Maldives Surf Trip - Day 5 - Mermaid's Coin Illustration

Day 5 - Maldives Surf Charter

15/9/2013

Where am I: North Male Atolls Who am I with: Anna, who has joined the boat from another one, a pod of spinner dolphins and a fruit bat.

Anna and a lovely bunch of bananas

What we ate: French toast for breakfast!! Fish and chips for dinner and banana crepes for dessert. A good day! What we did: Three surfs today! Told Tamara about the baby. Funny Moments: Singing in the line up. Shakin' our tushie on the dinghy. Surf Session #6 Spot: Jailbreaks Conditions: smaller I surfed my: 5'6 Best wave: I only caught one and fell off. As it was smaller I thought that sitting on the inside a bit might have been a good idea to catch some of the smaller ones. Unfortunately, the bigger ones caught me instead. Got caught on the inside twice and got a bit panicky the second time thinking that I was also being pushed across to the peak as well as inside onto the reef.

They really pound you here. Suck you back when you dive under. Got a bit emotional, but I'm totally fine. Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you. Glad we're moving onto ninjas, which is meant to be much gentler. The size of the waves has been fine, but the sets are just massive. Might just play it really safe and sit out on the elbow at the next place. We were talking about how we were sitting out on the little finger yesterday. So I joined Leeann and Anna out there before heading in.

Magic Moments: Three boats full of girls all wound up here, so we had about 16 girls in the lineup. One whole boat was from Dunsborough. It was great seeing other people get stoked on this wave.

Out on the fingernail = next to the boat

We collected Tamara off the reef on the way back to the boat as her leggie had snapped! Surf Session #7

Spot: Ninjas

Conditions: Smallish and glassy.

I surfed my: longboard

This was such a great surf. Small enough that there wasn't the fear factor but the sets still felt decent. Only about two bigger waves in a set, which was more manageable.

Best wave: one of my first waves was so long! Nice and wall-y. I tried to tuck and get past this section. I wound up in line with where the Haira was anchored in the channel! So then I ended up standing around the side of the island, on the reef 'having a cuppa' for a few waves, before a lull to head back out. Took the GoPro out today. Caught loads of waves!! Tamara and I were in our element on the longboards. Leeann had some fun ones and felt much more in her comfort zone here. Much more fun when you're trying to catch the set waves instead of the ones in between! Magic Moments: 2 turtles, 2 pods of dolphins and turquoise fish.

Surf Session #8 Spot: Ninjas Conditions: afternoon. Higher tide than the lunch surf. Fatter. I surfed my: longboard We had dolphins out with us for this one! It was crowded initially with quite a few learners out with two guides. I've been trying to flick off the back of the waves before they start to close out but haven't been having much luck. One of the guides saw me and told me I needed to be right on the tail to get this done. We shared a great moment of stoke when I managed to nail this on my next wave. There was fist pumping.

The Moment - Sharing the stoke

We all whooped and cheered for a lady who he was coaching. She caught this bomb and rode it to the bottom on her guts. Innocence is bliss. I wish I had that much fearlessness! We then had the place to ourselves. So awesome to have sessions where you lose count of your waves. Got a few bombs too! Leeann was on fire this session and I was lucky enough to see two or three of her waves from the front where she was getting more angle and more speed. Two were really terrific, long waves, so she was absolutely stoked. After this morning I was saying that some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you. It was a bit of both today, but I'm pretty sure I got roast bear this afternoon!