A New Approach
Panga-style boats float serenely in the calm estuary. The tide is high, filling in the mangroves, the softly shimmering surface lapping at the small ramp of black rock where surfboards, handed down from the roof of the van, are carried and laid into the bow of the long, narrow, open fiberglass workboat.
Today we’re going where the waves are bigger.
Not yet appearing to our east, the sun forms shining columns in a cloud of steam pouring from a volcano, defining the horizon and giving the morning a biblical glow. On the riverbank is our cast of characters: Rob, Fred, Sabrina, Willow, Gerritt, Victor, and our new boat captain, a thickset, smiling man who flashes a shaka—communicating some combination of all-good, you’re-good, right on, aloha, hang loose, thanks, or simply yo bro—at the vlogger-cam whenever it’s turned in his direction. I waggle thumb and pinkie, middle three fingers curled, back at him with my free hand and we share grins. This will be the extent of my conversation with our
Rob seems coiled, ready for the day. I ask him what the plan is.
We're going around and out the estuary, around the point, down to another estuary, and probably surf the beach break there.
Sweet, I say.
And there’s your log, he says, nodding with a touch of smirking derision as Victor carries a nine-and-a-half-foot longboard to the boat.
Easy now, I say to Rob.
The day before, back at another beach break, Victor decided it was time for me to change boards. The first board he’d given me, a plank called Spearmint for her lime green, chewing gum color, apparently wasn’t getting me the results he’d hoped for. As I was not yet proficient enough to make the initial pop-up while headed down the line of a wave, I’d been taking off straight and attempting a bottom turn to beat the white water and ride out onto the green face of the wave. This strategy mostly resulted in the nose of the board diving for the bottom of the ocean, sending me forward, arms instinctively covering my head as I performed the kook flop.
Or, if I did catch the wave, I’d fail to beat the curling lip to the face, and be pushed along anticlimactically by the wall of churning foam.
And so, as Victor had explained, it was time for a new date.
Slapping his hand on her wide surface, already pocked with great gobs of wax, he’s said: This is Big Mama. She take care of you.
Big Mama was also a nine-footer with a single fin, but had greater volume than Spearmint. Volume equals buoyancy; the more a board has, the better it floats. Another difference: when laid on the sand, this new board had more rise to the nose, which surfers call rocker. More volume and rocker, Victor had told me, and I will get better results. The strategy had worked and on days two and three I’d upped my caught-wave count from three to six to nine.
If you’re an accomplished surfer, these numbers will read as laughable. If you’re not a surfer, they will all seem pathetic. But if you’ve tried this ridiculously difficult sport, you will understand the fragile pride with which I offer them. And you’ll respect my need to defend my date’s honor when faced with Rob’s sneer.
That's Big Mama, I say in a mock warning tone. You be nice to her.
Standing in the stern, the captain starts the outboard motor, cocking it to the side as far as it will go, and carving a smooth C in the still surface of the inlet. Gerritt launches his drone and phones appear in hands, pointed at the silhouetted volcano. The moment is too perfect not to document.
Bow of the battered panga riding high over oncoming swell, we round an island outcropping where the waves peel off in fast left breaks, leaving me grateful our boat keeps skimming right on by. Later in the week we’ll test ourselves on this point break, but today we head farther down the island to where the sandy bottom forms a predictable A-frame wave. Or so I’ve been told. An A-frame is a good thing in surfing. It means the wave breaks in a single, predictable peak, suited for riding either left or right.
We’re barely stopped when 78-year-old Rob hops in the water with the elan of a 28-year-old. As he paddles off toward the back of the break, Gerritt is the only one of us who doesn’t watch him go. His head is down, focused on the small screen that’s showing him what his drone sees. I look over his shoulder and am captivated by the perspective. From high in the sky, Rob’s board carves a silent V in the smooth sea as he paddles toward a bible sky and an exhaling volcano. Arriving at some spot he’s selected, he sits up on his board, and you can see the satisfaction in his posture. He’s alone, sitting on a white board, in a white tee in a vast expanse of teal ocean. As he rides the coming swell in smooth appreciation, I am somehow happy to see my friend having this moment to himself. By some shared signal, it seems everyone else is content to let him have the solitude as well. Boards are waxed, sunblock applied, unhurried. We are alone out here; there’s no rush.
As it happens, Big Mama is on top of the stacked boards in the bow. So, it’s time for me to take my date to the dance. I dive in beside her, find the floating leash and attach it to my ankle. Shimmying up on my belly, I paddle toward the break and Rob. Coming in from behind the breaking waves is serene and smooth, with no need to battle through crashing waves to get where you’re going.
But you also can’t tell how big the waves are, or what you’re going to be in for. You’ve just got to trust that you’ll know what to do when you get there. This is new territory for me. I’ve pretty much been a slam-through-the-obstacles, knucklehead kind of guy. Blame it on a lifelong passion for ice hockey or my Boston upbringing, which seems even further away than its four thousand mapped miles. There’s no ice in Nicaragua, except maybe in your drink, and even that is rare. The softness of Central America, the required trust and flow of surfing…
Is it too late for me to learn a new approach? To find trust in the flow?
Probably. Once a Masshole, always a Masshole.
When I sit up on my board beside him, Rob nods and smiles as if in on some shared joke. No words are needed. Fred arrives moments later, slipping into the same satisfied and expectant sliver of silence. And then Rob spins his board toward the shore and, with barely a paddle stroke, springs to his feet, carving right down the wave. Like me, Rob is a goofy footer, and prone to making every wave a left, if possible. Yet he doesn’t choose the frontside ride here, and is rewarded by a long, fast right. Fred is next, and he too goes backside, carving a long left in his regular stance.
And then, without any thought or fear, as if on autopilot, I’m paddling and popping up. So stunned by the ease of the caught wave, I wait too long to make the frontside turn and stay out on the green face of the wave. The white water catches me, and though I know the cool kids would kick out, I’m not letting this one go until it’s over. From pop-up to keel-over takes all of 12 seconds (I'll time it later on the drone shot Gerritt captured), but the moment stretches to ten times its actual duration. And during that elongated moment I do not feel exuberance, nor do I feel like screaming with excitement. I feel open, without edges, and somehow home.
And then the moment is gone, the fleeting connection leaving a warm, oddly familiar emptiness that will not find me again on this day, but even now, as I write this, many weeks later in the dry Utah fall, I can still feel it there, somewhere behind my heart.