The Straw Draw

My hands are starting to get horribly sweaty. It's not the tropical sun getting to me though, but nerves.
It's a Saturday morning in early November 2007 and I'm stood on the sand of Tavarua Island in the South Pacific with three small lengths of palm frond gripped in my outstretched hand and I'm waiting for an American, an Australian, and chance to decide where I surf today.

Prior to a recent change in Fijian Law which had extended land rights to the coral reefs over which islanders fished (and thus meant that island surf resorts such as Tavarua and Namotu could claim exclusive access to several world-class waves) the only way that you could catch a wave at Cloudbreak if you weren't paying US$350 per night to stay on Tavarua was to turn up on changeover day and surf the short window between one set of guests departing and another set arriving.  I was staying on the mainland, next to the mangrove swamp and boat ramp that was the jumping off point for these luxury surf resorts, and had asked the lady at the place that I was staying to call ahead and book me a space on the boat out to Cloudbreak for changeover day.  Somewhere along the line there had been a mix-up and Tavarua resort were only expecting two of us, rather than the three who jumped out of our skiff into the warm, ankle deep, waters off their beach.  Their boat was already almost full of surfers who had boated in from other islands and the mainland, so there was no way around this:  we were going to have to draw straws and one of us would be heading back to the soft right-hand reef pass that none of us had travelled to Fiji to surf.  I didn't want to put the pressure on myself to draw a straw, let alone go first, so I picked a fallen palm frond out of the undergrowth and tore two long lengths and one short one from it and arranged them in my fist.  The others could decide my fate.  I offered out my hand, equidistant between the young American surfer who I'd been surfing with all week and the Australian banker who'd unapologetically dropped in on me several times the day before.  They both reached out and simultaneously drew a piece of green.

Deep breaths.

I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry.

It felt as though I was being punched in the chest but from the inside, my heart was beating so hard.

On the count of three we all opened our fists to see who would be taking the two remaining seats on the Tavarua skiff.  I exhaled loudly, tried to stifle my smile, and made ready to spend the next few precious hours grabbing my outside rail and hoping that I'd make it to the end of each wave.


This piece was also published online this week by the folks over at Approaching Lines, timed to coincide with the start of the Volcom Fiji Pro 2013.  Please head over to Approaching Lines to check out some of the ace content that they're publishing.

Repeat After Me: "I Am An Islomaniac"

The sunset before the storm, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

Newland, due just North West of my front room window.

You can set me down just here thanks. The Maldives, appearing out of the blue.

My name is Mat and I am an islomaniac.

Ok, it’s your turn to say it too. It feels better to have got it off your chest no?

I’ve been putting off admitting my fascination with islands for a while now, I kept telling myself that I needed to wait until I had visited just a few more; a couple more photos of an island from the bow of a boat, maybe another image of a rocky outcrop silhouetted against the sunset. But it’s time to lay it out: I have a thing for islands. I can’t define it but their mysterious charm has cast a spell on me. The list of islands (and groups of) that I want to visit just keeps growing, and at this rate I’d never get around to writing this so strikes me there’s no time like the present.

There are thousands of islands on the planet. Trying to find out just how many depends on how you define an island and how you categorize them; The Vikings would only class land as an island if they could pass a ship with a rudder between it and the mainland, whilst the 1861 Scottish census defined an island as “an area of land surrounded by water and inhabited by man, and where at least one sheep can graze. Some are prisons, others holy, some are glorified cruise ship docks or have been razed and re-turfed as golf resorts, some are owned by film stars, some support the world’s biggest cities, some of them are islands at high tide and linked to the mainland at low tide, and a lot of them are knee deep in bird crap.

Big, small, sandy, rocky, volcanic, coral atolls; a lone palm tree, jungle, desert or bleak and windswept; cold, tropical, temperate; oceanic, freshwater, river; remote or a stones-throw from the mainland; there are so many variables that actually coming up with a definitive number of islands on planet Earth is nigh on impossible.

