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…