Dunsborough via Yallingup...

Dan and I woke up early, ready to hit the road again to see what more we could find in the Margaret River area in the way of fun.  We met James for a quick cup of coffee on the main road and then drove down to the river mouth, not expecting much, only to have our suspicions totally confirmed.  It was as flat as glass and there wasn’t a breath of wind.  With no reason to hang around, we set off north on the Caves Road towards Yallingup, putting in a quick stop at Moses Rocks on the way to check out the coastline. 

Moses Rocks didn’t disappoint, but the path to the beach was going to prove fairly difficult to the most able-bodied of us, let alone the human tripod.  We got back in our cars after a couple of obligatory “I’m in Australia, in the middle of nowhere, check me out”-type photos and carried on towards Yallingup, with the promise of free wine at the various vineyards along the way as an added incentive. 

We got to the car park at Yallingup Beach to find enough wind blowing for a potential session with a 3 foot left breaking on the reef right in front of the beach.  There was a bit of a walk down to the water, so rather than venture down to the beach, Dan took up residence at one of the park benches with his book, his newly acquired ukulele (a new project to help wile away the days) and a six pack of Heineken to simultaneously aid the musical process and dull the pain of watching James and I set off for another wave sailing session.

It was by no means an epic session (I managed to get slammed pretty well in the shorebreak on the way back in) but then a crap session is always better than no session at all!  Just ask Dan… 

James and I made our way back to the car park to find Dan had made pals with a bunch of Kiwis and Irish kids (and a token Canadian who’d spent the last summer in Polzeath – random) and was getting stuck into some booze and some thumping drum and bass emanating from a massive sub in the back of the Kiwis’ van.  As tempted as we were to get properly involved in the impromptu car park party, neither Dan nor I fancied sleeping in the hired engineering marvel that was the Kia, so we hung around for the sunset, packed up the car and were on our way to the Dunsborough YHA for the night with a case of beer and all the makings of a banging stir-fry.  

Margaret River - Day Two

Margie’s Day Two

Dan and I met James, Paul, Tom and Paddy down at the beach the following day after finding out we couldn’t ride at the river mouth because there was a pole-dancer’s competition on. I think it was the Australian Wave Sailing Masters, but we didn’t hang around to find out and drove a couple of kilometers south to Gnarapub. The swell had dropped a little and had cleaned up a lot as a result. Also, the wind seemed to have sorted itself out and the gusty conditions had all but disappeared completely.

I was really looking forward to some down the line sailing and grabbed my 7, 9, and my surfboard, planning not to get caught out by the wind as I had the day before. I went out on my 7, but immediately had to come back in and grab my 9 and was soon out playing in the waves despite a slight error in judgment. It wasn’t to be the only one for the day as it turned out.

James, two local guys and I were all playing on Boodjidup, a reef break just north of the Gnarabup car park. After hanging around in the rolling swell out back for 15 minutes and watching two of the local guys line up, I pulled in to my first wave. It was a fairly slabby left with a 9 foot face which was quickly rising up behind me. I pushed the bar out in an attempt to drop some power out of the kite, stepped hard on the tail of the board, trying to get into the pocket, and looked over my right shoulder to judge my position on the wave. I was pretty well set up so I looked forward to pick my line. As I did, I saw a slab of reef pop up about 5 feet in front of me. It was only about 8’ x 6’ but it was bone dry! I pulled the bar back in, pushed my weight on to my front foot, jammed down on my left rail and shot out in to the flat, narrowly avoiding disaster. With eyes as wide as dinner plates, I pushed back on to my heelside rail and just managed to snatch a couple of seconds and a final turn on the shoulder before the wave died out completely. I headed out back, ready for the next one only to see James lining up for another wave in the set, totally loving life.

We hung around on the reef for another half an hour, trying to get the line-up dialed when I noticed the two locals had disappeared from the surf and were heading back to the beach. I tried shouting to James but he was too far out back to hear me…

The reason for their departure quickly became patently obvious – the wind was dropping off at an incredible rate. It was almost as if some one had shut off a fan somewhere southwest of us and we were riding the end of the breeze as the blades of the fan wound down.

I made a beeline for the beach, narrowly missing a huge section of reef in the process, and just pulled into the channel in order to body-drag the last few hundred meters, trying to expel all thoughts of sharks from my mind in the process. As my kite peeked over the shoreline, the wind gave its final death rattle and my kite fell out of the sky, gently landing on to the soft white sand. I staggered up on to the beach and turned around to see James struggling to stay on a plane and heading straight for the section of reef I’d narrowly avoided, or potentially more catastrophic, the impact zone of the next break. After a couple of dicey minutes, he just managed to get up-wind of the large rock reef and ended up walking back over the slab towards the beach with his kite high above his head and his surfboard under his arm. I dumped my harness, grabbed my surfboard and paddled out to keep him company on his long drag back to the shore.

