Flow Motion

The thing I love about living in Western Australia is its vastness. Having scoured its coastlines for over three and a half decades, with the aid of a new toy (a wee little Zodiac bought for tow- in foiling) the doors have opened to areas of that I’d previously been to, but never had the means of accessing. Until now.

- Scott Mckercher

The thing about such vastness, is you have two coastlines facing different directions which work on opposing weather systems. Meaning, when one is on the other is off, and it can involve quite a bit of driving to be in sync to catch the elusive offshore. In Autumn especially, you could either score gold or be dumb outta luck when a large winter system comes through that wipes out all options. Wesley Fry, previously from Western Australia but now transplanted to the East coast, was coming home for the Rottnest Island Classic. I had a new step up the board I wanted him to try, along with collaborating on another journalistic endeavor while he was in the vicinity (with a limited window i.e. one week). So, the best plan to assure scoring conditions was to not have a plan at all. We waited until the last minute as to where to go on our next little adventure, so as not to lock ourselves into somewhere that wasn’t happening. Last year’s trip to Sumbawa was so lucky with the arrival of the swell while we were there, that I couldn’t count on such blessedness twice in a row. Ultimately, however, this is how everyone’s vacations should be coordinated. If you’re into chasing waves, you have to be flexible and in flow mode. If WA was stormy and windblown and sending swell up to Indo, we’d be jumping on a plane (blessed that Indo is only been three hours away from WA). However, if WA was offshore, we’d stick around and chase locally (coz indo would be flat).