Surfing

Monday the 14th of September was our first day of surfing. Longy, Mark, Boyde and Sean. We got an introductory speech, made by Mark. He talked about putting sunscreen on, rips and looking after the equipment. They fitted us with wetsuits and we tried them on to make sure they fitted. I found this hard because I couldn’t get my feet through the holes. We got into the bus to go to Berry Bay South. When we got there we grabbed a leg rope, a rashie and a board. My leg rope was the manliest colour of all, pink. We grabbed everything and started the walk down the stairs. This was quite painful. When we reached the sand we put our boards on the sand, some of us tested the water, and it was defiantly colder than it looked. Mark told us to stand in a group to have a photo taken. After the photo we divided into three groups, two groups of eight and one group of seven. We had another introduction lesson, which was quite boring. We were told about rips, how to paddle, how to stand up and everything else we need to know. We also had to build a sandcastle so that we could warm up our paddling arms and also so we could see where the rocks were. After all of this we finally got to get into the water. The water was freezing!! But I got used to it. We pretty much did our own thing. After a few tries I finally got used to surfing and I was standing up on pretty much every wave. We had to be careful of the rocks either side of where we were surfing. After we got used to it Ben and I both caught the same wave and hi-5ed while surfing. It was really cool. Unfortunately Mark didn’t get a photo of it, but it would have been a cool photo. After 2 hours we had to get out. We carried our boards back up the stairs, which was really hard. We loaded the surfboards back onto the trailer and changed out of our wetsuits.

Tuesday the 15th of September. Today we had our second day of surfing. We had a game of Gaelic footy and then breakfast. We had to be at the bus at 8:15 AM. We got together all of our stuff and got onto the bus to go to the Dust Bowl (Northern end of Formby Bay) We grabbed a board and started the long walk down 280 stairs, just to get to the bottom. The walk down was hard and then we realised that at the end of the day we had to walk back up them. My legs were already hurting and we hadn’t even warmed up. again we had to build sandcastles as landmarks. After our warm up and stretches we got to go into the water. he waster was still cold, but it was good with the wet suits because they didn’t let any cold in. We had to watch out for the rips either side of where we were surfing, and the rocks. We had to move around, up and down the beach. it was really annoying because the tides would pull us out and then we had to keep on moving around. We stopped for lunch for about an hour. After lunch we got back into the water again. It was still quite cold. Most of us were standing up now. I had to sit out a few times because of the rashes on my arms and legs, which was annoying. We surfed until about 2:30 PM. We then walked up the staircase, which was the hardest thing ever. This day was still enjoyable but wasn’t as fun as the first day.

Wednesday the 16th, our final day of surfing. This was at Berry Bay North. We had the long drive there and I think I fell asleep on the bus, again. When we arrived we grabbed a board and headed down yet another staircase. We had to build two sandcastles, by now we were pro at making them. When we got out we got the hang of it again and then some of the instructors took us out to the back where the bigger waves were. We had to paddle like mad to get out there, we had to sometimes paddle through the waves that were crashing where we were, so we took 10 steps forward and then a wave would push us back about 6 steps, it was like snakes and ladders. It was really frustrating. I managed to catch one or two of these, but I enjoyed just sitting or lying on my board out the back without the waves crashing to disturb me. After we had been surfing for a few hours, it was time and we had to walk our boards up the long staircase and then we had to get changed out of our wetsuits. I would have to say that this day was defiantly the best day.