Mega 'Toe' Failure at Bondi

Sunday 14th, Bondi Beach. The Festival of the Winds was about to kick off but we had bigger things to do than fly a kite. The heavy rain had left the beach practically deserted and the sea ours for the taking. We wasted no time zipping into our winter-length wetsuits but even then the sea was still freezing and I felt a sharp twinge of pain as I entered the water. We paddled out for half an hour, making little progress in a no man's stretch of water that would neither spit us out onto the beach nor let us swim on to the waves just ahead. The rough sea and south-westerly wind constantly shifted the sea bed creating troughs and only the occasional peak to stand up on. Unlike Manly the sandbars were intermittent and seemed to have a mind of their own, choosing to appear and disappear at will. Occasionally someone would yell out that they’d found one, only to be disappointed moments later to find a 10 ft deep trench in it’s place.

Eventually our friend Burge alerted us to a sandbar he'd found. We paddled parallel to the shoreline for 5-minutes before swimming straight out to meet him. Once there we rested victoriously until we'd assessed the situation. Having spent half an hour trying to find a sandbar we weren’t about to waste our efforts on a dud wave. So we stuck it out, letting the first barrage roll over us, aware that with each one we ran the risk of losing the sandbar for good. After 10-minutes of fighting for a slither of sand we decided to go for it. A swell was gathering force on the horizon that we couldn't refuse. Already the wind had pushed us slightly past the optimum point for catching the wave. Exhausted from the swim I could only manage to raise one leg, so I shot forwards gracelessly in the ‘proposal position’ straight for Burge who now floated helplessly in no man's water knowing that after all that effort I’d ride straight over his head if I had to. Luckily for him the uneven sea bed sapped the power out of the surf and I went down on one knee... to the depths. I resurfaced to find I could no longer touch the floor with my feet. The sandbar was lost. Lee torpedoed past in proposal style straight into a wall of water that swallowed him whole.

I lifted myself up on my board and flipped onto my back. Initially only a few feet separated us but after ten minutes of recuperating I’d managed to drift almost out of sight on a powerful rip. I was reminded of an episode of Bondi Surf Patrol I’d seen on UK TV before I left, in which a lifeguard commented about a part of the coast they called the ‘English Channel’ - and now here I was, four months on and shamefully stuck in it myself. Lee waved at me with a smile as he swam out on his futile search for another sandbar. Kit was already out of the water and making his way to the car – if only we’d all had the same degree of insight. I paddled laboriously on for another 20-minutes until my back and chest ached. By the time I met up with the others the freezing sea had taken it's toll. I found Lee and Burge shivering and gibbering that their numb feet had fused into “mega-toes”. Realising that they'd lost their minds in the cold I made my own way back to the beach. Despite the handicap of their mega-toes they managed to drag themselves out of the sea without too much difficulty. I however had no energy. I battled on to the beach but the sea wasn’t quite ready to relinquish it's grip on me. I struggled to keep my head above water, occasionally slipping off my board as I tried out different swimming strokes to gain a few feet - in the end it was the 'backstroke whilst tugging the board' technique that proved most effective. Eventually the sea lost interest in my pitiful struggle and ejected me back onto dry land.

After warmth had returned to our bodies and our mega-toes felt like feet again we continued on up the beach, which was still empty apart from a small group of people shuffling towards us under the cover of umbrellas. As we got closer we realised that it was no ordinary huddle of people but a group of Japanese tourists. The umbrellas parted and from their handbags and purses they produced a pile of cameras. Pained, we readied ourselves to take a million photos, but they didn’t want us to take photos of them... they wanted to have their photos taken with us. Somehow we'd gone from mega-toe surfing failures to Bondi Beach postcard material (or maybe not). They took turns posing next to us whilst doing the hippie peace sign. I made the mistake of letting two of them stand on the board as I pretended to surf on land, which meant having to repeat the same pose three times. Sadly that's the longest amount of time I’ve stood up on a surfboard to date.

So with that we left the beach. Perhaps the surf had been awful that day, and maybe we’re pretty awful at surfing. But does that really matter? If a bunch of people from the far side of the world go home thinking they’ve met some genuine Bondi surfing heroes isn’t that what it’s all really about?! We think so.


Above photos taken the day before when it was actually sunny.