To an untrained eye like mine, the previous days body boarding from Harry suggested he was going to be a natural at the surfing lesson today. We’d signed Tracy, Harry and Toby up for a 2.5 hour lesson yesterday morning, I was the designated photographer so I couldn’t surf, otherwise I’d have loved to! After the alarm had woken us again this morning, (what kind of holiday is this with all these early mornings?), Toby announced that he didn’t want to go surfing afterall. He’d thought about it over night and he didn’t fancy the falling off part that much.
At quarter to nine Tracy and Harry were slipping into some pretty tight wetsuits and making their way to the beach where their audience were waiting patiently in the fog. it really was Fogust in Tofino. While the surfers warmed up and practiced their moves on the beach Toby and I played soccer. It wasn’t long though and they were going out into the water and the surfing began!
Harry went first and he was up and off! It looks like my prediction was right, he was going to be a natural! He kept going and in amongst a few falls and splashes there were some good moves. Tracy was also showing her moves and although she was whizzing into shore pretty well she preferred to stay on her knees! As she pointed out later she would have been a pretty awesome knee surfer by the end of the lesson if disaster hadn’t struck. But disaster did strike although in a slightly different way to how it appeared behind the safety of a camera lens.
Tracy came in to shore, on her knees, and fell off the board. She then did a Neil and flolloped about in the water for a bit – we suspected that she may have been taking a quick wee, but as it turns out she wasn’t! As she sat in the water Harry came flying in on his board and it appeared that he crashed straight into Tracy! As this all played out in front of us the instructor came over to survey the scene. Tracy was up and limping out of the water, had Harry’s board whacked her leg? As it turns out, as she fell from the board she twisted her ankle and fortunately Harry didn’t crash into his mum as she flopped about trying to get out the water!
On the positive side I caught all of this on camera!! So we start with Tracy coming in on her board:
And there she was gone:
Here she is flooping about like I do:
Here comes Harry showing no signs of mercy as he points his board straight at his helpless mum:
And wipeout!
Eventually Tracy made it to shore and lay on her board in pain. Poor Tracy. After a few minutes we hobbled very slowly back to our lodge as Harry kept on surfing.
It took some time to get back to the lodge but we made it in the end and then made the ankle even worse by pulling a skin tight wetsuit off over the top of it. At just after 10am Tracy gingerly climbed into the hot tub, took two pain killers and had a glass of wine! She didn’t care how early it was, she needed wine.
With Tracy and Toby settled in the hot tub I went back down to the beach to see how Harry was progressing. The first thing I saw on my return was Harry surfing in to shore and doing a 180 degree jump on his board! He really was a natural! What a smile he had on his face. As much fun as he was having he looked pretty exhausted by the time his 2.5 hours were up – as good as it is surfing in, I guess it’s pretty exhausting carrying your board back out again.
Back on the beach for the final time, his instructor confirmed that he was in fact a natural, much to Harry’s delight! All that was left to do was carry the board back and then jump into the hot tub with his mum (who’d just had her second medicinal glass of wine and quite a few Pringles!!). Poor Tracy, happy Harry!
And just in case this isn’t enough, there are more pictures here and the following are some surf dude videos:
httpv://youtu.be/xThMJVjBXdo
httpv://youtu.be/-MIEKgIKCbE
httpv://youtu.be/toGmFEFpVQI