But why are so many of us entranced by islands? After all, they’re just bits of land restricted by water. But maybe that’s it; are they are reflection of us as human beings, individual and often isolated? “No man is an island”? Perhaps not John Donne. Perhaps we see a bit of ourselves in them and are comforted by the fact that when we view them in our minds eye we usually see an island that’s manageably small - the sort that you could walk around and get to know.

When I was little there were times when I exclusively read books about islands: Treasure Island, The Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson and later Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies and The Beach all fuelled my over-active imagination. There was a pond near where I grew up which had a little island in the middle of it that my friends and I used to gaze at, but never swam out to it because we all knew that it would never live up to our expectations and imaginations. And these days when I look out of my window I stare straight at Newland, a rocky outcrop straight offshore from where I live. In the summer when the ocean’s flat some of us will paddle out to it but there’s nothing much to do when you get there; it’s just a lump of rock. At least one of us will still make the paddle year on year though. One day I’m sure that one of my friends will find pirate treasure out there though and make it all worth it.

George Orwell argued that we need solitude, creative work, and a sense of wonder as much as warmth, society, leisure, comfort, and security, and that “man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life.”

It would appear that it is often much easier to gain and maintain this simplicity on an island than on a comparatively sized chunk of continental land (Thurston Clarke).

Simply put, we’re more human when on an island.

Tavarua, Fiji, as previously featured in a Desert Island Discs post.

My friend Jack casting for mackerel in front of Mouls Island, Cornwall.

St Michaels Mount, Cornwall. A mythical giant used to live on it according to Cornish folklore.

Prison island: Alcatraz, shot from the ferry from San Francisco to Sausilito.

Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand.

A friend of mine found this on the wonder of the interweb. There's no way it hasn't be photoshopped to turn it into every surfer's daydream, but who cares if it fuels some searching?

If islands are your thing too then take a peek at this book, be warned though, it'll only pour fuel on the fire.

Desert Island Discs

It’s a relatively simple idea: You’re to be castaway on a desert island, and you must choose the eight records that you can have with you to while away the hours lazing under a palm tree next to the lagoon. Assuming of course that you haven’t smuggled your i-life with you.
This is the format of Britain’s longest-running “celebrity” chat-show which has been on the airwaves for getting on for seventy years - although we’re talking celebrity in the traditional BBC sense of the word; politicians, authors, scientists and the like. BBC Radio 4 is normally the domain of round the clock news, politics, current affairs and the shipping forecast, all delivered in a clipped and controlled Queens English betraying no emotion and harking back to the days when invisible radio announcers nonetheless had to wear dinner jackets to read the news. However for an hour every Saturday it opens itself up to the nostalgic musical tastes of its subjects. It’s the only time you’re ever likely to hear Eminem on Radio 4 (choice of Sir Clive Woodward, former World Cup winning England rugby coach).

So you get eight pieces of music, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible and a luxury item washed up on the beach with you. Hell-raising actor Oliver Reed requested an inflatable doll, whilst American author Norman Mailer said he’d take a supply of marijuana. Surely you could grow your own on a tropical desert island though?
Pretty sure I’d take a surfboard, a 6’2”, just on the off-chance that there’d be a smoking reef pass on the edge of the lagoon, like the one in that Tom Hanks movie. I’d guess that there’d be nowhere to develop camera film on a desert island anyway.
Now there is no way I could settle on just eight pieces of music, in fact I reckon I’d struggle with selecting eight albums because I could guarantee that the next day my mood would change and I’d be hankering for Metallica rather than Miles Davis.
Eight memorable waves? Too tough.
Eight memorable sessions? Well, perhaps I could recall and compile a list of my top eight surfs, although surely it has to be a list of seven being that one would have to be your first ever surf; the one that got you hooked on this whole endeavour.
You never know, perhaps your island would have that little kink or gap in the reef that, combined with the prevailing swell direction and trade winds would combine to produce your dream wave. All to yourself. Perhaps seven sessions out there would populate the rest of your list?

