Waves, powering up onto the slabs, at low tide just don't whip the lace weed out of the water. At high tide a dynamic playground emerges. On an up wash I dive close to the bottom for the deep force of the wave. I'm swept up swiftly over the barnacles and just before they rip my suit to shreds I let my legs wash past me and turn away. Then I'm sucked back on the nose of my diving mask across the flapping flat bubble weed and race again into deeper water.
Such swimming needs all my attention, but from the corner of my eye I see Dusty gliding alongside me, always closer to the water's end. She turns effortlessly with carefree precision, as if one with the water.
It's the poetry of body language, sung together with Dusty in this uplifting water. I try to wait for a big wave, but only too often I'm pushed in by a succession of smaller ones. The right ones feel as if the ocean takes a deep breath before releasing the rush and like a subsurfer I have to time my kick-off for the full ride. Often it starts off all right, but then the weeds wash around and just fall short of moving me back to my take-off.
The reefs make an extreme fun fair. I'm lifted, dragged or fully tossed about with a dash of danger. But the worst that has happened to me so far was when I got stuck on a sudden shallow and found myself floundering helplessly before the mocking eye of the dolphin.
Curious, I can really flash with the water, but when it's coming towards me, I'm not swept back but merely dropped into a stand still. It's hard to keep up with your whereabouts in this ever moving world of kelp ribbons elegantly rolling up and down the reef rims and vehemently flogging the slopes at apparent random.
The reality check lies into finding a patch of naked rock. The daredevil thing is getting close to where the wave breaks. I'm lifted high and then have to fight away from the wipe out. There the water gets fizzy and the visibility shuts down to zero. And it feels eerie to be trapped by blinding water with high reefs all around you.
There are channels that run straight towards the coast and where the water is tearing through even more fiercely, in particular the very narrow ones. The latter, however, are hard to ride as the waterwing is too wide. Sometimes I do, though, holding it in line, sort of skulling with the rear end.
But there are hollows across as well, sometimes very deep and rounded, holding stones that have ground it out over the ages. These are the serenities, trimmed by rocking frills of weeds, where the big fish pause. Here I hide from Dusty and hold myself down on a kelp stem to prolong my stay. But wherever I hole up, she'll find me before my breath runs out and swims close by with a grin and an eye pretending not to see me.
And though I do not always see her, she is around. Especially if I do something interesting, like trying to teach her to blow ring bubbles (google this and prepare to be amazed) or trailing strands of seaweed between the humps of the waterwing, she'll come out of the haze where she's been monitoring my movements with a lazy ear all the time.
And thus I soar and pivot, pitch and yaw, roll and rush through the hasting waters. I got into talking with a man who was a pilot (he’s 83 now) and even flew and stunted with double-decker planes. He lent me a book about flying (without formulae) as we agreed there are a lot of similarities between travelling through air and through water, even though the density of water is thirteen times that of air. And now I'm reading about skin friction and parasite drag and longitudinal dihedral angles. And it is great to discover that I have been putting all this theory into practice for a very long time.
And with the lingo I can map out my own experiences.
Thanks an ocean blue, Joe!