Bielmann is getting nervous. "I'm fucking nervous, brah," he drawled.

"Why?" I asked.

"Fuck, brah, it's the scariest thing in the world being in those boats when the sets come. You think the end of the world has come."

So I started feeling nervous too - in solidarity at first, and then for real. I'd listened in at a safety meeting at the marina yesterday. The Tahitian water patrol men were gathered around, ashen-faced, while a doctor in a floral shirt and dark glasses ran through the hazards.

Boats going backwards over the falls into the reef, splintered like matchsticks, mass rescues, jet-skis, chaos, people screaming for their lives, helpless as new-born lambs, paramedics resuscitating people on the point, choppers buzzing in the sky whisking the injured to hospital and on and on until it made me dizzy. I don't think you can imagine it but when a veteran like Bielmann whose seen it as big as it gets starts to sweat you know it's gunna be mediaeval.

As well as crying for their own mummies and daddies surfers here will be farewelled on these days by their surrogate Tahitian families. It is high time we recognised the families of Teahupoo. Natural justice demands it.

I am staying with Ginette and Papa. Ginette is a Tahitian lady of quiet dignity and a sometimes cheeky sense of mischief. I have no doubt she is descended from Polynesian royalty. She has a Queenly disposition.

Papa is older yet shirtless he still carries the physique of a bull. In looks he resembles a Tahitian Charles Bronson but his eyes sparkle and twinkle with goodwill. He speaks no English so Papa and I communicate in a series of smiles and gestures which on a soft Tahitian afternoon lubricated by a few Hinanos can run into hours.

Papa is a man of the sea. He's retired now but his working life consisted of placing the channel markers on reef edges to indicate safe passage to mariners in the Society Islands. Papa placed the channel markers at Teahupoo long before the break was surfed. He has done so in the Tuamotus, the Gambiers, the Australes. Apataki, Mururoa, Rangiroa, Bora Bora, Huahine, Raitaea and every island, atoll and motu in this great archipelago strewn across the mid-Pacific like a chain of jewels have been mapped and made safe by Papa. He has seen more perfect, unridden reef pass waves than any man alive. Most of them will go to the grave with him.

Papa tends his garden in the cool of the morning. Grapefruit, banana, papaya, breadfruit, mango, jackfruit, guava, noni and other fruits all grow in his garden. His garden is proof of the gentleness and docility of the Earth when man caresses it with loving hands. When replicants roam the scarred and smoking ashes of the cities of the world, when the last vestiges of power have faded away into ugly decrepitude, leaving little vulture-like knobs of manifested will, the few human survivors will return to the way of the Polynesian - a few chickens, a crude hut, a patch of crops, a clump of fruit trees, a running stream, a dance to pass the night.

Papa does not speak on the phone. Papa cannot use a computer. But he is superb with the products of the garden and the sea. In the afternoon his brother brings a tuna, fresh so the cut meat shines with the iridescence of a rainbow after a dawn shower. Papa cuts the meat into cubes, adds some onion, some cucumber, tomato and squeezes lime juice over it. At the end he adds a dash of coconut milk. This is called poisson cru and it is the national dish of Tahiti. Poisson cru burns clean, makes men feel strong, makes men feel like they can conquer the sea. You think I'm lying? Try it for yourself.

I left Papa and Ginette after dinner and walked down to the marina to call my family. The night was intense and velvety black, buffeted by wind and rain squalls which ripped at my umbrella. I'd been talking with Dylan Longbottom about the swell and towing in earlier in the day. Dylan was talking swell periods, winds, skis blah, blah, blah. But I'd seen his son earlier on, a bright-eyed spright who looked with love into his father's eyes and I wanted to ask, "How, why would you risk your life for a wave?" But I couldn't, a lump came into my throat and the words wouldn't come out; I could see the little boy with that pure love for his dad and I just couldn't bring myself to raise the subject. To speak of death now is unclean.

I felt my way home in the blackness. Papa shook his head this morning. "Sud-est," he said.

Ginette pointed out to sea, "Wind is no good.".

We are all on the brink of a great experience...but not yet.

Pas Encore.