SKITTLED
For his first ride I could see he was sitting pretty deep of a fairly big bowl and was urging him to get moving as I was sailing back out in the channel – or at least what I thought was the channel! It was lighter wind and more side-shore than the day before, so the ability to gun out of sketchy situations wasn’t there.
He bottomed turned and I was like ‘oh no, he’s gonna eat shit!’ The whitewater engulfed him, he came out, and then it swallowed him up again. For sure he was gone, but, like Houdini, he managed to escape its clutches once again. As I went over the shoulder I heard him hooting at not being mowed down – and then my heart sank. The exact situation that had haunted me before coming here was all of a sudden right in front of me. A wave bigger than anything that’d come through all day was bearing down on me. I didn’t see Jason, but apparently he was on it, saw me and thought, ‘he’s stuffed … ’