The swell during this week was nothing spectacular, so I mainly stuck with the two most consistent breaks in the Krui area, the Peak and the Point (aka Tanjung Setia/Ujung Bocur).
At the beginning of this week, while Krui Lefts was still working, my board got structurally damaged in the most unfortunate circumstance. While I was duck diving a shoulder high wave, my board slipped out of my grip and I felt my fins knock my shin. After recovering my board I could feel sharp irregularities on the rail of my board, and I realised that my deck was creased.
I was kinda pissed cause I wasn’t even doing some crazy steep takeoff or getting wiped out on double overhead waves. It was just a pretty average day for the waves, and my board was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, when the lip probably hit it smack on
Anyways, after getting it repaired, I continued surfing the Peak. On one of the sessions, for the first time, I felt that I really clicked with the waves, in the sense that I was timing all of my takeoffs correctly and hardly missing any of my attempts at all. It was a surprising and awesome feeling, as if there was a voice in the back of my head, confidently telling me, “Alright, you gotta paddle there and start scratching then” or “Nope, this one’s too far away, just leave it”. For the first time, I had a complete session where I was in complete confidence of myself.
When someone in the line-up asked me how long I had been surfing, she was surprised, noting that I seemed more advanced than the 5 months I had surfed. I took this compliment as a feather in my hat. (Note however that consistently being confident in changing surf conditions is what separates me from the advanced surfers)
On one of the other rare and special moments at the peak, the left was walling up slightly. I was also consistently taking off without fail here and managed to wing in a sharp pump and a few turns here and there. In this session, I also felt super confident in my maneouvres that I was genuinely frustrated my top turns were not sharp enough.
Unfortunately, on one off my bottom turns, I didn’t compress my front knee enough, and the wall of the face pushed my yet-to-be fully recovered ankle inwards, causing some pain and swelling all over again. So, I had to take it easy for 2 days, taking anti-inflammatory pills and letting the swelling subside.
All in all, there were no physical feats to measure this week’s progress, but I could definitely feel my improvement in consistency, wave-reading and confidence.
