity, some of which had been street performers before they came to live in the sanctuary. Some of the chimps in their performing days had been taught how to break open very hard nuts with a hammer. Quite a useful skill and a good way to get ahead in the chimp world. And a skill that every other chimp wanted to learn.

The trouble with chimps, according to David Attenborough, is that past the age of 4, they cannot learn new skills. That's it. They are done for the rest of their lives. Everything they learn before the age of 4 is all they have for the rest of the lives............and they live for up to 60 years!........I found this interesting and a little unnerving. Especially as the next scene in the documentary showed a number of chimps, having observed a brother chimp crack open nuts and eat them, trying to teach themselves this new skill..............................a fruitless task, as David commented in the background........as they were all older then 4.....

I just couldn't help but wonder that at 32, am I one of those chimps? On a fruitless journey to learn a new skill that I will never, ever master?

I survived the Mentawais!

I was sooo out of my depth and spent the first few days literally shaking everytime we jumped in the boat. I didn't help that eveyone staying on the island were amazing surfers! Eventually I realised that I wouldn't die and that even though the waves were so much bigger then where I usually surfed, once you're up, they are actually a whole lot more fun!

We stayed at Wave Park on Maniak Island. There were 12 of us in total, six Peruvians, three west aussies, two sydney siders and JeTaya......... a precocious two year old who made the trip just that little more special. I went through Samudra, a yoga/surfing/raw food group that run global retreats out of Dunsborough, Western Australia. We did yoga every morning and surfed 2 - 3 times a day................

I surfed most days with one of the girls working at the resort. Kristin and I were kind of at the same level (kind of except for the fact she had been on Maniak the whole season!). We mainly surfed around Playgrounds and Pitstops....and had two amazing surfs at Spankers (Four Bob) and Bikini's when it just the two of us in the water and perfect 3 - 4 foot waves. Those two coral heads at Spankers still haunt my dreams!

Most importantly, the 10 days in the Mentawais has started me on the course of Astanga yoga and raw food.....I plan to weave those elements through my life over the coming years..................................I'm not sure if I'll ever go back there. I dream about it now and its beauty is insane but I struggle with the white, male, surfer dominating such a landscape.............

Following the Mentawais, I coped a beating in Kuta - a nasty food poisoning case of Air Aisa and spent two days face first on the tiles in a crazy, LSD, Frida Kahlo inspired room at Three Brothers in Legian. This was followed by a few days in Ubud and then Ekas on the island on Lombok....................Inner Ekas is really the wave of my dreams! It was nice to not feel like I was worst surfer out there.

Surf travel...............

I just brought a double surfboard cover for my upcoming trip to Indonesia. I'm so excited although I'm surfing so badly. I'm heading to the Mentawais just off the Sumatran coast and then on to Kuta and Ekas on the island of Lombok.

I live to travel. I squirrel away my spare pesos with images of places unknown in my dreams. The unknown, unfamilar and just plain different get me so excited. Surfing has added a new element to my travels. Now I don't even want to consider travelling to somewhere without a surf break nearby, I spend my days reading tales of the search for the perfect wave and constantly dream of finding my perfect break.

My friend Ivan and I spent 6 weeks in 2009 moving from Bali to East Timor in search of perfect, nufty waves. We found it on the island of Sumbawa and we had it for a small window, almost all to ourselves. In between days exploring interesting late night food markets, eating bowls of tripe we lounged at surf camps, checking out surf reports and scootering around local villages. We also managed a daily dose of surfing as well!

Its the smell that stays with me the most. It keeps me going through long, arduous winters, morning surfs in thick wetties and the winter darkness. I'm currently planning on hooking up somewhere in Central America next year where I can get fluency in Spanish as well as work on my surfing. Any suggestions?

But closer at hand is my trip to the Mentawais and Lombok at the end of this week! I'm surfing really badly at the moment so I'm a little nervous that I'm way out of my depth. The Mentawais is where the pros go, yeah? Every surf mag currently produced has a picture of Macaroni's, HJs, playgrounds in every edition but I'll be fine! I'll just surf with the kids!