Fortunately it took hardly anytime at all for James to get back in to the beach so we packed down and started our 2 kilometer walk along the coastal path back to the car park at Gnarabup for some beer, some guitar, a catch-up with fisherman Dan (who was totally oblivious to the dicey end to the session) and a quick sunset before heading back to Maggie’s to carry on boozing.

All said and done it was just another day living the good life in WA…

Margaret River - Day One

Dan and I pulled into Margaret River as the sun was setting across the vineyards of southwest WA and, as tempted as I was to stop for a photo, the threat of rogue kangaroos throwing themselves in front of tourists’ rental cars was too great to warrant hanging around - even for a couple of minutes.  We pulled into the dimly lit main drag of the town around 8, grabbed a slab of beer from the drive through bottle-shop and settled into our hostel for the night.  Dan was looking as forward to getting stuck in to the beer as I was about the promise of big waves and a cranking wind forecast for the next morning.  I was not going to be disappointed.

The next morning, at the crack of 11, we blitzed through the 15km drive to Prevelley Beach after a hastily slung together breakfast of coco-pops and apples.  I couldn’t believe what I saw as we pulled into the car park above the point where the Margaret River spilled into the Southern Ocean. 

Everywhere we looked along the rugged coast were huge rights and lefts – a combination of enormous 10-foot faces and heavy barreling lips, primed for surfers and spongers bobbing around in the water.  Unfortunately, the wind was yet to really start blowing (shown by the windsurfer wobbling out in the photo just beyond the cripple’s head on the left) and I realised I’d left the fins for my board back at the hostel in Margaret River.  How convenient…

We shot back to Margaret River, grabbed a quick sandwich at the hostel and wasted no time getting back down to the beach.  As we turned off the main road to head to a southern section of reef break at Gnarrabup Beach, just south of Prevelley, we saw the hideous curtains of Paul, Tom and Paddy’s van flapping in the breeze in the motor just ahead of us.  Unreal - in a country the size of Australia, with as much kiteable coastline as WA, we randomly bumped into the Bristol Boys - again!

Both of our cars parked up at Gnarabup Beach and Dan was all too happy to show the guys his newly acquired X-rays.  I snapped a couple of shots for posterity’s sake and grabbed my gear to head down to the beach with the first case of kite-inspired butterflies I’d suffered from in as long as I could remember.  The water was fairly flat on the inside, but the wind was coming over the headland and gusting like hell.  Things were not helped by the fact that the wind line seemed to coincide with a section of reef that was sucking dry between thunderous sets.  

I walked down towards the thin ribbon of sand that made up the beach, laden with my surfboard, Dan’s twintip, and my 7 and 9.  As I got onto the coastal path I saw that there were a couple of guys pumping up 7s on the beach.  Knowing there were going to be other people out with me had a fairly calming effect on the butterflies slamming into the wall of my stomach lining until I found out they were locals who were totally new to kitesurfing and couldn’t even get off the beach due to the wind swirling off the headland.  No matter, though.

I grabbed my 9, pumped up, took Dan’s twinnie (mainly so I wouldn’t have to worry about the gusting wind, the reef, AND trying to gybe a directional in the mahoosive waves) and ran towards the water.  Paul and Paddy had come down to have a look and decide whether or not it was worth going out after I’d gone out as the team guinea pig.  Again. 

Paddy launched my kite, which was intermittently luffing and shooting forward in the gusts, and I attempted a beach start that saw me fly off the beach (leaving the board behind) and slam face-first in to the water about twenty feet off the shoreline.  I resurfaced to the howls of the boys’ laughter from the beach.

After body dragging back in with a head full of water continuously spilling from my sinuses, I legged it back up the beach, fighting both to keep the 9 flying and keep my feet on the ground to begin my second attempt.  I stood on the beach, moving the kite to keep it falling from the sky above me and…..success! 

I wasn’t feeling brave enough to go out strapless on my surfboard due to the gusts (and also due to my being a total pansy) but had a pretty good session anyway, switching between my 9 and 7 and trying to avoid the massive walls of white water washing in over the reef. It was pretty decent on the inside once I got out of the wind shadow coming off the point and I even managed to throw a couple of unhooked raileys in for good measure.  (Thanks for the photos, Brenzo!)   

