Walk on Water
a Surf Saga
by John Geyer
Copyright 2016 John Geyer
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Part one
JAKE AND THE NEW HEBREDIES
A Surf Story
CHAPTER 1
Jake, balding, and Osley, thick silver ponytail down the back of her dress, sit quietly at the open air bar of the Novotel in south east Lombok. Savoring beer over ice.
In walks Gee; 51, Aussie, tall, tanned, muscular, curly light brown hair, aviator glasses and a crisp white undersized T shirt. Jake smiles thinking, ‘I know this guy, maybe once was like him, the kind who would steal your girlfriend, not consciously, not even on purpose it’s just in his DNA.’
The three of them and the Indo bar tender facing the sea in the late afternoon.
Gee says, “Have you guys been on the island long?”
“We live a valley west of here.” Osley smile
“You have a remarkable smile” he says introducing himself as “Gee” a heli pilot from Vanuatu.
Jakes brain cracks a smile as he remembers dramatic times on a northern island of Vanuatu.
“Have you been?” he direct eye contacts Osley, who is 10 years his senior.
“No, but Jake has.”
“Ya I was there in ’66 on an extended surf exploration, sorta…”
“Really where?”
“Well, doubt you’d know it, a little sand wrapped atoll.”
“North east of Espirito Santo?”
“Ya?”
“Big lagoon, with a perfect longboard wave rolling down the north side?”
“Really?” Jake’s thinking, ‘dude you got to be kidding me’.
“Funniest thing, I just flew the new French owners up to check it out last week”
“No way?”
“True, Anne and Jean Paul, and while they were frolicking in the lagoon I walked into the jungle and found three abandoned huts, one with a rusting tin roof.”
Jakes head starts to rocket on all the memories he’d wisely forgotten. Gee continues, offering Osley a smile
“Ya amazing but up in the rafters of the shed was a beautiful 3 stringer longboard! And it has a 1966 surf license sticker from Newport Beach, California! I will go back to get it.”
Jake looks at the guy, shakes his head to clear the voltage careening around in his skull, and says
“I’m from Newport and that’s my board. A Hobie, Phil Edwards’s model, three redwood stringers with a light green tint in the glass job.”
“No way?”
“Yes way. That board’s been waiting for me for 50 years.”
“I got to hear that story.”
“You buy the beers”
“Coming up! Do you guys really drink beer with ice?” Gee orders in perfect Bahasa
“We’ve had our share of warm beers.” Osley laughs and smiles at Jake with that unmistakable graciousness that says ‘you are my best friend’.
CHAPTER 2
Jake starts,
Ok in May ’66, at 19 years old, my friend Larry Porter, I occasionally crewed on his big family yacht, graduated from Orange Coast Junior College. A California thing; first two year of Uni. Porter came from a long line of old money yachtsmen, so for graduation he got a Cal 36, fully rigged for soloing. That’s just tradition in his family; 36 foot yachts. Porter tries to get Dave Ullman, a great sailor/surfer from our town, Newport Beach, to go on a summer adventure down through Mexico. Ullmans got to many regattas over summer so Porter asks me. Didn’t really think, just said yes!”
Porter says “Great we leave two weeks before graduation, take your test early.” Porter was a bit focused.
My idea was to maybe make it as far as Mantachen Bay a good 1200 mile trip. But it was a fresh North Wester all the way down Baja. Got a few waves at San Carlos, Punta Abreojos, and killer nose rides at Scorpion Bay. But within two weeks we were setting anchor in Matanchen Bay watching mile long rights roll through. Longest wave in the world.
In those days the local town of San Blas had one bar, Torino’s, no electricity but lots of ice for cold beer. So I’m hanging over the low rock wall that has the fake alligators in it, only when the bar tender threw meat they trashed to life. So while I’m freaking out about the reptiles next to my table, Porter is at the bar talking to this totally beautiful, seemingly out of place blond European lady. Anne from France. She was just that bit older than us, maybe 26.”
