MAELSTROM

One of the earliest uses of the Scandinavian word maelström was by Edgar Allan Poe in his story "A Descent into the Maelström" in 1841, about the Moskstraumen, a powerful tidal current in the Lofoten Islands off the Norwegian coast.

One Spring morning a year or so ago, me and DL went out for a dawny on a dropping tide - there was a new chest high swell building with light cross-offshore breezes at one of our local spots. The usual paddle out was via a small stream in the corner of the beach. So we suited up and got in the water - just the two of us as the sky started to lighten.

Almost instantly I was rushed out the back on a speedy conveyor belt of moving water that dragged me away from the clean waves I had been aiming for. I found myself in a swirling, choppy, ripped up patch of water that was a lot further out than I wanted to be. It was literally a big circle of churning, boiling sea, and I was stuck in the middle of it! I'd surfed this beach many times and thought I knew most of its moods but was taken by surprise at how violent this particular rip was. I tried to focus and paddle across and away from the rip back to the relative calm that seemed only 20 metres away yet I was still going further out to sea in the opposite direction. A change of plan was needed so I steered off toward a bouncy, backwashy impact zone that would not normally be an option, but I wanted to get out of that rip before I ran out of gas. After another 15 minutes of sustained hard paddling I finally got away from the rip and across the dumping sandbank and decided to recoup back on the beach.

Back onshore I waited for DL, a strong paddler, who had also been caught in the same predicament and was making his way back to the beach.

"That was like a fuggin maelstrom out there!" I declared.

Not really understanding how it had been so ugly, because as we looked out on it now from the safety of the beach the rip had disappeared, and while I had been seemingly paddling for dear life the rip had faded away, the waves had cleaned up and a whole crew of surfers had arrived and were out having a whale of a time on the clean lefts.

The combination of a fresh pulse of swell meeting a quickly dropping tide above some particular bathymetry had produced 20 minutes of almost whirlpool-like conditions if you happened to have paddled out at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

Bad timing? Not really - I can't say I enjoyed it, but I can say I'm glad I experienced it.