A Sobering Surf

After a week of heavy showers and grey skies, the weekend was back to normal with blue skies, warm sunshine and a crystal clear sea. It’s very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by all this.

Carl and I were surfing at the point at Arrawarra on Sunday morning. Unusually, there were few others out but Leroi, a gnomic figure who has apparently not missed a day’s surfing since fibreglass was invented, and possibly before that, was there. He is even older than Carl and me. We noticed a large number of boats further out and, ominously, several helicopters, sweeping the ocean.

Leroi told us that they were looking for two fishermen who went overboard from their boat during the night. Suddenly, I felt less blasé about bobbing up and down on my board so near the rocks of the point and so far from a safe shore. Later we found out that there had been four in the boat. One, wearing a life jacket, had swum ashore and another was found clinging to an empty oil can. It appears the boat had struck a whale.

Watching the humpbacks as they migrate north every year at this time is a stirring experience, whether from the shore, or from one of the whale-watch boats but, having seen a whale beating the water, apparently in irritation, with its tail, I have wondered whether I’d want to be anywhere near them in a small boat, whether they felt malicious or were just going about their business and you happened to get in the way.

Those fishermen were not doing any wrong or particularly stupid, with the exception, possibly, of not wearing lifejackets. They probably had not thought they were taking a risk by going out in their boat. Perhaps their mistake was taking nature for granted.