SHALLOW

I’d never seen a board break like that before. A jagged snap, vertical from the tail up, tracing the line of the stringer before blowing out from the rail like a tree branch. It looked like a lightning rod had struck it, rather than the lip of a North Atlantic wave.

It was my first time surfing The Left and I had gone through two boards in rapid succession. An earlier wave had claimed the nose of my shortboard as I tried to whip