The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir

Author:Wyl Menmuir [Menmuir, Wyl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780711280908
Publisher: Aurum
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

It is all but guaranteed that if the surf is up here, whatever time of year, there will already be riders on the wave before you get there, no matter how early. This is Badlands – deep surfing country.

Serious surf is reserved for early risers and for the most committed who sleep on thin mattresses amid their boards in their vans within earshot of the waves. It is reserved for those who can calculate the length of the fetch, the wave period and height, those who can accurately predict where the best waves will be found. In his surf memoir, Barbarian Days, William Finnegan points out that there is no agreed standard measure for wave height among the surfing community. Novice surfers, he writes, tend to vastly overestimate the height of the wave, while veterans downplay it. Finnegan cites the wife of a big wave surfer who claimed she could accurately calculate the height of a wave in refrigerators, which seems to me as good a measure as any.

The serious surfers attempt to predict the effects of a hurricane on the American eastern seaboard or a depression in the mid-Atlantic on a reef or a beach break several hundred miles east, the way a particular wave is likely to react to a particular profile of beach. They are the most genned-up of amateur meteorologists. When it is on, messages are exchanged on WhatsApp and locations agreed, and those in the know converge, having concluded that this particular place at this particular time might offer the best of the day’s waves.

When a builder we employed shortly after we moved here disappeared a week into the job, we assumed another urgent job had come up or perhaps a family emergency. It transpired there was a forecast that the wave at Thurso, on Scotland’s north coast, was about to go off and he had dropped everything for it. He had jumped in his van and headed north for the 820-mile drive. If the prediction was correct, the wave at the out-of-the-way reef break would be worth it. The wave at Thurso East is generally known to be one of the finest right-handers in Europe, a large barrelling wave that – aside from the frigid conditions – would not be out of place on the Hawaiian coast. It is not as though there are no ridable waves on our doorstep here; it is more that the temptation is undeniable for some surfers. It is not unusual for a builder, a plumber, an electrician, a decorator or postman here to travel with a board and wetsuit in the van, just in case. When the surf is good, it is surprising how no one seems to have that much urgent work to do (well, if you are surfer, really not that surprising at all). It’s one of the prices and privileges of living here, an unwritten addendum to pretty much any contract on the north coast.

If the surf is good, I’ll be late.

If it’s really good, I’ll see you once the swell has passed.

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