Rememberance of Things Past

A couple of weeks back I was reading through an internet surf forum and came across an entry by a fella named Grazza. It was in a thread titled ‘Wiping Out Effectively’ and is a great read:

“Some years ago at G Land I went out with two other blokes on a seriously big day, constant wash throughs from the outside bommies, that kind of thing. I tried to paddle into three or four in about an hour but there was way too much water moving around for me, and eventually I decided to bail it, and I picked a gap between the sets and very nervously sprinted in over the now low tide reef, at the same time as one of the other guys I paddled out with.

We ended up standing on the coral in front of Speedies feeling very relieved to be back in one piece, watching the sets roll through. The only guy left out was a Cronulla surfer (the name Wayne Tyte sticks in my memory but I’m not 100% sure), who was on the last day of an impulsive last minute 3 day trip when a job got cancelled. Through the sea mist, we watched as he scratched his way into a bigger set that started relatively easy and then started to funnel down the reef, growing quite alarmingly and getting thicker and thicker and faster and faster. Wayne was sitting in the pit, not deep but totally and completely committed with no possible option than to gun it and hope. As he passed in front of us, the beast was now probably 4-6x overhead, of which about 1/3 was lip, and was now seriously sucking water off the reef and dropping two or three feet below sea level. After a couple of more seconds, Wayne got completely and utterly swallowed and then smashed.

I look at the other bloke and he looks at me. We’re both thinking that he’s at best seriously hurt and what’s more, we are going to have to pull him out of a place that neither of us is hero enough to venture into.

30 to 40 seconds pass, and as the next wave draws the water off the reef again, Wayne stands up on the reef where the wave has left him. He’s in calf deep water at best. He looks around at us and raisies his arms in the air in triumph. The next wall of whitewater bowls him over and pretty much washes him up at our feet, bloody in several places but fundamentally unharmed. Never did ask him what his wipeout technique was, but”.

Now the thing is the fella in the story, Wayne Tyte, is in my boardriders club, and we had a comp today. So while watching Cronulla Point going off at 4′-5′ with light NW offshores I ran that story past him. Not suprisingly he was shocked.

Firstly, because Tytey is on the cemetery side of 50 and this whole internet communication business has largely passed him by. He couldn’t believe that I’d read a story from an unknown source about him on the net.

Secondly, that the unknown person had remembered it so well. It happened nearly 20 years ago yet the storyteller had got it spot on. Even the part where he raised his arms in the air after it.

The wave was obviously still vivid in Tytey’s mind as he then regaled all who cared to listen with his firsthand account of the wave; replete with breaking wave sound effects, waving hands and a jolly good hoot at the end.

Woooooo…..