NOT SURFING THE CHATHAM ISLANDS
Directly in front of the Chatham Hotel pub is a little curve in the shoreline that produces a perfect, peeling right. It’s not a real wave, as in rideable – it’s barely ankle high, and breaks right on shore – but if you were GI Joe it’d be six-foot Superbank. On a sunny Friday afternoon I worked my way through a bottle of Gunn Estate Pinot Noir and mindsurfed it, bashing lips on my Al Merrick Flyer, swooping high and mighty on my Skip Frye fish, sliding sideways and backwards and twirling on my Derek Hynd F-F-F. It was an exhilarating surf, growing more and more real with every sip.
During my week-long visit to the Chatham Islands I saw lots of good waves – slabby reefs, zippy rivermouths, A-frame beachbreaks – but that imagined session was as close as I’d get to the water.
Sharks. You can’t mention surfing in the Chatham Islands without hearing about sharks. Before the word surf has left your mouth the sha-is already forming on the local’s lips.
“Sharks are all over the show,” Nick Cameron, a former surfer whose boards collect dust in his garage, told me. “They’re cruising around everywhere.”
“You’re bloody kidding, aren’t you mate?” said a rough-looking guy I met on a bluff overlooking inviting head-high peaks at Kahunene Point.
