It was a Saturday morning; cold and windy. It seemed early in the morning when I had my first surf. It was uncrowded, the water was bone-chilling and the waves were like glass. It was quite small and with a south-easter blowing up the face, it was hard to paddle onto them. Still, in spite of the rude wind, I caught my waves and did turns. Dad and I retired home to enjoy breakfast, later returning to the beach with Mum and Tais, to find that the crowd had settled in. We watched in the car park to see if we were willing to battle crowds for small waves, or to wait until the southerly kicked in. There was also the option of the bay, but neither of us wanted to deal with fifty grommets, all hungry for waves. After some chat to Kane, we decide to go out at Lopes; a shallow reef break, that did nothing but barrel in ten centimetres of water over thousands of urchins. If you couldn’t already tell, I was pretty scared of the place. Nevertheless I gathered all of my courage and went out.

The waits were long, the waves small, but when one did finally come, I was ready. Dad gave me a push to help my weak paddling, and I was on. Sadly, it closed out in front of me. I paddled back out, eager to catch another. During the waiting period, Lochie, a barrel king from the Bluff, came and waited with us. Eventually a set did come and Lochie took it. Much to my luck, it was followed by another set. Again, Dad gave me a push and I was on. I pulled into the barrel and watched as the lip went over my head and I got amazing tunnel vision. A closeout section was coming, so I went out the doggie door and got pulverised by whitewash. As I came up from scraping the reef, Lochie looked at me and smiled;

“Sick one,” he said.

I happily paddled back out and caught another, it closed out, so I went to the bay. After my surf, I went in, then went back out and watched the crowd die off at the point. I ran out there and battled the southerly to catch waves. A few hooks in the lip and cutties later, I went in. You could not begin to imagine how stoked I was to have conquered my fear and surfed Lopes.

This was my second one at Lopes. The photo was taken by my friend Ben 🙂