Even Paddy managed to choke down a spoonful of cement and hardened up enough to pump up a 7 and come and kite until he was too cold to stay on the water.

Dan spent the afternoon fishing from the pier off the boat ramp, with Paul and Tom keeping him company, and I kited until the wind got too gusty to even attempt anything hooked in, let alone unhooked.  We retreated to the car park to grab a couple of beers and watch the sunset only to get stopped by a guy who’d seen a another kiter go down in the surf out back by the reef.  This cued a fairly frantic half an hour looking for him in the blinding light that was bouncing off the water from the setting sun.  Long story short – he was fine.  Tired and a little embarrassed, but fine.  Suddenly I felt fairly justified in my decision to play it safe. 

No sooner than I put my gear down behind the hire car and began to struggle out of my knackered wetsuit, James (another English kiter we’d met in Lancelin) pulled into the car park in his battered Jeep Cherokee, having just driven down from a few days of kiting in Scarborough.  I think he was pretty gutted to have missed the day’s session but was stoked to have a second bite at the cherry on the following day, a day which promised cleaner waves and wind. 

We finished our beers and headed back to Margaret River to carry on the drinking for the night, both looking forward to the promise of another windy day on the horizon, stoked in the fact that this was only day one and the next was looking even better.

Lano to Joondalup

I woke up early enough to see the sun rise over Lancelin one last time, then used the remainder of our internet credit to check the wind forecast for Margaret River before starting to pack up all our gear.  It was looking very promising, indeed - 25 knots from the southwest with a 3 metre swell running.  With a forecast like that, we couldn’t get moving south fast enough for my liking.

As I stumbled around in the cool, early morning air (after staying up til 3 to watch United beat Arsenal 3-1 at the Emirates), I managed to pack up all of our gear and load the van bound for Joondalup.  The plan was to arrive in the suburb north of Perth, drop Dan at the hospital to check out his sprained ankle to make sure he’d be back on his feet in a couple of weeks, then pick up a hire car, swing by the bank and get on the road for Margaret River.  Shouldn’t take more than a few hours, right?  Wrong.

We pulled up at the door of the emergency room and Dan hobbled off to the reception while I unloaded two massive kite bags, a surfboard, a cooler full of beer (a prerequisite when in Australia, regardless of the distance you’re traveling), Dan’s duffel bag, Dan’s computer bag, my camera gear and a few other bags I’d hastily packed that morning, dumping them onto the pavement leading into the hospital doors.  I found a nice spot in the shade, pulled out a magazine and settled down to wait for Dan to get the all clear from the Joondulup Hospital osteopath.  It looked like it was going to be a long wait…  Everyone who walked past my street-side gypsy encampment couldn’t resist passing comment… “Odd place to camp, mate.”  “Not gonna catch much in the way of waves there mate!” Each one funnier than the last…

After sitting on the pavement for an hour, one of the nurses came outside to tell me Dan had broken his ankle and I might as well move everything into the hospital while we waited for him to see a consultant.  I groaned, asked if she was joking about the break, but obviously didn’t have to wait for a second invitation to get out of the sun and into the AC.  The nurse was really helpful and reassuring.  She had gone to Bellaire High School in Houston and had already struck up a great rapport with Dan.  We were lucky enough to have caught the hospital on the first day of a brand new six-month rotation of recently qualified doctors.  It has to be said, the nurses looked as excited as we were at the prospect. 

So, after spending the last 12 months in various hospitals around the UK, this was not the auspicious start to our two month West Australian kitesurfing trip I had anticipated.  No matter now, though. 

Dan dealt with the news quite well and seemed to be enjoying telling anyone who would listen that he’d broken his ankle doing some gnarly kitesurfing in Lancelin.  As the hours got higher on the clock, so did the height of his jump. 20, 30, 40, 50 feet…I think by the time we got seen he’d done a 120 foot, double handle-pass kiteloop or something along similar lines…  The only people who were getting a slightly different version of this story were the hospital doctors (for obvious reasons – the main one being insurance coverage).  The version for them was that he’d fallen off a kerb, into a drain and broken his ankle.  The collective looks of the medical staff suggested that they didn’t believe a word of it.  Particularly when we told them there wasn’t even alcohol involved.

So shortly after Dan was discharged from the hospital with crutches and a temporary cast, I managed to get us a hire car and we were en route to Margaret River with only rush-hour traffic and a few hundred km standing in our way…