The Duck Dive #20
The aBsUrDiTY of scoring good waves
The purpose of my newsletter has been clear since day one: to shoot my land-locked friends a dose of true surf culture. My impulsive writing habit has recently focused on dissecting the treacherous nature of the sport, the unrealistic surfing ambitions I nurture, and how I approach the rituals involved in surfing. Last week, Dylan Graves published a masterpiece of a video and speech that does just that. Here’s the pitch: Part surf film, part satire, part therapy session, this is a love letter to the strange pursuit of good waves and the absurd lengths we go to for them.
The quality of surfing is obviously insane, but there’s more to it: it’s what surfing did to us all - pros and amateurs alike. Our first wave hit us like an arrow pierces tender flesh, leaving behind a burning desire for more. Since then, we exhaust ourselves to be in the right place at the right time, and each wave gives us a kick. His speech introduced a new perspective: that the essence of our passion for surfing is unchanged, accross all levels. This is good news for the bottom 99% of surfers - we who never got barreled - and explains why some pros have praised my amateur annecdotes (in spite of the amateur writing). Real recognizes real!! I’m done overstepping Dylan’s story. Read his precious speech below.
P.S. someone send this to Dylan Graves !!
I don't know how else to start this, except to say that surfing is hard.
Getting good at standing on a piece of foam in the ocean, river or any style of water feels impossible at the beginning, as you're doing activity in another world, essentially. If you decide to try to make your water activity of choice into a profession, good luck ! As navigating a career in - whatever line of work this is - is even trickier. Say you've been fortunate enough to somehow turn this into your job, like me, then you've definitely driven everyone in your life insane. So if you're still crazy enough to want to do this at this stage, I commend you, and we're probably friends. Friends with the same silly obsession of getting good waves. And once you find these said good waves, you now attempt taking off and trying to stand inside these good waves over and over again until there are no more waves, and then you become addicted to this process until you can't paddle anymore. So, what does it actually take to get good at getting good waves? Or why would you even want to? Let's dive in to what I'm calling the absurdity of scoring good waves.
Okay, first and foremost, let's get into the sanity that is forecasting, surf forecasting, to be specific. It all starts with meteorologists and marine meteorologists running data collected by satellites, radar and weather balloons, running this all through computer models and then applying their atmospheric knowledge to make educated guesses on what the weather and in our case, swell, is gonna do. So already, a lot of overthinking and analyzing starts happening before they start updating forecast sites every three to five hours.
At that stage, surfers come in and start our own over analysis and begin purchasing airline tickets, rental cars, lodging, all your essential travel needs. Sometimes to destinations halfway around the world, just as we all did in this specific case, where we all met on a secluded beach in the middle of nowhere.
I was blessed to connect on this trip with Aritz Aranburu, Mickey February and Brendon Bibens to name a few. And a funny thing happens at this stage: everyone forgets about the forecast that we've all viciously analyzed over the last few days, because the call's been made and we're all there. This is exactly why you always hear overly excited surfers freak out every time they see a good wave at the start of every trip or video - because it means we're not crazy.
“Look at this thing!!! Oh, that thing's a slab! Wow… look at that ! Look at that one at the end.”
Oh, we're not crazy. The absurdity of scoring then sort of morphs into “the luck of whatever the sand is doing”. A wave is only as good as what's underneath it. If the sand isn't right, it can make for a lot of wiping out. Until the sand finally organizes itself and starts gifting you some perfect rides. It is a pristine, glorious morning, and the waves are absolutely pumping. Waves look about double the size of yesterday. There's some long lines, rifling barrels all the way down the point for as far as the eye can see. So… I think we put ourselves in a really good place. I’m really excited for today.
Once you've gotten this far in the process, now begins the real battle of the elements. And when one of those elements happens to be a really long sand point, the absurdity seems to get turned up a notch. It becomes a game of :
How many times can you walk up the park?
How many laps do you think you can do before you collapse?
How many times can you paddle back out?”
How far out in a rip current are you willing to paddle back from down?
How many wipe outs are you willing to have ?
How much mental fortitude do you have ? When you’re pulling back on the ones you should go on, and you’re going on the ones you shouldn’t… and it's just a constant mental struggle.
How many boards are you willing to break, and did you bring enough to last the entire day?
That's what it takes to find that wave you were hoping to get on this trip. And here's the kicker, this is exactly why we love it, because all of this absurdity somehow makes the most beautiful, ridiculous sense with how it comes together. Through the absurdity and delusion of it all, there's also magic, the kind of magic that makes you feel alive and tortures you in all the right ways. There is no better curriculum to life, in my opinion. From the planning to the over analyzing to the energy depletion, even though all these things might seem preposterous on land, once you're in the water, especially around these silly cylinders we love so much, this all feels normal and right.
MUSIC
Listened to this while writing this little piece and some of the lyrics resonated with the absurdity of surfing. Picture your mate making it back out after getting wiped out by a monster set…
Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms