Wave of my life

Well, it happened last night; wave of my life. My roommate Michael and I went to this right named Nipussi which is about 25 minutes from here. It was late in the afternoon/evening and by the time we got there we only had maybe 30-40 minutes to surf before we had to head back; there are no lights out here so when it gets dark you're in trouble, especially in a small boat. The swell was rolling through really big and a few of them were breaking on the high tide. It’s one of the only places that’s really doable on an onshore wind, which we certainly had last night. So Michael and I find our way to the takeoff zone and some waves started rolling through; much bigger than I/we were expecting. The sets were overhead and some of the super-clean ones that were breaking about 50 meters away from us might have been a foot overhead and all of them were surprisingly clean. I let a few roll by since we’d never been there before and I wanted to get a feel for the place before I dove in. Michael was raving about the wave after his 2nd ride; a long one that just held up the whole way and never closed out and he ripped it apart with several big turns and reo’s. Right as he was telling me this I saw one come in and decided to give it a shot. I turned, paddled and it picked me up and I made the quick drop and I saw something I’d never seen before. Before me was a head-high masterpiece; a bowly, sucking wave that looked like it went forever. My instincts told me to get my ass moving and get moving I did. Before I knew it I was pumping on a high line, racing down the face to the bottom and back up again. The wave never closed out and just kept building speed and holding its size and my speed kept up the whole way. Nipussi finally decided it was time to end as it started losing some size and barreling over in front of me and I pulled in to the barrel with about a 2% chance to make it out and I certainly made it into a clean, squatting tube and it was sucking over me but I wasn’t even close to making it out so I got sucked up and over and thrown down, but it was fairly deep water so no reef rodeo. As I collected my thoughts and the board and looked back towards Michael I was about 100-125+ yards or so from where I started; the paddle back took at least 5 minutes. No hopping, no negotiating sections, nobody else out, nothing. I had a head-high, bowly wave that peeled for 100+ yards all to myself and it was amazing; the ride of my life. We’re not “scoring” by Mentawai standards this trip but if catching waves like that is considered to be a sub-par outing around here, this is the most amazing place to surf, anywhere. So we promptly had a little impromptu celebration of Bintang’s and cheers or “good on ya, mate” depending on your nationality back at the restaurant and I was the toast of the resort. It was awesome.

Couple that with a tuna that the footy players speared a few hours earlier and we had the best tuna sashimi that any of us had ever had. If all sushi tasted like that I could get into eating it all the time.

Sort of a slow day around here but we did another Nipussi run later in the morning and had a blast. A bit smaller than yesterday but the sets were still shoulder/head-high. I did, however, have my first serious board injury. The RSQ's nose completely buckled about 4 inches down but is still held on by the glass on top. I was caught deep and it was wicked shallow and I think as I was getting tossed the nose of the board got crammed in between some coral and just buckled. It's fixable, I guess, but I'm debating just leaving it here since it's been beat up so badly and has so much epoxy filler in numerous gashes and punctures from the reef and I might make some little kid's dream come true and have Ray deliver it to one of the local villages but I guess I'll look to make one last attempt at saving the old girl before I give up on it but it certainly is in dire straits. I think I'll be reading the rest of the afternoon and resting some new wounds. Thank god for my Quik jacket; it saved quite a nasty injury today and I still have some really nice scratches down my back that look like I got clawed by a bear but had I not been wearing the neoprene jacket I might be sidelined a bit with a nasty set of deep gashes from the reef.