My body is getting better adjusted to this time zone that's eight hours ahead of my own, but dawn still seems to arrive awfully quickly. Our downwind camp group is meeting at 8 o'clock each morning, so I'm getting myself out of bed at 5:30 to make sure I have time for some coffee and breakfast and to wake up a little bit.
The wind hadn't really picked up yet yesterday morning, so we put our boats in at Fish Hoek beach and paddled some 4.5 kilometers up to Muisenberg Beach to do a wave session. The shore break at Muisenberg features reliably big, smooth waves that are favored by board surfers for learning and practicing skills, and the Mocke brothers got us out there to do some drills that emphasized boat control and awareness of one's position on a wave. One key skill, of course, is avoiding the big "wipeout" in the "impact zone" where a wave begins to break.
Once again, our photographers from Cape Town Sport Photography were on the job. Here's a shot of yesterday's morning session; that's me on the right, with Ezra on the left and Jasper in the middle:
I've mentioned here in the past that I have sort of a "Goldilocks zone" in downwind conditions. Sometimes the bumps are too small for me and I waste a lot of energy trying to find help from them, and sometimes the swells are too big and I get scared and freeze up. One of my main goals for this week is to expand my Goldilocks zone under the tutelage of the Mockes.
Yesterday afternoon the Miller's Run started out in the "too small" end of things and I was gasping for breath while feeling like my boat was going nowhere. But then the conditions grew into "just right" territory and I started to find a groove. I was reminded of what hard work downwinding is, however, and it seemed like I was letting a lot of catchable runs get away because I just didn't have the oomph to sprint at the right time. This seems to happen whenever I travel someplace to paddle downwind, whether it's South Africa or the Columbia Gorge: my body needs a day or two to adapt to the new demands upon it.
Here's a shot of me at the launch site at Miller's Point:
The wind built overnight and by this morning it was plainly a more serious force. We gathered at the beach club at 8 o'clock and shuttled back to Miller's Point.
All kinds of things happened during the this morning's run that are worth discussing here. But for everybody who participated, the run was defined by my encounter with the seal.
I was maybe a kilometer or two in, and as I glided down the face of a wave I saw something brown, about the size of a large dog, swimming just to the left of my path, headed in the opposite direction from mine. Then it leapt straight up from the water and landed right in my lap. I let out a girlish squeal that I'm glad nobody was close enough to hear. Then I flipped.
I quickly remounted and got back to the business of my downwind run. I didn't give the seal much more thought besides being miffed that he'd made me flip. The conditions were plenty big enough to command my full attention... definitely a bit outside the Goldilocks zone.
Actually, I didn't really feel all that uncomfortable out there. It probably helped knowing that I could indeed execute a remount in those conditions (I guess I owe the seal one for that). But I just about wore myself out trying to link runs out there. The kinds of moves that required sub-maximum effort yesterday seemed to require maximum effort this morning. Dawid was moving around among the campers providing coaching, and each time he got to me he was telling me to Sprint! Sprint! Sprint! every ten seconds. I was fully in the red zone, gasping for breath. The thing is, I greatly admire and respect Dawid and if he'd told me to keep sprinting until my heart exploded, I probably would have.
Once we reached Fish Hoek Bay, Dawid seemed to detect that I'd had enough. He told me to spend the last few hundred meters in to the beach catching runs and then using as few strokes as possible to stay on those runs and link to other runs.
So... how did this run come to be defined by the seal? Well, once I was on the beach I saw Jasper and told him about the encounter, and he looked at my boat and said, "Is that what caused this??"
I hadn't even noticed it, but the boat had been gouged all the way through on the starboard edge of the seat bucket, near where my knees were and right where the seal had landed, both inside and outside the cockpit:
That seal had chomped right down on my boat. Here are his tooth marks inside the seat bucket:
And on the outside of the boat:
As we all gawked at the damage and talked about what had happened, it began to sink in how lucky I was not to have been seriously injured. If the seal had landed half a foot shy of where he did, he might have bitten right into my femoral artery. Dawid and Jasper might be experts of the highest caliber in surf lifesaving, but I can't imagine how they could have evacuated me off the Miller's Run before I bled out. Whew.
Piling that bit of emotional trauma on top of the extreme physical exertion of the run left me utterly exhausted. I returned to the B and B wondering if I even had it in me to do the afternoon run that was scheduled. I had some lunch (we've arranged with the innkeeper to hold our breakfast until after we get back from our morning sessions, so lunch for me this week is eggs and bacon and stuff like that) and then lay around for a while, trying to settle my brain. The wind had blown somewhere around 25 knots in the morning and was expected to be even a bit stronger by afternoon.
I walked back to the beach club for our 3 o'clock gathering, feeling apprehensive but determined to give it my best. The Mockes had kindly pulled out a new boat for me to paddle. Dawid pointed out another thing that hadn't occurred to me: one reason for my exhaustion was that I'd been paddling a boat with a bunch of water in it. He told me to spend the first section of our afternoon run doing more drills where I try to ride and link runs with as few strokes as possible, and then go for a strong finish from the lighthouse to the beach.
I think that bit of advice took the pressure off, and I had a much more enjoyable run. Doing what Dawid told me in the early going helped me relax and let the runs come to me. I was definitely getting tired in the later stages, but overall the endeavor had a more positive, less urgent feel than the morning run had.
And I think my Goldilocks zone might be expanding, even if just a little. One thing is for sure: the Miller's Run is quite a bit more challenging than the Columbia River Gorge, where my last downwind paddling took place. The addition of ocean swell to the wind conditions makes it feel like a washing machine out there. I'm still not totally at home in it, but I have a few more days to work on that. It looks like the wind will continue to blow.
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