Ah Raglan... that storied locale for left-handed point break surf. Yup... been there... "surfed" it... had my ass handed to me. No excuses though as I was nowhere near in good enough shape to handle that place let alone comfortable enough on my board or in the water... makes sense as I hadn't surfed much for the previous year or so... the board was a major problem... bought in haste right after I arrived in NZ... severely undersized for me even if I had been on my game. I didn't so much surf at Raglan as sit just outside of the main break with a ring side seat to some world class lefts and the people who call them home. A few days later I bought a brand new fun shape and moved on.
Over the following weeks I absconded away from whomever I happened to be visiting when the surf appeared to be good and scored good days around Taranaki, the Wairapa and the northwest coast of the South Island. Those days were a combination of long and amazingly beautiful drives, sleeping on the beach, in the car or at the odd and random public house, killer grub and stormy, scary, bigger than I was used to surfing.
Then I went to Australia and things were completely different ;-) I benefitted from my hard weeks of work in NZ. The surf in Oz, albeit fickle for that time of year, was generally smaller, cleaner and warmer. I had some great days on the Beacroft Head surfing with my cousins. The best and most traumatic day was at a place called "Golf Course Reef". A head high to +2ft south swell had come in and the place was firing... and crowded. I waited a while and chatted up some local blokes in the car park to get a feel for the place, show a bit of respect and get the low down on the break itself. I paddled out with a few fellows, caught a couple of great rights and then proceeded to lose track of the line-up and take off on one way, way, way to deep. I ended up hanging on to my board so as not to injure the folks on either side of me... the board hit the water, bounced up and hit me, I hit the water and then the wave rolled me over the rock reef. I paddled out the break zone without any discernible injuries and surfed for another couple of hours. Later that night after I pealed off my wetsuit I noticed some pretty intense left side pain and a big ding in the side of my rib cage. I sleepless night at the family cottage and visit to the local ER the next day reveled a few fractured and separated ribs. Interesting thing to note here is that the ER visit only took about 2 hours and cost AU$180 for the doc, an X-ray and and unltrasound... take that Congress! I didn't surf much after that as I headed north to dive the GBR and figured I'd better heal up a bit first before I paddled out again ;-)
Unfortunately I don't have too many shots as I was offten surfing alone but here are a few...
This room was about AU$10 oer night and came with a great pub and separate bistro downstairs... killer!
Yep... that's really what they call it... and here's why...
View Larger Map
The area is basically the western side of a nearly perfect conical volcano that dominates the landscape of the area... given the surfable area that covers about 180 degrees on the compass there is surf somewhere on Tranaki most days... hot damm!
one of the many breaks at Taranaki.
And another... the paddle out was a bit sketchy here ;-)
I was fortunate to meet up with, camp and surf with some fellow travleres out along the 'naki...
Mauro and Bruno from Brazil...
... and Martin and Gavin from Germany and Ireland. The spot in the background that we surfed that day was interesting... there weren't any rocks when we got in a high tide... ha! Duped again!
A clean, glassy, warm day on the southern tip of the Wairapa.
And now for something completely different... a video postscript... this film was the national winner of the 2008 New Zealand Amateur Surf Film Festival... the creator is currently working on a full length film covering the Sout:East:West:North (S:E:W:N) aspects of NZed wave riding... dig it:
Many thanks to Jan Baur (for introducing me to the maker of this film and sending me the link) and to Nico Brikke for making it and to both for a killer day out at the Wairapa... cheers.
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