I’ve met several surfers over the last few weeks who were searching for their first real barrel. I could relate to their search for what felt to me like chasing a unicorn for so long, and I was hoping I’d get to see the look on their face when they found theirs. Although I never had a front row seat to see someone come out of their first barrel, I did hear frustrations from a lot of them about close they had come.
“I just need to commit”
“I was a little too far out in front of that one”
“I got a little cover-up, but not quite deep enough. Can’t claim it!”
And I did hear from one about getting the best barrel of his life. Felix, I hope you have many more to come. And me too.
Here’s this week’s note, written in Nicaragua. “My First REAL Barrel”
- The Mission: 6 Weeks In Nicaragua – don’t come home without a barrel
- The Trials: too high, too low, too deep, too shallow, too late, too early
- The Wave
I had experienced many little barrels, shampoos, and almost but not quite tubes. Going into the trip I figured if I couldn’t get barreled at Colorado’s over my six week stay then I never would. This was the place where you could pull in, get shacked, and get spit out… all day long. At least that’s what my friends had told me.
This beach break is the perfect training ground for learning the quick takeoff, tuck in, and stall required to get in and make it out of the tube. Although many have been injured and boards are snapped on a regular basis, the sand bottom has lower consequences than surfing over reef, giving me no excuses for straightening out.
There’s almost always some swell during the summer months and the winds are offshore all day. That’s right – offshore winds all day. If you want to, you can probably pull into 50 or more barrels in a single day, provided it isn’t too crowded… which it often is, as the secret’s already been out on this spot for years.
The only good thing about the crowds was that I could watch guys who had front and backside tube riding absolutely dialed in. This helped with two things:
- I could try to emulate exactly what they did.
- I was motivated more than ever out of envy to finally get a real barrel.
The Trials
I had to do everything wrong before I got it right.
Too Late – My biggest problem at first was being too late. I would drop into the wave too slow and get left behind the barrel charged on. The waves of Colorados are almost always very fast so I had to learn to really get up and go… but not too fast.
Too Early – As with many things, I overcorrected and had countless waves where I was too far on the shoulder. Racing ahead, then crouching down waiting for the lip to crash over me, before outrunning the wave – surely looking like a total kook.
Too Low – I got destroyed by the lip many times for being too low on the wave. When I did have the timing for the section right, instead of being in the safe zone inside the barrel, I was at the bottom of the wave where the lip would come crashing down on top of me. These were some of my worst wipeouts.
Too High – A few times I was too high on the wave. Too steep. Too powerful. Too fast. The top quarter of the wave is not the right place. If I spent more than a millisecond here, the wave would just roll me and throw me over the falls. Again – kooking it.
Too Deep – Now we’re starting to get somewhere. I pulled into many a barrel but couldn’t manage to make it out. If I was going to get anything wrong, then being too deep was the best scenario. The thrashing weren’t nearly as bad and I didn’t look like such a kook.
To my relief, there were several days when it wasn’t barreling. Despite my friend’s description, the conditions didn’t always lineup for hollow tubes. The waves could be a little bit crumbly or just have small almond barrels, not big enough to pull in to.
These days gave me a break from the pounding and I think doing some playful turns helped revive my confidence a bit.
After three weeks of being pounded I was actually feeling pretty good. I’d been surfing multiple hours every day and was in possibly, the best surf shape of my life. My takeoffs were clean, I had fewer and fewer kook moments, and more near misses.
I was pulling into many front side barrels and getting clamped, going down on the foam ball, or somehow being just one tiny variable off of making it out clean.
My biggest problem, I suspected, was mental. I ran back waves in my head. There were several where I clearly remember bailing inside the tube when I probably could have made it out. I was so accustomed to going down inside the wave that it almost became habit. I was taking off, getting set in the barrel, and then bracing myself for the inevitable impact – sometimes even with my eyes closed.
Convinced this was the final piece of the puzzle, I made yet one more adjustment.
I started telling myself I could make it – trying to drill it into my brain so that in that fight or flight moment inside the barrel I wouldn’t bail. I would think to myself on the takeoff “pull in – this is the one” then once in the barrel “hang in there!”.
It’s Really Happening?
Then one evening on a day with waves perfect for turns, it happened. The sun had set and I was in that twilight zone where it’s still light out but it would soon start getting difficult to see. The ocean looked darker, the once vibrant trees on the shore were looking a blueish gray, and sky was transitioning from orange to purple. This was my queue to start looking for my last wave of the day – a good one to end on.
Most of the waves were quick and short. I’d have a thrilling takeoff get in one or two turns, then the wave would shut down. But sometimes it seemed like two peaks would connect to form one long wave. I tried to sniff these ones out. When the peak I took off on was big, but the peak down the beach was a little smaller, instead of closing down on the inside, sometimes my wave would conjoin with the second peak, forming a nice rippable wall that ran all the way into the shallows near the shore.
These walls were the best. They stood up a little taller allowing me to really put some force behind my turns – the wave would push right back.
One of these double ups would be the ideal one to end my session on high note.
Just when I was starting to think I’d have to settle for singleton, a clear doubler came my way. I took off, thinking only turns. When I got to my feet on the chest high wave, I was almost drooling with anticipation to do a couple big turns. I made a quick pump at the top to get some speed, did a big bottom turn and a nice top turn, then I eyed up the next section to see what the wave had in store for me.
I took another pump to get through the next section, racing a bit faster than I expected. As I looked at the lip, I could see that this wave was not going to crumble or even have a shallow lapping barrel at the top. This one was going to fully pitch, opening up, and inviting me right in. All of a sudden it felt like I was in really shallow water. I could tell by the speed of the wave, steepness of the face, and in my peripheral vision – sand and foam being kicked up behind me.
The tide must have dropped more than I expected, creating the shallow and throaty inside sections that ended in either glory or destruction. This all came together after the fact of course, in the moment I didn’t have time to do anything, but duck my head and assume my well practiced barrel stance.
I was crouched down with my butt about parallel with my knees. My hands were up – front hand pointing down the line, back hand even with my chest, posed and ready to jab into the wave and slow me down if needed. My shoulders were a little bit slanted with the back one higher than the front one and I was leaning a bit forward, most of my weight on the front foot.
When the wave pitched over me, everything went dark, but this time not because I was closing my eyes in anticipation of being destroyed. I was deep inside the barrel. The sandy wave had blocked out all light except what I could see down the line at the exit point. I was deep enough to see the lip breaking several feet out front of my board and beyond that out into the world – the tree-lined beach from a vantage point I’d never seen for more than a millisecond.
It might have been the darkness behind me and light in front that kept me aiming straight toward the mouth of the tube. Or maybe I was just frozen in shock of how surreal the experience was. In any case, I didn’t do anything. I just held my line and the wave did all the work.
A second later, the wave slowed down, but I maintained my speed and kept my line.
I flew out through the window, back into the world.
Standing upright with a proud posture and big smile, I turned toward the beach, jumped to my stomach, and rode the short remainder in to dry sand.