“Do you think?” Gee lifts his glasses for direct eye contact with Jake.
“No way of telling but…? Anyway Anne and Porter join me and the alligators. Anne is that kind of blue eyed beautiful where eye contact makes you feel like you’re swimming in too deep, maybe shark infested, waters. I think Porter fell in love right there.
Anne had to get out of Mexico “now”. Tepic prison was close and she was pursued by the Federalies. Accused of masterminding marijuana smuggling without paying bribes, plus she was the last person standing from the deal that had landed her less-than-loyal accomplices in prison and her accomplices had friends in town.
The bar tender has been especially nice to us, well Anne, and is serving the three of use ahead of the local guy with tinted glasses and that bad vibe of “third world and drugged”, who yells something obscene to the bar tender and us, Anne interprets, something about little whores, and he leaves. While Anne is explaining how she has to get out of Mexico ASAP the tinted glasses guy returns with mates and a gun threatening to shoot the bar tender and us. Everyone in the place dive under tables while the bar tender curiously grabs a meat cleaver somehow thinking it will deter the guy with a gun. While they are screaming at each other in a classic Mexican standoff, the bartender’s big fat Mexican wife comes up from behind and blindsides the guy with a folding chair and kicks the gun clean out the door. The guy gets up, tries to grab Anne, I step in the middle, he swings I drop him jump on him and start punching for all I’m worth. In the middle of the fight tinted glasses guy’s friends start kicking me in the back.
Anne says she wants to go to Tahiti now, Porter says OK.
Right there I could have left but she smiled at me as nice as she did Porter. It was one of those feminine smiles that says ‘I have a secret for you’. I fell straight into it. Plus, I’d heard of the waves on Huahini from Joey Cabell, so I didn’t really think and said “Yes.”
4000 miles, 22 days later, summer half over, I’m meant to start a wrestling scholarship at UCSB in September and somehow Anne has been able to sleep with both of us without animosity or sense of attachment. As we drop our hook in Huahini bay I know Porter would like me out of the picture but whenever he’s ashore or even asleep she’d hook up with me. I kept smiling and kept my mouth shut. Four days of lefts and somehow she has us sailing for Fiji.
2000 miles, 12 days later we are moored off a small isle on the west side of Fiji, Tavarua. Porter and Anne are bonding over ‘conserving natural beauty’, heritage and other lofty ideas. With me, mainly I’m getting good waves, and misunderstanding the difference between lust and love.”
Gee brings more beer and says, “One of my main problems in this life”. Osley gives him that ‘you’re a lost kitten’ look and she say
“Guys can get stuck right there;’ lust equals love’, or even the next faze where you have a so “cool” relationship that you never argue or stretch the edge;
not committed to two as one …or you can get lucky like Jake and me, I thought I was over it, winding down but here we are constantly glued by the spirit and stretched in every direction by the will. What about you and Anne Jake?”
“Well I loved surfing with the same intensity. At nineteen somehow it all seemed the same self-indulgence.
CHAPTER 3
I think Anne had the New Hebrides in mind all the way from Matanchen Bay. Back then Vanuatu as it is known now was ruled by both the French and British in tandem. Anne knew a white accused could choose to be tried by either. The British had good jails but the French had good food, and any international investigation into Anne’s potential drug bust on the other side of the world, Mexico, would bog down in a, “condominium”, dual ruling party malaise.
Porter was an amazing navigator but on our way to Espirito Santo, the biggest island in the New Hebrides, Anne and Porter got deathly ill, Ciguatera, reef fish poisoning from a barracuda Porter caught for a candle lit table cloth dinner with Anne. Porter was a romantic at heart.
So I sailed us from Fiji to Vauatu as they both vomited deliriously. I thought they might die. It took me 5 days instead of 4 and I missed Espirito by 90 miles. So when I pulled us into the lee of this uninhabited atoll. I needed timeout. Went ashore, walked around the corner of this brilliantly white sand jungle area and stared northeast at crystal clear chest high top tubing 300 yards of longboard perfection. Grabbed my board and hit it.
