A photo surf story on how we dodged lightnings and surfed red colored waves.
This is how it began, a peaceful evening surf, suited for my minimal…I hate that summer is over, especially because the days are shorter and shorter. And then there is that stupid DST crap at the end of October. Where can I sign to stop this?!:)Well, this is one way to fight that. Two cars with lights aiming at the sea. It wasn’t a night session to write home about, but it was kind of fun.Well, this photo sucks. But it is supposed to show the night view from the lineup towards the beach and our two light sources.Fast forward over some cheap and delicious Gorgonzola, goat cheese & Istrian prosciutto pizza, a beer and a bunch of “how and why I missed my flight and what happened next” surf stories, next day greeted us with gloomy skies and well, again some marginally bigger waves.It soon started to rain.And rain some more…The rain got stronger and stronger but that was not what sent us running for cars. The first lightning I saw was followed by the thunder maybe 2 seconds later. Which is close. According to this article, you should get out of water if the lightning and thunder are less than 30s apart. Well…soon they were 0 seconds apart. We could feel the electricity cracking in the air while we ran for our cars with lightning and thunder over our heads. Scary shit.Sitting in the safety of my car the rain started to fall even harder (if that is even possible). 47 liters (12 galons) of rain fell over a square meter in time of one maybe two hours.There were streams of water everywhere. Especially flowing from the red dirt cabbage fields towards the sea.Painting the sea to which we returned when the lightning stopped red-brown.Everybody went for the right peak.So it was just me and another two friends on the peak next to it.Late comers had some trouble getting to the beach as the mud tried to eat their shoes.Despite all the weather drama, the waves didn’t reach over waist high. A few turns on the shortboard when the windswell peaked and then it was back to mini malibu business. But the shitty brown water and afternoon sun made up for that:).Even the foam looks like it comes from a water treatment plant.I could describe this beachbreak with the immortal words from times when we were still searching for sandy breaks in Bali: “This beachbreak is a little bit to rocky for me.”To prove this point, two fins were lost on the submerged rocks. Luckily my plastic malibu can stand up to anything you throw at him. A few grinding sounds later it was still ridable.My last sun and boardshorts session was over at 5 pm and it was slowly time for a sleepy way back home.
