First off, let me apologize for being a slacker as far as updating the blog. But to be honest, I am frequently surprised at how busy I can get even when I'm unemployed. Checking different spots for waves and surfing them takes up a considerable amount of time! Anyhow, I did want to share some more thoughts about the big swell we had here about 10 days ago now.
It was in the late afternoon of Tuesday, March 18th that the first forerunners of the swell started hitting the island. My friend Jason and I were chomping at the bit to see what kind of waves would be rolling in. So we headed to Maria's in Rincon where we were joined by about 80 of our closest surfing buddies in the water. The conditions were good, offshore wind blowing and the sets were building ranging in size from about 1 ft to 3ft overhead. Now those are some pretty big freakin waves but I had been out in similar conditions once before so that helped relax me a little bit. Another thing which I learned to do is not look backwards at the wave right before it breaks - or let me rephrase - at least you shouldn't think about it rationally as it is swells up behind you. Any rational thought would tell you to freak out, panic or release your bowels. So no, I didn't do any of those, but instead just worked on timing, paddling hard and catching some of these beasts. And when you do catch one, holy cow, what a feeling! The drop, the speed, the bottom turn as you go back up the face of it and the push the wave keeps giving you - awesome!!! I was able to catch about 3 or 4 waves and after my last one, I just rode the whitewater back to the beach. And on the way in, I saw a $5 bill floating in the water which I grabbed - as if to pound into my head with the subtlety of a sledgehammer - this was your lucky day!!!
As bright and inspiring as Tuesday night was, Wednesday morning was dark and gloomy. The true size of the swell had really filled in and its menace was accentuated by the overcast skies. Outside my front yard, huge 25 foot waves were churning, in a pretty chaotic manner looking extremely gnarly and nasty. But sure enough, there were a couple heads bobbing out there by the main break about 150 - 200 yards out. You couldn't have paid me $5000 to go out in that stuff, so I tried to ponder what made these guys go out there? As Jason explained to me, these guys are "chargers". Chargers are surfers who will "charge" any wave they see, regardless of how big and nasty it looks, or whether they have ever surfed the break before. Chargers are inebriated in self confidence of their surfing abilities, desire to conquer new challenges - or as Jason speculated about the guys out in the water this morning "maybe they just smoked too much weed".
So as we were watching this scene, I picked out this head that was bobbing up out of the water every few seconds. Was it a bodyboarder? Or maybe some lunatic who went in there to swim or bodysurf? No way, this guy looked like he was in trouble. Jason and I ran down the beach to keep up with him, not really sure what we could do to help since we couldn't go into the water very far ourselves without getting into the same mess. But we followed him down a few hundred yards to where he finally washed up onto the beach. Like a scene out of a movie, he stumbled onto the beach and collapsed. We dragged him a little farther from the ocean and after about 2 minutes of gasping, he finally told us how his leash snapped and that he was caught on the inside (the area where the wave breaks) and couldn't get out. So he tried to swim parallel with the beach for a little bit, while constantly getting hammered and held down by huge waves. "I thought I was gonna die, bro" this young American charger repeatedly muttered. There was blood all over his arms and legs which were lacerated in various locations as a result of multiple collisions with the reef.
Jason and I decided to head to Rincon to look for some smaller protected spots that we might be able to surf. While we were there we rode by Tres Palmas, which was looking super huge but not super organized. Tons of onlookers were onhand and I remember seeing another surfer on the side of the road who had an abrasion/laceration about the size of a dartboard on his back. After all the nastiness I had seen earlier in the morning, I was happy to find refuge at some spots in Aguadilla that were "merely" head high.
Here are some more pictures that I took:
A (kamikaze) surfer drops into a huge wave at Tres Palmas.
Maria's in Rincon can't handle the size of the swell.
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