I’ve consider myself an experienced surfer. Surfed for many years. Surfed many locations. But on this particular day I felt I was close to my limit. The wave of choice for my close friend and surfing buddy Brett and I was the famous Bali Reef Break ‘Impossibles’ located on the Bukit Peninsula in Bali. It’s called ‘Impossibles’ because normally you can’t make it all the way down the line but karma was with us on this trip and with all the long waves we were getting we renamed it ‘Makeables’ for our time there. Only have had surfed it twice before, I certainly hadn’t had the place wired. However Brett had surfed it a little more so I knew he had my back. Over all we surfing in twice a day, five days straight. The swell just kept giving. On this particular day from the cliff top the perfect peeling waves looked around a handleable 6ft, however once standing down on the reef we quickly realised it was a different story.
Just to get to the line up was an adventure in itself. Starting with a climb down around 150 stairs to the beach , followed by long walk along the beach until we reached the end of the sand. From there we weaved our way through rock boulders below the cliff face, walking through caves formed from these huge boulders. Monkeys would be running a muck at the bottom of the cliffs, sometimes chasing us as we tried to avoid them. It all was an awesome sight and experience.
As we appeared out of the last cave and I caught a glimpse of the break, things became serious with the anticipation turning to nerves and even fright, for me anyway. It was massive! From there we reached the start of the reef and on to negotiate the sharp coral reef toward the jump off zone. Even though thoughts were entering my mind to turn back, with Brett by my side, that wasn’t an option. The most critical moment was picking the gap in between sets to paddle out, as if you timed this wrong you were surly toast! As the lull appeared we jumped and paddled for our lives to pass the inside reef. We timed it perfect and made it out without any consequence. The inside section had the most waves with a handleable size at around 6-8ft but every once in a while these 10ft+ bombs would appear from no where breaking further out and cleaning everyone up. Every so often we would paddle out waiting for these bomb sets, but as a fairly long wait, we would end up drifting in to get some smaller ones and of course in doing so get cleaned up when those bombs came. But even the 6ft waves had a punch, with at one moment Brett taking off only to be thrown over the falls. I could see his board floating but he had not surfaced yet. It almost came to a point where I was saying to myself ‘ok Brett, time to come up’ and was about to paddle over to see when he finally popped up looking quite exhausted from the hold down. A couple of times I wiped out and had my hands cut in trying to keep my body off the reef. Better hands than something more serious. When we managed to catch the bomb sets the adrenaline was running high with a drop that seemed to take forever before racing down the reef as fast as I’ve ever gone on a wave, making a couple of sections where falling would have brought massive regret.
Even just sitting out in the water was glorious. I saw huge colourful fish through the crystal clear water swimming below. I saw a huge dugong fish and at one stage a turtle popped its head up right in front of my board as if to say hello. We were diving down to the reef during the lulls investigating the wonderful underwater world. What a sight.
After we got a few amazing waves at around 6ft in size and up to 300 metres in length, we were sitting, waiting for the next one. Then they appeared. A line of waves on the horizon that looked to be way bigger than any I had seen during the session, and any of our other sessions for that matter. I started freaking out. Their was no way I had a chance of getting out to make it over them. They were going to detonate just metres in front of me. As the first one approached the panic set in and I started to use a surfers breathing technique to try and calm myself. At one moment I swore out loud as I wondering how annihilated I was about to get. As the huge lump of whitewater was about to engulf me I push my board to one side and pinned dived down as far as I could go, almost to the bottom of the reef. The force of it sucked me up and instantly I was been smashed around like a pair of socks in a washing machine. After what seemed an eternity, I popped up with little breath left in me, only to see another wall of white water beaming down on me.
Once again I took a huge breath and sunk down into the depths of the ocean. Again, I was tossed around and with no option but to go with the ride. At this stage I couldn’t relax and was panicking and fighting to get to the surface while avoiding the reef below. Eventually, almost out of breath, the turbulence allowed me to surface only to see one more wall of water coming for me. This time I chose to attempt a duck dive, as because I had been washed in so far, I assumed the beating wouldn’t be so hard and I wanted to hold onto the ‘safety’ of my board. It picked me up and through me around, but I held on tight. To my relief the beating wasn’t nearly as bad and I came up with my board and I intact. Luckily there were no more waves coming or I would have been in serious danger. Out of breath, zero energy left, I scrambled out the back paddling harder than I had ever done before. Once out the back it took a while to compose myself but I was ok. With the waves so perfect, I still stayed out to the sun started setting, catching a few more great waves. We then started our next adventure of getting in.
But that mission is a whole other story…
