bugsonmyboard

As I hummed along northward on the highway with the sun overhead just like I had many days before, a glance downward and to the left instantly sent a shot of panic through me. Since I was going surfing, I had my surfboard attached to my motorcycle, or so I thought. When I looked down, I found no surfboard, only a void and the asphalt rushing past below. I whipped around and sped the other direction fully expecting to either return to the last place I’d checked the surf 2 km back without sight of it, or to see it splintered and strewn across the highway somewhere. I rode fast, thinking that if I were quick enough I could snatch my one and only craft to ride the waves of Africa from such a cruel fate.   I got to the turnoff to the dirt track where I’d last checked the waves, still without a sign of my board.  Relief washed over me as I came to a stop. All the way at the end of the track, in the middle of the rocky bluff without a soul around was my board lying bottom down, with the arm of my surf rack still fully attached and in place.

The rear arm of the rack had broken off at the same place it had been repaired in Safi from my fall in the Atlas Mountains.  On examination it was clear that the repaired weld used a lot of material but formed a poor bond.  Enough bouncing around on the dirt tracks to check the surf and it had finally given in right where it lay. As I sat there looking at the ocean, engine running, my board had simply dropped away without my noticing and off I sped without it. Needless to say, I was very happy to still have a surfboard along on my surf trip.

We found our standby spot with too low of tide for the sizable swell that had grown overnight and was now pounding the reef.  The massive and mysterious ship boiler marooned on the reef was sticking high above the water surface as waves sectioned and closed out around it. Fishermen deftly dodged exploding waves to the north.

A couple of the local Moroccan surfers told us about a lesser know spot about 10 km to the south and we decided to head that direction.  One of them climbed onto the back of my bike wearing only board shorts and sandals and off we went.  We found some head high quick-breaking waves that lured us out.  When we got out to the surf, we quickly found that the waves were nearly un-makeable with the speed at which they broke down the line.  You would get to your feet, stay as high as possible on the wave face for as long as possible racing as fast as you could until a section finally forced you down and outran you.  The swell direction was too westerly. According to the local guys, swells arriving from a more northerly direction hit the reef less squarely and produce waves requiring a less frantic pace down the line.  While the waves left something to be desired, it had been a fun excursion somewhere new, led by local surfers, which is always a good time.

We arrived back at our ship boiler to find the tide had risen along with the swell, creating some big clean looking waves in between massive bombs that steamrolled through the lineup.  Only one surfer was in the water – the Spaniard named Axier who I’d befriended at the campsite and been surfing with during the past week.  He caught sight of me and waved me out and so out I went.  I barely managed to squeak out the keyhole channel between a big rock and the ship boiler before the area was mowed by a set.  Axier and I looked for the more manageable ones we both dropped in on a few that quickly blocked our paths down the line with heaving sections of lip.

After an hour or so I locked into a really good one and rode it just a bit too far.  Once out of the lee of the protective headland where we were taking off, the current was relentless and it had me pinned right where I didn’t want to be – stuck on the inside taking closeouts on the head.  The problem here was that we only knew one safe exit point – the same place that we’d entered, through that keyhole channel where the rocky headland attenuated a lot of the swell energy.  For as far as I could see, the southerly direction that the current pulled me the shoreline was just rocky slabs exploding 10 feet high with whitewater.  I lucked out and found the right spot at just the right time to exit safely enough.

Upon exiting the water a local girl who had watched my struggle was smiling and giggling with her friends sitting on a concrete wall just up from where I landed.  She came down the slope a little way and threw me a mandarin, which landed in the rocks just near me.  It was as though she wanted to say hello but was scared to get too close.  I retrieved the mandarin, made a motion of thank you which was returned by another giggle.  I stood there catching my breath and devouring the best tasting mandarin I’d had in a long time.  After that she became bolder and came all the way down to had me a little glass of mint tea. I was incredibly grateful for the small kindness.

The local bodyboarder, Ahmed, who had followed us out found the same exit as I did. Axier wasn’t so lucky.  He misjudged the current and missed our exit point and after struggling against the current for 30 minutes or so trying to get to it, he gave up and let it carry him down the reef.  Ahmed and I scrambled southward trying to scout a good exit spot and finally found one that coincided with a break in the sets.  Walking back, we were all pretty happy to be back on the ground.

We walked back to the local resident (the only local resident) Mohammed’s cave at the top of the point.  His little abode is built into the cliff right next to the surf pounding on the reef where it looks like nothing would be safe.  From his doorway, monstrous waves rumbled by, but posed no danger due to its position in the lee of the small headland.

Mohammed had lived here for 8 years, entertaining the traveling surfers as they came and went from the run-of-the-mill feral wanderers like us to top-level pros. In turn, surfers brought things out to him to make life a little easier on this barren stretch of coastline.  He had cooked us all up an octopus targine that we all enjoyed inside the cave.

We packed it up for the day leaving some lonely waves behind. The goats went home too.

And I retreated to my clifftop camp.