Beautiful, serene, wet.
I have wanted to try my hand at surfing for a while now as I have needed something to fill the void of snowboarding during the summer and my longboard is still broken. My friend Katie happens to love surfing and also happened to be going to Tofino this weekend. Tofino, for those of you not in the know, is BC's own little surf town (featured in an MTV movie no less). Needless to say I decided to tag along and try my hand at the only style of boarding I have not yet experienced. I traded my frozen oceans for the real deal.
The trip to Tofino is a pretty beautiful one. It oddly reminds me of the area around Fernie (Elk Valley) only with about a foot of moss covering everything. Despite that, however, I only took one picture out the window trying to perfect my Spielberg-esque "rear-view mirror" shot. You can see my hand so I guess I failed.
So we arrived and went to get some dinner at a restaurant on the waterfront. I saw some Killer Whales, or Orca for you Politically Correct Cetacean Crusaders out there. I did not have my camera on me so no pictures of the creatures for you.
The next morning we went and picked up some gear for me and made our way out to Cox Bay, the only place that looked like it had managable waves as opposed to waves that would crush and fling me about like a ragdoll. 45 minutes of pleasent attempted surfing followed. I managed to get up onto one foot and a knee which I hear is pretty good for a first attempt. My second attempt never came.
We were too far from the middle of the bay and thusly we were in the out flow zone i.e. The currents were flowing in at the middle of the bay and out at the sides of the bay. Caught in the back current Katie and I quickly found ourselves a little less than a half mile from the shore.
We paddled to little avail, essentially staying in the same spot and tiring ourselves out. A kayaker noticed our plight and towed us in abit but he too soon realized that the current was too strong for him to pull the both of us in to shore. He scouted out the rock wall of the side of the bay and found a place for us to climb out of the water. We waited for the water to recede and then scrambled up onto the rocks before the next wave had a chance to throws us against them.
We were safe but still a long way from the shore, so we started to hike. We stuck close to the water where barnacles lent some grip and the danger of ravines was more easily avoided. It was slow going but thankfully the Coast Guard showed up. We jumped back in with our boards and paddled over to their boat. Somewhere in the activity I sprained my right wrist (which happens to be the one that I damaged during the summer and which has not healed to full capacity).
They got Katie in fairly close to shore and back in the middle of the bay and she paddled back in to the beach so she could get the car. A park ranger surfed out a bit to help her along the way. I opted out of the paddling seeing as how I could barely move my wrist and was treated to a sweet, high-speed boat ride over some huge swells.
Back at the CG station the Coast Guard hooked me up with some hot tea and cookies. They also gave me the ill-fitting, fleece onesy to warm me up and replace my soaking wet wetsuit. Katie soon showed up bearing dry clothes and beer and we were on our merry way. Kudos to the Tofino Coast Guard, I really can't say enough good things about those folks, even if they did dress me up like an Oompa-loompa.
And that is the story of how I was almost washed out to sea this weekend.
