Phil Jarratt - Life of Brine: A Surfers Journey

CONTENTS

The wave that took my breath away, and almost took my life with it, was the one I didnt see coming. It smacked me down from behind, like a coward punch, just as I broke the surface and gasped hungrily for air.

I should have been expecting that second wave. The wave that nailed me initially had been the first of a multiple-wave set, and surfers are supposed to know these things, but in my struggle to find the surface, Id lost all the planning and logic that a good surfer usually employs.

I was gripped by something a little bit scary, but it was less than panic. As far as I can recall, I didnt really think I was fighting for survival, if indeed I thought about anything at all. It was simply that moment that every surfer becomes acquainted with sooner or later, that moment when you think that maybe, just maybe, you have bitten off more than you can chew.

And then the ocean was smashing me again, driving me down, not in the easy arc of a diver, but the frenzied rinse of a washing machine, shaking, shuddering, gripping me like some horrible thrill ride. When the force of the wave finally passed I burst to the surface again, taking in air in shallow, raspy breaths. I clambered onto my surfboard and lay, spread across it, while smaller sets of waves washed me, and it, closer to the inshore reef. It was then that I had the scariest realisation. My breathing was still laboured, not returning to normal as it should, as it had every other time the ocean had given me a hiding. I was gasping and wheezing, powerless to do anything other than allow the force of the waves to push me into the shore.

The fin of my board scraped across the last rock shelf and somehow I managed to pick myself up, negotiate three or four awkward steps through the shallows and drop to the black sand, exhausted, anxious, and yet at some deeper level, weirdly calm.

I lay there on the tideline next to my board for a long timeperhaps twenty minuteswhile my friends surfed on, oblivious to my plight. Early morning joggers, power walkers and dog walkers just ignored me, some old stumble-bum surfer sleeping off a big one perhaps, or maybe a 60s casualty peaking on acid. I cant remember everything that went through my mind that morning, but I know that what frightened me more than anything was the stream of thoughts and memories that punctuated my more rational thinking. The random thoughtswaves, good times in exotic places, bad times in shitholes, kids, grandkids, family crises, share prices, the wife, old loves, bad jokes, good wine, god knows what elseor rather, the fact that I was having them, made me consider the old clichs about a mans life appearing before him, like some lame musical comedy in the moments before the final curtain. Was this what I was experiencing? Would my final words be, Is that all there is? Or I wish Id spent more time at the office?

And then I started to feel better. I was still short of breath, but the pain in my back and shoulders, which Id put down to the wrenching of tired old muscles during the hold-downs, began to recede. I sat up, checked my pulse (still there), slowly stood, then picked up my board and even more slowly began the walk along the beach, up the temple steps, across the bay, through the creek and to the cafe where my wife and friends would be waiting for me to join them for breakfast.

As I walked, I tried to piece the morning togetherit was not yet nine, but it seemed it had been a long day already. It had begun for me soon after first light, when I strapped my Bali longboard onto the side rack of my scooter and puttered down Jalan Pantai Pererenan to Pondok Nyoman, where our friends were staying. The ocean was clean and inviting, but the tide was too low and the swell too big for the rivermouth break in front of Nyomans, so Rusty, John and I had made the quick decision to walk a kilometre along the beach to Old Mans, a reasonably user-friendly wave that worked better in these conditions.

The paddle out at Old Mans was easy enough between sets but the swell was hitting it very straight. We paddled around for ages looking for a place to take off where wed have a reasonable chance of completing the wave. Rusty took the lead, of courseover seventy and still the hungriest. Half a century ago, Rusty Millers photo, a study of concentration sliding down a meaty wave at Sunset Beach, became a billboard for a popular beer brand, seen all over Americas burgeoning freeway system. He still paddles and drops down the face with that steely glare of concentration etched on his wrinkled face. Its only when he leans into a graceful turn and races along the green wall that his expression lights up, and he appears to drop twenty, maybe thirty years.

But Old Mans wasnt cooperating with us. So when the young Californian longboarder Jared Mell knee-paddled through our group and said, Have you guys been watching the bommie? we glanced at the set of big waves breaking in deeper water way out to sea and promptly fell in behind him.

I had already taken a couple of set waves on the head at Old Mans, and felt like I might have been coming down with some kind of tropical virus. I just seemed to be lacking energy. So I watched another large set break as the others approached the impact zone of the outer break, then paddled quickly to the inside, planning to find my feet on something smaller.

I let two waves go because I hadnt yet paddled deep enough, then saw another large set looming wider on the outside. Damn, Id missed my window. I turned and paddled hard for deeper water, but the first wave broke just in front of me. I put my trust in the Velcro strip around my ankle and dived for the depths.

Look, this was no day for heroes and fools. It was just another slightly-larger-than-average, late dry-season day on the Canggu coast of South Bali, a strip of beach and reef better known for its Russian-owned surf schools and hordes of Eurotrash beginners than for death-defying surf sessions. Those of us who surf there regularly do so for convenience rather than quality. Although there are certainly some memorable days, this particular morning wasnt one of them. It was just a few old guys having fun, until one of them wasnt.

More than a dozen Australian men aged over fifty died in the surf in Bali that season and the next. I was extremely lucky not to be one of them, although I didnt know that at the time.

How was your surf? my wife asked. She was checking her Facebook, having swum a few lengths of the rooftop pool, finished a watermelon juice and ordered a coffee. It was the way we liked to start the day in Bali. I tried to smile.

Okay, I lied. Jesus Im getting old. Everything aches.

Everything continued to ache that spring. I found myself gasping for breath in the surf after almost every wave, and the pain in my neck and shoulders often got so bad I had to paddle in. On the steamy October morning I was to launch my book,