Riding the Waves: A new surfer finds fasion and fun
Martlet Publishing; Rachel LeBlanc
I have always loved the water. My mother swears I was already confident in it before my little legs stopped wobbling enough to take my first steps. I had a rainbow of swimming badges on my beach towel before I was old enough to drive a car.
Apart from a life-long love affair with water, I can’t actually pinpoint the first time I thought to try surfing. I’d be lying if I said Blue Crush had nothing to do with me finally doing it. I’d always loved how it looked on TV: athletic and graceful, simple and difficult—all at the same time. “Plus,” as I pointed out to my friend, who didn’t think surfing was my most brilliant idea, “if I fall off, it’s only water. It’s got to hurt less than pavement.” (Okay, so I didn’t have the most confidence-inspiring record in active sports. At least I try and try again.).
“Yeah,” my friend said, “but you can drown in water. You can’t drown on pavement.” A fair statement, I thought. Maybe it’s because I am a confident swimmer, but I hadn’t considered that possibility. The topic then moved on to an analysis of the types of wounds I might incur, from shark bites to infected coral cuts.
Unfortunately, this conversation took place in the Tofino hostel after I had paid the $195-plus-tax non-refundable fee for two days’ lessons from Surf Sister, an all-girl surf school.
Surf Sister’s founder, Jenny Stewart, is a member of the Canadian National Surfing team who always knew she wanted to make surfing her full-time job. She started her school six years ago with a cell phone, working out of the back of her truck. Surf Sister has been at its current location, next to Live to Surf, for three years now and the school is sponsored through companies like Roxy and Billabong. All of Surf Sister’s instructors are British Columbia Association of Surf Instructors (BCASI) certified. Their students are women and girls (although there are classes that men can take too) as young as 12, but who usually range from 20 to 40 years old—people just like me who have always wanted to try it out.
Krissy Montgomery is an instructor at Surf Sister and is aware of how intimidating learning to surf can be. “Surfing’s always been a male-dominated sport,” she told me. “We’re not trying to discourage men from surfing but to encourage women to try it out.” Krissy started surfing eight years ago but “quit a thousand times because it was so hard.” She claims she learned the hard way—by not listening to anyone. I understood by that that we all shouldn’t do it her way. This could be tricky. I have the attention span of a gnat and I tend always to do things my way (i.e. the hard way). Great attributes for anyone taking up a potentially suicidal sport.
I’ve always felt my love of fashion could lead to a well-rounded, fulfilling lifestyle, and here’s a perfect example: it was a belt that finally made me decide to take lessons. The salesgirl at the Tofino bikini shop was wearing a great belt. I asked if I could buy one, and she told me she got it at a weekend Roxy clinic that culminated with a goody bag. That was Surf Sister. It sounded like a blast—anything with a goody bag had to be fun. The real clincher, though, was the belt. I was definitely planning on learning to surf someday, but that belt convinced me to just do it. I guess you could say I owe my first time on a board to an accessory. It’s almost romantic how my love of clothing led me to surf. Sigh.
Since it was my trip, Tofino was my drive. My boyfriend Adam got to be my co-pilot, and since he had no desire to surf himself, he also got to be my cheerleader. His job was to drink beer on the beach and take pictures of me, which suited him just fine.
It’s a beautiful sunny Saturday morning in mid-September as we head out.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” I say to Adam, who just shrugs.
“Would it really make a difference surfing?” he asks. A valid, albeit smart-ass, point. I grin, glad he’s coming with me.
Sitting in the driveway, my car looks like it can make it up to Tofino. An ancient white-on-white V-dub Cabriolet, it has all the trappings of a cool surf-mobile, sporting an assortment of surf-company decals and Hawaiian-print seat covers. Yep, I was all ready to go.
It’s a fun drive, especially a part of the highway that dips suddenly, and if you hit it at the right speed, it makes your stomach go whoop. An irresistible feeling, like realizing you’re falling in love—just for a moment.
I see the group from Surf Sister and head over. I’m given a wet suit.
There is something adverse about putting on wet clothes, especially cold, rubbery,
tight, wet things that smell like old fish in a tire factory. To top it all
off, we got baby-blue Roxy rash guards that we’re told to wear over our
wetsuits. This would serve to identify us to our instructors—and everyone
on the beach—as a bunch of confused twits who don’t know we’re
supposed to wear them under our wetsuits.
We each grab a huge blue soft-top long board with Hawaiian print on the top
and head out to the beach for the pre-surf lesson. Here we cover the basics,
like surf safety and etiquette, we practice pop-ups, and we do some stretches
and warm-ups—yoga sun salutations, much to the amusement of pretty much
everyone else on the beach. Easy peasy.
Since we were all girls, there was a round-table discussion about why we all came out. Everyone recited carefully worded reasons about needing to bond spiritually with the ocean, blah, blah, while we all really meant to say, “I saw Blue Crush and it was cool, so I want to be a surfer now so I can be cool too.” But none of us had the nerve to say as much. I admit that I kept my motivational belt story to myself.
Finally, I’m out in the water and I realize I have no idea what I’m doing. Getting out at all is a lesson in futility. For each step forward I take, a new wave yanks me back five. I have to practically jump into the wave and push the nose of my board down, which lines my face up nicely to be smacked by the salty water. Spluttering, I can see Adam on the beach in his folding chair, reading and drinking beer, and for a second I think his job looks far more rewarding. Maybe he had the right idea after all.
