bootfahrer: 2008-12-01

what a spot!

every kayaker has a list of things to do, runs to run, waves to surf. and anyone who ever surfed big waves would be lying if they say that skookumchuck was not on that list.

when i first started whitewater kayaking i saw pictures of that wave that left me awestruck. people were surfing this monster of a wave, getting air, green grinding...

at that point i never thought that i would one day be able to do something like that. now, almost ten years later i have surfed waves that are bigger and faster, there has been tons of skooksfootage from boaters around the world. often enough so much coverage takes some magic away from places, you almost feel as if you know them too well already.

not skooks though!

the power this whole place has is beyond anything a picture could capture. seeing the wave appear out of nowhere, surfing it as it is forming, gettingh washed downstream on the tour on a fine line between massive boils and freakwaves, seeing sealions surfing waves and hissing at people, big boats cruising by as you are surfing on oceanwater, then watching skooks peak and green out, come back for a bit and slowly disappear into calm water again... simply incredible!

we made it an even bigger experience by camping out on an island next to the wave for five days! filled up our playboats to the brim with everything we needed and then pulled them behind the creekboats. from egmont it is something like a 40 min paddle at slacktide, so we only left the island once to get watersupplies and stuff we had forgotten.

it was a great time, but we also had a bit of an epic:
the first day there was a big SAR mission going on, cause the night before a guy that wanted to drop off his boat at the wave went missing.
turned out he simply didn´t recognize the spot where the wave forms and paddled way past it and eventually made it to the next seddlement to hitchhike back the next day. too bad that he wanted to meet someone there and never showed up...

and i had a pretty solid swim!
getting a mild trashing in one of the waves futher down my knee slid out of the thighbraces i hadn´t adjusted yet and thus popped my skirt. i had to swim through three gigantic whirlpools, got a lot of downtime, almost ran out of breath at one point and lost my paddle! scary shit.
didn´t lose the boat, luckily, but i still had to handpaddle back over to the island, quite exhausting.
the next day i borrowed foerster´s paddle and broke it on my third ride, forcing me to paddle back to egmont c1-style. took me about an hour and a half, it sucked! at least that was our last day anyways...

our camp on the island