ASSUME NOTHING
As I watched this perfect left-hander go off I could not help but feel a little intimidated by the whole scene. With so much surf culture surrounding this area, you can’t help but feel a little out-of-place. Surfers at times can be very protective of their local spot, so then to add some windsurfers into the mix could make things a little dicey. With everything that was going on, I didn’t really even think of windsurfing until Robby tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘going to be hard I think mate’. At that moment the magnitude of what we were trying to accomplish came into perspective. Neither of us had seen this place break before and our assumption that we could just show-up and start sailing seemed more and more unlikely. Robby started talking to some of the local guys that he knew and to my surprise they were quite happy that we were going to try to sail the wave. My demeanor changed right there from ‘let’s get out of here’, to ‘hey, maybe we can do this’. There was a helicopter flying around watching the surf and one of the local guys even called the pilot asking if he could land so that we could talk to him about taking photos. Unfortunately he couldn’t take his side doors off, which was a necessity for the camera crew. Everyone was very accommodating and friendly, a far cry from some of the locations I have been to around the world. In southern Australia one time a guy with a gun chased me out of the water and told if I was to come back I’d be a dead man.
If we were to sail this iconic spot, it wasn’t going to be about whose ass we kissed, but rather, if Mother Nature would deal us a kind hand.