A ROAD LESS TRAVELLED.

It’s easy to get jaded with surfing, with life, with anything. The constant pile-on pressure of the modern world doesn’t give you a second to breathe. No time to really smell that expensive coffee you’re too busy Instagramming. Our sanctuary is the ocean. Our happy place. Hell, it IS The Good Place.

Being in the brine is the closest a lot of us get to spirituality. A communion with nature that washes off the stresses of the day. Our beatific worship in Neptune’s salty dominion.

Unless it’s busy.

At which point you daydream unpleasant thoughts. Stare daggers at greedy SUP riders. Mentally flip off the ‘oh, sorry I seem to keep catching all these waves just that bit further out than you’ longboarders. Making do with just plain loathing for other shortboarders. As for the folks who you aren’t sure are retro fashionistas who ‘are all about the glide’, or just beginners on kook barges, them you just dodge.
Much as the surf industry is contracting, like all retail, it doesn’t seem to be making a dent in numbers in the water. That graph is only going one way. Indeed it seems that all 1,600 people watching the WSL live webcasts on FB seem to be out most days.
At your local there’s not a lot you can do but surf early or late. At this time of year you can dawny the shit out of it. Being in the water at 5am is no bother. Well. Apart from the whole dragging your sorry sleepy-assed carcass out of bed scenario, but it’s always worth it. A duck dive is the best wake up call in the world. Instant zing on those synapses. Suddenly you’re back in the room.

The other option is take a break. Go seek less crowded shores. Before the Russians and Chinese get fully into surfing, at which point it really will all be over… I jest. But there are still empty places with great waves even on our own shores. You’ve just got to put in the effort. Striving for stuff makes the rewards greater. Most folks would rather surf an average wave alone or with their mates, than an insane one with 100 people. There’s only so much time in your life you can allot to surfing. You should enjoy it, not be frustrated by it.

On that note there’s a few joints in this issue which you can go to and surf without crowd stress. We’ve done the hard yards, sweated in tropical airports and seen sights in tropical airport toilets that have scarred us for life to bring you this reportage. Enjoy it, get inspired and emulate it.

The other option is of course to give up on the ocean and pay for your freshwater waves. It’s all going a bit mental on that front with the new American Wave Machines lake breaking the internet just as everyone was ripping the repetitive nature of the Kelly Water Feature comp. The Cove is coming to Edinburgh and Bristol, will it scale up? Then the other pool style Occy is backing is digging in Queensland. Mad old times. Of course Slater’s tub might as well be on the moon as it’s not for the likes of you and I.
It’s a strange old time in surf land but the waves keep breaking and statistically world wide the bulk of ‘em go unridden…

Sharpy
Editor

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