It seems to me that surfing is a pursuit that fills our brains with incredible memories, often fleeting periods that are difficult to recall in all of their wonderment as we’re so wrapped up in the moment. Can you really recall that “best wave ever”, in the same stark clarity with which you experienced it, every crystalline detail, droplet and glint of light refracting off the inside of that barrel? It only lasted a few seconds, so why not?

I love lists, but compiling this one is just too hard.
Go on - give it a go yourselves.

The Importance of Curiosity

You'll have experienced it if you've ever wandered a little way off the beaten track, and if you're carrying surfboards with you then it's a dead cert. Curiosity.

It's your curiosity that has taken you there, so it's only natural that that curiosity is returned.

Adults will often be more restrained, perhaps out of politeness or because they've seen your type before, maybe just because they're not all that surprised; but it's children who have that real insatiable sense of "who, what, where, how?" when they see a stranger in their midst, one who looks radically different and may be dragging a big funny shaped plank around with them.

But there's one important thing to remember if you're seeking or the subject of curiosity. It doesn't happen if you distance yourself from experience: a nice hotel, restaurants, taking a taxi.
It happens when you're immersed in the experience - trying to load your boardbag on, in or under the chicken bus, buying food from a market or from a roadside stall, making a mess of trying to speak the local language, bartering, mucking in and getting amongst it.
Curiosity is how we learn. Mine, yours and theirs. Embrace it.

How can you OWN a wave???

Can a person or organisation OWN a wave? It’s a tough question, and a pretty contentious issue in the world of surfing. Waves are simply energy moving through the medium of water. The water doesn’t travel, the wave energy does. So how can the culmination of kinetic energy suddenly become a possession once it reaches a certain physical location?
Some truly great waves are affected by this issue, and it’s something that, it could be argued, goes all the way back to the Sport of Kings in pre-contact Hawaii.
If it didn’t affect great waves of course, it wouldn’t be such a problem.
Cloudbreak, pictured above, is a perfect example. In the mid to late 1970’s two surf entrepreneurs made a deal with the Fijian tribe who own the island to develop a surf camp there. The tribe’s land rights extend over their fishing grounds which happen to be the coral reefs over which not just one, but two world class waves break. The island is now an exclusive surf resort accommodating up to 36 guests at a time and costing somewhere in the region of $300 per day. But you get Cloudbreak or Restaurants to yourself. In fact, the only time that other surfers can sneak a look in is to do as I did and get out to the island on a Saturday morning (changeover day) and pay to surf in the few hours between one set of guests leaving and a new load arriving - usually by helicopter.
For me it was worth it, but is it right?
In pre-contact Hawaii, certain breaks such as Sunset were the sole playgrounds of Royalty and off limits to commoners. In 1950’s and 1960’s California ranch owners made access to spots along vast stretches of coast available only to those with access to a boat under threat of prosecution for trespassing.
These days more often than not the reason for off-limits surf is down to National Defence.
In the UK, The Pole in Pembrokeshire and Broadbench in Kimmeridge, Dorset both fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defence and access is strictly controlled, most recently to much public outcry at Kimmeridge.
If they’re firing, and the reef’s firing, you ain’t surfing.
And if you’ve ever travelled between LA and San Diego you’ll know that a large tract of land and 15 miles of prime pacific coastline on the infamous Camp Pendleton Marine Base is off limits to surfers – a recent Surfer’s Journal/marine R&R incursion excepting. The flip side of this though, is that apart from tank tracks on the beach this is probably the closest to an untouched piece of coastline in Southern California and the only thing preventing an LA/San Diego megatropolis. So perhaps not such a bad state of affairs after all in this case.
But it’s a valid issue and one that will only grow as the number of active surfer’s grows, particularly in surf travel Edens such as the Mentawais. Competition for waves and a demand to score perfect UNCROWDED surf when paying over the odds for your one surf trip per year will lead to more and more “exclusive” resorts fighting to keep their waves private and off limits to overland explorers on lower budgets or bro’s on their boat trips.
The thing is, wave “ownership” has been a sticking point for this long, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be solved any time soon. Catch ‘em while you can.