"I only come when it's big". No this isn't a Jenna Jameson quote, this refers to my life over the last three months. Wha? Okay, here it goes, I, Cody Townsend, have been trying to live as a responsible young adult. I am a full time Linguistics/Language major at UC Santa Cruz. I wait tables full time an upscale, 4 diamond restaurant. I have a gf to please and dog to feed, bills to pay and money to save for the upcoming winter. Essentially I lead the life of a normal suburban male. "Well I don't wanna fucking be NORMAL!" Anyways, my lacking presence at the local surfing and kitesurfing beaches has not gone unnoticed by my friends. "Where the fuck you've been Cody!?" "Why the fuck haven't you been kiting?" "I thought you died" Fast forward to today.
Forecast is calling for 12-16 foot NW swell at 20 second intervals. (to all those not oceanographers, that means big, real fucking big) Wind forecast is calling for 25-27 knots WNW. What this translates to a kitesurfer, such as myself, is like a forecast for 20 hookers and pound of blow to Robert Downey Jr.
So after checking out the likes of Rob Machado, Cory Lopez, Ratboy and my boy Josh Mulcoy tear new assholes in the double overhead waves at Steamer Lane today, (The Coldwater Classic surf contest was taking place today here in Santa Cruz.) I decide it's about time to get ten kinds of nasty. The wind was cranking and the waves were macking.
I drive up the coast to Scott's Creek to arrive a couple fellow kitesurfers saying, "where the fuck you been?"
"I only come when it's big"
And big it fucking was. Fellow kitesurfer and Mavericks charger, Mike "Malibu" something-or-other was claiming 18-20, 20+ on the biggest sets. I couldn't tell, the waves were too damn far away to tell. As we sat there, no one was jumping off there asses to get out there. So I state, "So you guys going or what?" Don't really get anything back, don't think they're scared, just in awe by the size of the waves. Then I bolt back to my car, throw on my suit, grab my kites, and kite/tow board and haul-ass down the cliff down to the water. As I'm rigging, I notice the others meandering to put on thier suits and grap their gear. "Fuck," I thought, "I'm gonna be the fucking wind dummy (i.e. guinea pig)" Whatever.
I throw up my 8 metre kite, suss out the wind, grab my board and head up the beach to get to my launch zone.
I sit. And I sit. I wait and then wait some more. The fucking shorebreak was 8-10 feet. I waited for a gap in the waves. Wasn't getting one. Then spy a break and bolt, throw the board on my feet and power up.
It was sort of riding like a bike, but not kiting for more than a month definetely left some kite/board feeling and touch back on the beach.
The energy at that point in the ocean is unbelievable. It feels like at any moment a two story mountain can come out of nowhere at flick you to your death in an instant. The wind, and the size of the waves, make you feel very very petty, very weak and very alone. I can easily say it's not the most pleasant of feelings. But then again, it focuses you, it forces you to be alert, it forces you to be more alive than you've ever been, more aware than you've ever been. It puts you to a higher consciousness.
I tacked at about 1 to 1.5 miles out, cut up against the wind and headed for the main bowl. The legs were still shaky for lack of kiting. I definitely wasn't the most comfortable I've ever been on a kiteboard. Anyways, at what seems like ten miles from the beach I slowly see a mound starting to build. "Sweet, looks like a good one." That far out, with no points of reference and no judgement of scale the wave looks like it'll be a big one, not huge, but a good big one. As I'm racing to keep up with the wave, I notice about three surfers scrambling to the horizon. (They would later say they were still out there they said cause they couldn't get in and where waiting for the tide to drop a bit so the shorepound wasn't so bad.) When I notice they're scrambling like a bunch of chicken's running from the axe wielding farmer I suddenly realize that this fucking wave is a monster. A fucking huge mother fucking monster. At this point I'm commited. And from that point on I would feel more speed then I've ever felt on a surf/kiteboard before. I would be more scared on a wave face than ever before. I would truly feel that if I fell, I WAS going to die. I approached the bottom of the wave and looked up to see a feathering lip towering above me. The only thing I could do was turn on to my towsides, get to the middle of the wave at start racing the wall forming in front of me. I ended up going so fast that my lines were going slack. Now think about that for a minute. I was catching up to my kite that was being blown by 28 to 35 mph winds. I kept having to fade back into the bowl. Much like slowing down to let your would be killer have a better chance of killing you, I had to keep turning back towards the bowl to keep the lines of my kite taught. I could feel the wind churning behind my back, I could feel the wind the wave was generating and I could not hear anything but the roar of the 25 foot wave violently churning behind me. I was fucking scared. It was one of the single best moments of my life. I rode out the rest of the wave to shore, got to the beach and boosted my kite so that I would jump up to the dry safety of the beach. I look up the cliff to the filmer above and he says "Holy SHIT! that was a bomb!"
A medium sized wave with one of the few surfers out up.
http://static.flickr.com/28/55424072_28b4aa56aa.jpg?v=0
A big, big wave. But with no scale.
http://static.flickr.com/24/55424071_81ab8c51f4.jpg?v=0
