The occupation

Tim

This is my buddy Tim. We went for a surf last weeks Monday because it was his last day of freedom before definitively joining the occupation. The next day his contract at his first 'real' job started. Off-course such a day should be spent in style.

I woke up incredibly early to catch a train to the coast to be welcomed by Tim saying the forecasts changed a lot overnight. Instead of mellow surfing conditions, all of a sudden we were getting serious Dutch stormsurf.

I have a longboard stalled at Tim's house, but boy was I happy I dragged my fish with me that day. Longboards and Dutch stormsurf don't mix very well in my opinion. Too much board that can be dragged back to the beach by the many shifty peaks.

Anyways the forecast got us quite excited, so a quick cup of coffee and we took the tram to the beach. After a short walk through the dunes were welcomed by this view:

Hey, wait a second...  this doesnt look like stormsurf!

Some pretty decent lines seemed to be coming in, so we rushed the last bit to the beach.

In the water however the conditions turned out to be a bit more haggard than they looked. Strong currents, lots of close-outs, big foam walls and 2 guys in the water who both should surf more, made for a lot of paddling and not a lot of surfing getting done.

I did manage to get some waves, but had some issues adjusting to my fish which I hadn't surfed in a looong time.

Tim gearing up for the cold North Sea

Waves still looked decent from here

Fuzzy pic of me struggling on my fish by Tim

Not only did I struggle with surfing, I had quite a hard time photographing as well. The conditions made it impossible to shoot from my board and I wasn't feeling comfortable swimming out too far with the strong currents. I did try for a short while to get somewhat closer to the break, but there was quite a ferocious shorebreak. I had one of the worst wipe-outs in a long time... and it was without a board!
Standing in knee-deep water I got sent into some sort of summersault throwing my legs over my body, and digging my chin into the bottom in the process. When I surfaced my camera which was around my neck (and tied around my wrist as well!) was gone. Luckily it floats, so after a mad dash I retrieved it from the claws of the greedy North Sea.

From the safety of the beach I later did manage to get this one cool shot of Tim and a fishingtrawler passing by behind hem.

Even though I really struggled, I still enjoyed myself tremendously. I really start to saviour every day spent in the water more and more. A bad day in the water is still so much better than an average day spent doing random daily stuff.

When surfing the net later that week, I came across this drawing by monsterboardsorg.blogspot.com 's Eef:

 I really dig Eef's art (and his unconventional hand- and bellyboards as well). In this drawing he really caught the feeling I had last week (and have quite often when I'm in the sea on a grim cloudy day when there's some height to the waves). I can really get intimidated by her sometimes, although I know there no reason to be. Weird enough whenever it happens, as soon as the suns breaks through, it's gone. I guess its all in my head. Anyway, I like this drawing a lot. Eef rocks!