At last the moment comes. It’s my turn, and here comes my wave.
“Get ready Rachelle—this one’s yours,” shouts my instructor.
Adrenaline pounds through my head as I try to remember the prescribed order
of events: paddle, check for wave, paddle like stink, get wave, paddle 1-2-3
and pop up.
Everyone’s shouting, “Paddle, paddle, paddle—you got it!” and I wonder distractedly how exactly I’m supposed to know when I’ve “got it”— until I do and then I know.
I flail, trying to fit everything in, and immediately flip the board over and splash. I do this a bunch more times. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally, and surprisingly sooner than I expected, I was up on my board, hooting victory as I rode a wave for a few momentous instants indelibly imprinted on my body, brain and spirit.
For the record, “surfah” girls are not a new thing; in fact, women have been surfing in the Polynesian islands for hundreds of years. The first Australian to ever try surfing was a woman. But you wouldn’t necessarily know this just from looking at surf magazines, where it seems that men do all the surfing and the women just wear the clothes, waiting on the beaches while their surfer boyfriends hang ten.
Things have been changing, and professional female surfers like Rochelle Ballard and Keala Kennelly have been getting more and more acclaim. It must be something in the water since they’re both from Hawaii. If I were from an ocean paradise where the water didn’t feel like liquid nitrogen, I bet I’d have had a better head start on my current novice status.
Now there are magazines just for women who surf, written by and about women who surf. Magazines like Surfer Girl and Wahine address the issues faced by people with two X chromosomes and sand in their wax. Even some of the main guys’ magazines like Surfing have added a women’s section due to growing reader interest.
Megan Abubo, Oahu surfer extraordinaire, points out that there are basic physiological reasons for the different styles of men’s and women’s surfing: men are bigger, stronger and have been at it longer (at least competitively). “No one ever says `I don’t think Venus Williams surfs as good as Andy Roddick,’” Abudo said in a recent interview with Transworld Surf magazine. “Venus will never surf as fast as Andy Roddick, and that’s just the way it is. I’m not a male surfer and I never will be.”
She raises a good point. I’m not a man either and have no plans to change that, ever. The clothes on my side of the gender fence are way too cute to ever let me switch over.
It’s obvious that attitudes towards female surfers are changing. Megan Stewart, a student at UVic and news editor for the Martlet, is a newcomer to surfing. She feels no intimidation or macho attitude from the guys who seem to live out past the break. Her second time surfing, she was at Tofino’s Chesterman Beach in late September. Her friends had their nine-year-old daughter, Hannah, on a board, and Megan was surfing too. “ [Hannah] wasn’t intimidated, and neither was I,” said Megan. If anything, she said she was more concerned about not knowing surf etiquette and potentially hurting someone. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a face to a surfboard fin.
Seriously though, I can relate to having to save face around children. My six-year-old niece once dragged me into the Bug Zoo by the Victoria Inner Harbour to hold a tarantula for her. I did it, despite my better judgment and utter terror, because peer pressure works, especially when it’s coming from those little peers who only come up to your elbow. But I digress.
My first day of surfing at Long Beach was finally coming to a close. I had ridden out countless waves and fallen as many times before I put my board on my head and marched back to the parking lot.
“Hey sexy surfer girl,” calls Adam. I put my board back on the truck and went over to look at the pictures he had taken on his digital camera.
“You look pretty hot in this one.” I leaned in to examine a great
shot of me on a yellow-tipped board—except my board had a red tip. I wondered
how much beer he’d had, but whatever. I guess we all look the same falling
off a surfboard. Besides, I was so exhilarated that nothing else mattered. Falling
off is pretty much all I was doing anyway. In fact, I would say I almost perfected
the art of bailing.
The next morning I woke up and I hurt. Maybe it was the other way around. I’m
not sure. Didn’t matter though. It was time to get back to the beach.
I’m so dedicated, it hurts. Really.
More yoga and more lessons—this time about waves, wind and different
breaks. We’re lucky to be in Tofino. Apart from the rip tide, there’s
nothing to worry about—no rocks, coral or sharks. My friends were worried
for nothing. Good news for sharkophobic me. Although later that afternoon, when
I graduate to deeper water and bigger waves, I find myself sitting on my board
with my legs pulled up, wondering if sea lions ever attack people or if killer
whales come in this close to shore. I’m afraid to dangle my legs over
my board, irrationally positive that something big is under my board and wants
to eat me.
Then I see the wave.
It’s small, but the afternoon is wrapping up and we’re on last
call.
“Catch a wave and ride it in—it’s your last one today,”
shout the instructors. I start to paddle hard. I check and see that my wave
has grown exponentially bigger than I thought. Like a schoolyard bully, with
a hard shove it hits me, and I paddle. One-two-three and pop up. It hasn’t
even broken yet, no whitewash—just a wave with me in its way. I ride it
for a bit until I try to cut across, only to learn that I’m still just
a newbie. I get worked. For the first time, I don’t know where up is,
where to find air. Like a washing machine, I’m in the spin cycle and enjoying
it. At last my board breaks the surface, and my leashed leg pulls me back up
to my world.
Whoop. I’m in love.