And Here´s the Pitch

If there is one thing that Chile has in abundance it´s swell More than any other place that I have visited, Chile has the most consistently large waves I´ve ever seen. And with that one adapts to these swells. I´ve found that over the last few months there hasn´t been any times where the waves have scared me, until yesterday. You see, the waves here are big, but relatively friendly. The bigger the wave gets the mellower it seems to be. When the waves are head high out here at La Puntilla or Punta de Lobos, you can easily find some very hollow waves. However as soon as it gets over double overhead (which happens more often than not) the wave backs off and becomes a big wall of water. It´s fun to cruise on but doesn´t provide much of a scare. And with that, it is really easy to get accustomed to big waves.

Yesterday was a bit different. It has been big the last few weeks, since my parents have left and so I´ve been paddling out on my 6´10´´ lightning bolt. It has more foam so it allows me to paddle into these bigger waves. Yesterday it looked like it would be a bit of fun so a group of us (Chris, Brian the Lion (the only selfgiven nickname to stick, plus he´s bald), Brian the Painter and I decided to go for a surf.

It was pretty fun when we first got out, a little windy but once on the waves it was well groomed and they were long. I got the first wave and rode it almost all the way into shore. I paddled back out and realized that the wave I had caught was really only a little inside wave and so I had to take a hand ful of even bigger waves on the head. That really doesn´t bother me too much. I´ve gotten used to getting rolled around in the whitewash here, I just duckdive, bearhugging my board once underwater, and I know that I´ll eventually cork up.

So I finally get all the way back out and am sitting much wider in better position for the sets. It´s a weird place for me, due to the swell angle, I wasn´t used to surfing out this far wide. It was incredibly difficult to get into the waves because of all the wind and I started to realize how steep the waves were. I miss getting into a couple of waves and then I finally line up for a pretty good size set wave and I´m paddling hard down the face, but the wind won´t let me get in and suddenly I´m stuck in the lip of the wave with nowhere to go. And for the first time in a long while, as I stare down the distance to the bottom of the wave, I´m scared. I ended up being alright. I took the punishment that accompanies getting stuck in the lip (the worst might be having to paddle through the remainder of the set, because you never get stuck in the lip on the last wave of the set), and I paddled back out and even though I´ve taken far worse beatings in my life I was all jacked up on adrenaline. I actually felt really good. But a few moments later, I began to realize how shortlived the adrenaline can be and even though it was still there, pumping, I felt how quick it seems to diminish. It was fun for me to get something a little be out of my element, it´s been a while since that has happened but I think that the better feeling for me is just getting the stoke of a good surf, not necessarily of a huge wave. I´d much rather have surfed La Puntilla a few feet smaller yesterday, and gotten a few barrels and played out there than getting the feeling of survival.