After another travel debacle of getting back to Kuala Lumpur to attend to family matters (The overnight bus from Krui to Jakarta broke down and was delayed by more than 8 hours, so I hopped onto another bus to the closest airport to catch a flight to Jakarta #IndoTravelStories ), I returned to Krui after taking a week’s break from surfing. I was looking forward to returning, as a week-long sizeable swell was forecasted to hit and this was an opportune time to get barreled.
On my second session after returning, I had a painful walk out over the reef to The Point (Scratched my fingers on the reef and reopened an old wound), I caught a couple of nice waves and was having a decent surf session when I attempted to pull off from a late take off. But alas, I was too late, and I went over the falls. My butt hit the reef and when I re-surfaced, I felt sharp edges on my rail again, and thought “Not again!”
Yes, I creased my board. Again. And in mere head high waves. Again.
I left my board at the ding repair shop, and was forced to surf my trusty old hybrid fish again, when I realised I had actually forgotten how to surf the damn thing. I couldn’t do late takeoffs as well as the Hypto replica, and I was finding myself going over the falls a lot more, since I was so used to timing myself for later takeoffs. I realised then that I had progressed to later takeoffs to the point that the rocker of my hybrid fish wasn’t sufficient if I raced down the wave face too steeply.
Eventually, I got used to the Hybrid fish again, but it took 2-3 sessions to get back used to it again, and during this time, I couldn’t push myself to progress as I had to surf conservatively.
When I finally got my Hypto replica board back, the first peak of the swell arrived, and I went out to surf Krui Rights for the first time, hearing that it was fun sized. Unfortunately, when I got there, it was anything but fun, and had become overhead scary with lots of water moving around. The lip of the wave was thick and throwing, but unfortunately not far enough forwards to create enough space for a barrel to thread.
I pearled on my first two takeoffs since this was the first time I had surfed rights in 3 weeks, and on one of the wipeouts the reef gave me a agentle back rub. Feeling a stinging sensation on my back, I was concerned I had a couple of bleeding scratches on my back. (Later on, I learnt that there was no bleeding at all) I eventually caught a decent wave, bottom turned sharply after the take-off and pumped one time before the wave outran me. Feeling stoked, I allowed myself one more before heading back in to escape from this pretty scary, yet relatively mediocre surf.
After waiting another 15 minutes, I saw a slanting dip in the horizon, and started paddling towards the beach to catch the wave. As soon as I felt the tail of my board lift, I popped up and turned both my hands towards the face, taking off smoothly as I have watched the pros do countless times. It felt good.
I put in one speed pump, but I saw the lip of the wave ahead already throwing forwards with a barrel too small to be threaded, so I straightened out for the beach, hoping to ride the white water in.
Unfortunately, the lip was so heavy that the impact of the lip crashing behind me took me out and I tumbled into the whitewash. A split moment later, I felt my nose and jaw hit the rock bottom with a slight thud. I had never hit my head on the reef before, and I was immediately alarmed, knowing how serious the consequences of my situation would be. I instinctively turned my neck sideways to prevent it from peeling off my face, as the force of the water dragged my neck and ear across the reef for a split moment.
I surfaced with a dull pain on my neck, touched my nose and saw pinkish water on my fingers. There was no way I wasn’t bleeding after that. I was grateful I hadn’t broken my neck or suffered a concussion, and had only sustained minor flesh wounds.
I patched myself up with trusty old spray-on bandage and continued surfing that afternoon at Krui Lefts, sticking conservatively to the insides to catch the smaller waves, and even then, I almost took off on a monster wedge that suddenly grew from a 5 foot face to a 10 foot one as it drained the water off the reef. *yikes*
It was awesome watching the locals take on almost double-overhead barreling surf, and join in the cheers and gasps as massives waves were ridden, surfers were getting barreled, or failed takeoffs with pencil dives to avoid the worse outcomes of a massive wipeout. My own personal highlight of that evening was successfully throwing spray with a backhand stomp of a top turn, something that has still eluded me until now.
As I paddled back in after that mild surf session, the waves were so strong, that so much chop was generated in the channel that I bumped my board on some coral heads. Once again, my board was dinged.
I knew I could easily repair the ding myself, but I had already missed 2 days of uncrowded early morning surf sessions with my Hypto replica and now this was going to be the 3rd. This added to my growing sense of frustration.
Anyway, I left my board out to dry and patched it up using some Solarez and it was good to go by the late morning. You would think by now, that I had enough bad luck, and I would be able to surf while this week long swell was here without further incident, but nope, unfortunately not.
You see, I foolishly applied some anti-inflammatory cream on my back, thinking it would speed up my recovery from the intensity of non-stop surfing . But instead, I woke up the next morning with knots in my back. I tried massaging it out, but instead worsened it by aggravating it. Merely turning my head to the right resulted in intense pain down my trapezius.
And once again, I was out of the surf for several days. It wasn’t until the 3rd day of rest that I finally went for a massage and realised that I was using the incorrect anti-inflammatory cream that was causing poor blood circulation. Or in traditional asian medicine parlance, the ‘wind’ had entered my body.
Thankfully, the cleaning lady at the surf camp (who also serves as the masseuse) noticed this and suggested using a spoon or coin to scrape my skin to stimulate the blood flow to the affected areas. (I should’ve asked her a day earlier *facepalm*) This is pretty similar to the effects of ‘cupping’ in traditional chinese medicine. I wasn’t a stranger to this form of medicine, so I Iet her do it, with some aesthetically interesting results.
I know it looks scary, but it actually provided a lot of pain relief after she was done.
This was a pretty rough week overall, mostly because I missed out on a week of particularly good surfing conditions due to circumstances that were mostly out of my control (or unintentionally caused by me). I was extremely frustrated and disappointed, but somehow I managed to keep my pessimism in check by looking forward to returning to surf, and being grateful that things were not worse. I still have a couple of weeks to go, and I still have the confidence of getting that barrel really soon.
