It took a long time for me to learn how to catch waves. I was either paddling too far in front of the wave or too far back. I spent a lot of time eyeball to eyeball with the pit entering the trough like a spear with my surfboard.
I paddled, fruitlessly, for more waves than anyone else in the history of surfing. I paddled until my arms flopped into the water uselessly. I paddled so much I didn’t have any paddle left to paddle with. I just, sort of, drifted in with the seaweed.
I wasn’t without ability, though. I could cling to my surfboard like a human leach. I could hold on when it was sideways, backwards, upside down and even pointed forwards, when that occasionally happened. There wasn’t a small breaking wave born that could wrestle the board from my grip.
It was this desperate ability that directed me to the soup lines where you were guaranteed a ride no matter how bad you were at catching waves. The soup line was a sixties surfing term of the white foam left after the wave breaks and is usually the first step in learning to ride a surfboard. A gremmy, another surfing term of the sixties, was a beginning surfer of young age. The word was taken from the small creatures that crawled from the surf onto the beach once a year during the largest full tide under a full moon.
The foam ball or soup is a true measure of a board rider and anyone who surfs has had his or her measure in this violent turbalence. To paddle like mad and in the end the final, futile scratch to meet the immeasurable strength of that exploding body of water was a barren and awesome
experience. It has kept many a manly surfer from paddling out into large waves. Yet, I met my fortune in that violent world, an honor despised by accomplished surfers.
What a ride. No smooth drop on a clean swell to the trough where with gentle pressure you’re trimmed and sailing, setting up for a move. Oh no, with an immediate and forceful collection you are gathered up and hurled to the forefront where, if you don’t quickly trim you will be collected and hurled once again.
I found that the key to surviving this unorthodox method of surfing was to stay low on the board and, baby, when those big foam balls pick you up and hurl you through the air like a flea on a javelin, you had better be low to the board.
It became simple science. Survive catching the foam, make it quickly to your feet and immediately trim the thirty pound board. Maintain that low center of gravity and keep your eyes open for that all important peek out of the hurtling spray. The rebreak is the kewpie doll. It’s the prize at the end of the effort.
On big days, I would hurtled along with the soup across a sand bar and would ride a reforming wave over deeper water. I learned to go over and around sections and loved to exit with a prone pull out that flew off the back of the wave.
I was a soup line freak. I use to dream foam ball. Flying in whirling foam. Perpetual doom at the heels, roaring and hissing, the floor erupting into dragon heads and flying away, mist in the wind.
Being a mere mutant of a surfer, I still sought, in my heart, the ability to catch those ever so clean humps of green seawater. It was at a surfeing contest, strangely enough, that I caught my first real wave. And what a wave it was.
I had positioned myself in front of the outside reef trying to take the soup into the inside shore break where competing surfers were very gutsy in sectioning overhead waves. So far, I had not found my way in.
The water was chopped by gusting on shore winds and the waves were sectioning quickly when they didn’t hold. It was an eight-foot swell that was moving fast and growing. I just wanted one good ride to the inside, going flat out, hell bent for the beach.
I was still trying to reach the inside break as soup line after soup line left me short, the rebreak escaping beneath me. Finally, by staying as close to the jagged point as I could, I found a way in.