Screaming my love/lust for Anne as I knee paddled out.
It took another week for Anne and Porter to get close to normal. I’d tend them between glorious surf sessions. Anne said she could just stop here and live on the atoll with me… not sure what she told Porter but I had moved to the isle, combined some old shacks into one nice place with a tin roof. I expected her to join me. I justified manipulating the situation because sex seemed like love. At least you think its love as you lay there breathing deep draughts of satisfaction.
So, after a heat exhausted day in the shack with Anne, she said she had to go tell Porter about staying with me. A day later they both just sailed off. To this day I don’t know what happened except Porter circumnavigated arriving back in Newport alone.
I surfed another week trying to get rid of the bitterness a women can do to a man’s soul. I screamed at her as I paddled out and I gouged the waves like a Chicago blues harp player. Then I vowed to never let a woman get to my heart like that again. I was skinny from only fish and coconuts and I’d surfed her out of my head. So I stashed the board in the rafters, hailed a copra boat and got to Port Villa, flew to Suva, got a flight to Guam, then a military flight to San Diego. Got to classes a week late wondering how I was going to avoid Viet Nam.”
Gee says, “You know I saw you two oldies pull up on that shinny white motor bike and assumed you were recently retired from “normal life”. You never know the stories inside people. Sorry for stereotyping you guys.
“It’s cool” Jake laughs” mate that isn’t the half of it.”
Osley smiles at Gee, grabs Jake’s hand, pulls on her faded denim jacket and says, “Let’s go home Jake.”
Part two
THE HOLY GOOF
A Year of Surfing
Transitioning from the late ’60 into early ’70 didn’t find every twenty four year old at the disco……….
CHAPTER 1
The waters of Wiamea Bay are deeply disturbed by the thirty foot waves exploding toward shore. Billy’s been watching for an hour, his mind’s eye riding every wave. It’s do-able he thinks just don’t get caught by the close out sets. Excitement mixes with fear, his warrior instincts scream yes, and his mind’s eye rides every monster. He visualizes his blond, sinewy body from fasting and relentless surfing, jumping to a crouch and sliding across big green ocean sheet music.
“I’m going for it Lloyd” He tells his black and white hound dog in back of the Jeep. It’s like a short step across a cold line, “I’m going for it.”
The only FM radio station, KPOI, is playing “Going up the Country” by Canned Heat.
Course sand underfoot yellow board under arm, and Billy seamlessly morphs into the instinctual animal waiting for the moment to jell before sprinting down the sand incline to jump on the back of the last receding wave of a set. The water is violently awash, total focus is on getting past the board snapping shore break. At the edge of the reef he sits, back erect and searching the horizon; and then it comes big, black, like a herd of stampeding elephants under a huge Persian rug. Reminding himself that this is the real deal, awesome, but realizing the approaching mountain of water is going to break on his head. It takes way too long to get prone and begin paddling toward the horizon every sinew about to pop as he scratches up the face of judgement praying to God that he’ll get over the hissing lip.
Just over and the surge tries to suck him back, heart in his throat, keep paddling, just made it.
Cautiously moving back into position as the warrior in him screams ‘I want one’. It’s not just courage screaming it’s a lifetime of being in the ocean, challenging oneself, whether being eleven years old at the local break, or 17 and scouring the coast, discovering waves from Mexico to Panama, which almost smells illegal, or moving to the islands to invest oneself in the art, the power dance; surfing. “I want one.”
