BONE-CRUNCHING
What I’d heard about One Eye is that – even now, 20 years later – it can deliver one of the worst windsurfing wipeouts of all time. (The next two sentences are not for the feint-hearted!). There’s this rumor that one participant got a double fracture of the lower leg, because One Eye’s lip threw him onto the flats and he couldn’t absorb the hard landing from his aerial. His leg just buckled and the broken bone went through the deck into the core of the board. With this horror story in mind, you have to have a lot of respect, even just looking at the wave. And yet One Eye is such a unique beauty viewed from the channel. On good days, the wave breaks as such a perfect tube for hundreds of metres alongside the reef and allows incredibly fast rides and huge airs. Whoever knows how to read the wave – and doesn’t take too much risk – will kick out at the end with a big smile on their face heading back to the peak. One Eye can give you the fastest ride of your life, but if you miscalculate it, you’ll feel the full power of the Indian Ocean. Crushed equipment and reef cuts included. At low tide, the reef is an insurmountable razor-sharp obstacle for windsurfers and home to sea urchins with the size of a grapefruit with pointy needles. There are better things in life than swimming after your stuff in those shallow waters, with your harness ahead to protect you from the coral.