Stuart Nettle September 7, 2009

Clif and I never get good waves when we surf together. Sure we've only known each other for a few years but in that time we've driven thousands of highway miles, and run down hundreds of bushtracks looking for good waves. We've been dudded every time. We do all the right things, and make all the right movements, but our surfing friendship has been fraught with unexpected onshores, unusual tidal movements and the unexplained disappearance of swells. I work in an office surrounded by meteorologists, each with a particular specialty in weather prediction – men of science all of them. So, far be it from me to explain away the bad luck we've had on surf trips as unfounded and irrational superstition. Except there's no other way to explain it... We've camped at places where the 'men of science' have said it will be pumping on the 'morrow...only to find it two feet. We've surfed spots that were knee-high to find out the rest of the coast was coming out of the sky. I've even taken him to my local on a day it was pumping, when the planets had seemingly aligned so Clif and I were finally able to share some good waves together. Yet in the time it took us to get into our wetsuits the current that usually runs down the point reversed and ran out to sea, turning the place to junk. In twenty years of surfing the point I'd never seen it happen. Like a sign of the apocalypse, right then I knew we were doomed. Now before you start thinking that I'm the one with the voodoo doll, I'll have you know that it's not the same with other surf partners. I've had many sessions in perfection with other mates. Sessions that saw us sit in a daze on the drive home, barely able to process what we just saw. Sessions that have brought us closer together as mates. Sessions that get recalled with knowing delight when we talk tale. It's just that, for reasons unknown, Clif and I can't get it together. Science can't explain it but after many failed missions we don't need any further proof that something else is at work (and no, I don't mean him). Yesterday morning I was woken from my sleep by the insistent buzz of the front door bell. It was Clif so I let him in. He had way more energy than is proper for a sunday morning so I knew something was up. Talking a bit faster and louder than normal he asked to borrow a board bag and a 7'2”. Turns out there is a huge swell heading toward Indo – a 'sure thing' swell - and he'd just bought a last minute ticket to Nias. He didn't ask me to join him and I understood fully. No explanation necessary.