So it comes. This is his one, damn it! Sucking in powerful breaths he turns his board toward shore. The years have told him the only way is 100% committed, 97% won’t get it, 97% leaves room for the intellect and this is bigger than that, this is heart committed instinct. With decision clenched in his teeth, and deep even strokes he attempts to match the speed of the approaching energy. Excitement mixes with fear like tequila and limes. The tail of the board rises as the angle of this morphing giant quickly gets steeper. Billy is forcing for release; full focus, body on the electric line. Instinctual action no thought just jump like a cat into a crouch, aim down between the stress lines, racing down the incline, vision is the whole mind, the bottom is only thirty feet below. Such complex forms of motion; wave moving toward shore, jacking up, throwing out over head, stress lines from wave energy dragging on the reef below, pitching out threatening to crush him as the rider slides down adjusting to it all without thinking, instinct only, heart on the line. The multiple forms of motion compound the illusion of speed yet to the observers on the beach he seems glued to one spot because the speed of the wave rising matches his decent, he is almost going backwards until board/man overcome inertia and force to the bottom where he shifts weight to the inside edge of the board and carves through the g’s like squeezing a bar of soap through your fingers. It’s a grand arching turn carving up across the dark wall of water. He only senses the fringing lip above and the grinding churn of white chaos behind. To the observer he is a flowing line across God’s sheet music. For Billy he simply arrives at the other side of thick sticky time where sliding into the safe deep blue waters of Wiamea Bay is shocking, almost absurd, as if he should check his pockets for identification. ‘Was that really me?’
After three more waves, each unique, like totally different lovers, Billy moves for the deepest possible take off where the upsurge can twist a board around. The position is critical. He is down the line the deepest heart of power where the waves first begin to fray, hiss, and threaten. ‘Just cross the top and drop down the right stress line’, but his position is too critical and he is stuck to the pitching lip. It’s like holding on to a cement mixer that’s tipping over a cliff.
With fear-filled slowness his mind records the event. First weightless then skipping like a flat stone trying to penetrate, then the cascading lip of the wave drives his board into his back. Finally he is pulled under the surface by a sucking swirl of pummelling after-wave. To those on the beach he is like a high diver back flipping off a waterfall and simply disappearing. For Billy its down, down and breathless; so deep it’s dark. Pressure in the ears, eyes, and groin, there is no leverage against the chaos. “Relax” his mind screams in an at
tempt to conserve the remaining oxygen in his veins. Lungs on fire, body about to explode, indifferently, like turning a radio dial, things get cold and objective. ‘A man is drowning.’ A thousand moments in a moment, time is sticky as cold and darkness close in. Yet one open eye sees daylight above and a cumbersome last effort scratches for the surface. Life is just a few inches away; desperately he breaks through, eyes bulging, greedily gasping at the foamy atmosphere and feeling like a rock. He needs ten breaths but survival only gives him four, he must dive in a panic of tears for the reef below to avoid the pounding swirl of the next wave. Frog stroking with a heart screaming for oxygen, ears about to burst; looking up through swirling columns of after-wave he knows he’s finished if it gets him. But his body is screaming “Up Up” and he must obey, power stroking to fight the last surge before breaking through to the surface. A good series of breaths, the next wave is smaller; he will live.
Swimming to the middle of the bay to pull himself onto his passive yellow surfboard; rest, get it back together, let gravity return to chromosomes, and paddle in to stick his feet in the course sand. Yes, the static serenity of land is almost nauseating, like a sailor too long to sea.
Walking toward the pick-up, buzzing, feeling sort of high, almost off balance, pulling it together, so many spectators have lined the road … Musing the in-articulable answer to, ‘what drives a man to do these things?’
CHAPTER 2
All right Billy!!
It’s Jake.
Once, Billy’s best friend from university, from the days when they were soldiers, from when Billy, the puppy Lloyd, and his ex-wife opened their house to soldier-surfers so they could escape the khaki threat of Viet Nam. The thought bubble of her, the dog and the house on the sand got him home from Nam… Billy, like Jake, was an all American athlete, said the pledge of allegiance every day of his school years, but unlike Jake, Billy’s father and uncles all fought in WW2. So when Billy got his orders; Monday morning Russian roulette, stand at attention in the dark tropical morning, random roll call to Nam, like a spear thrust into his chest; Billy grabbed his M-16 and went to Viet Nam… so simple to say.