The Race Begins
Summer laid his coat of shining warm sunlight and strong warm wind over land and sea. The full moon joined him, and together, the two opened the yearly Shipwreck Bay Surfing Championship. The wind and the gravity of sun and full moon created springtides with huge waves that rose as they rolled into the bay and up the river. The bay where this competition was held was renowned for its large waves, which had smashed many a ship against ragged cliffs and thus earned the locality its name. Shipwreck Bay was long and wedge-shaped. On its sides towered cliffs. Their tops were adorned with a few wrecked ships, for although they were tall, some waves had been taller still. At the tip of the bay, Stonemason River flowed into the sea. It had got its name from having carved its bed into the cliffs as masterfully as a stonemason.
The organizers of the tournament stood on the cliffs beside a lighthouse and set up cameras, loudspeakers and other equipment. They had hired a band to play summer music for underlining the mood. Reporters livestreamed the event to the public on the Internet and broadcast it on TV. When low tide came and the wind slacked off, the contestants got onto the river with their surfboards and paddled into the bay from there with their hands and feet. Raymond Dickens, a surfer with smooth black hair, was drinking his tequila through a straw while drifting on his board. Once the surfers had gathered below the cliffs, the overseer declared the rules to them through the loudspeakers. He was a tall and muscular man with ebony skin, stern eyes and a deep and booming voice. Among other things, he said this:
“The race will begin when the lighthouse flashes. There’s a start line of buoys outside Shipwreck Bay.” He pointed out to sea. “When the race starts, you must be at that start line or further out. Some one thousand feet upriver hangs an apple above the river from a horizontal bar fastened to a pole on one riverside. Your goal is to pick that apple. The apple hangs so high that you have to jump or ride a tall wave to reach it. You have been given the chance to group yourselves into teams or take part alone. A team wins if any one of its members picks the apple. This is an upside of being in a team. If a team wins, the prize will be shared between its members. However, in order for a team to win, the number of team members passing the pole must be the same as the number of team members starting at the buoys. If not, the whole team loses, and the prize goes to the first surfer not in that team to pass the apple pole (unless they’re part of a team that also loses, of course). This is a downside of being in a team. Once the wave a contestant has ridden has broken down, the race is over for them. They’ll have either won or lost. Surfing on a second wave doesn’t count.”
“Ready to drink my spray?” said Raymond with his trademark arrogant grin and splashed with his surfboard, on which fire streaks were painted.
“Whoever grins last grins best,” responded Gwen Hammond, a strongly built redhead, and splashed back with her turquoise and orange board.
Raymond emptied his plastic can and threw it and the plastic straw into the water.
“Hey!” said Gwen. “Don’t pollute the oceans.”
Raymond only laughed. He took the can and straw out of the water and laid them on his board. Then, he paddled to the narrow beach with his hands, filled the can with sand, and threw it – with the straw sticking in it – far away into the sea so that it immediately sank and Gwen couldn’t remove it from the water.
“There!” he said content with himself when he had paddled back to Gwen.
“You lover of fish meat will eventually eat that yourself, you know,” said Gwen and shook her head.
“When I’ve won the prize, me and my friends will spend the money on the best caviar and shark fin soup in the world,” said Raymond.
“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen and that the money will go into shark and ray conservation, gar and sturgeon conservation, and other noble causes.” Two surfers appeared on Gwen’s sides. They were Ashton and Ashley Smith, telepathic twins begotten during a total solar eclipse.
“Ooh, the Smith twins and nature maniac Gwen think they can beat us. I’m so scared,” mocked Raymond. He made a loud whistle, and three surfers lined up behind him. “Everyone knows that the four of us are the best surfers in the world.”
“We’ll wait and see.” Gwen and her twin friends looked their four opponents in the eye.
The voice of the overseer sounded, “Surfers, get to the start line.”
The surfers headed out to sea, positioned themselves behind the buoy line, and waited for high tide and for the wind to become strong again. The wind got stronger and started to whip up the sea and drive handsome waves into Shipwreck Bay. But these “ripples”, as many of the surfers called the many feet-high waves, were not what the competitors were waiting for. They were waiting for monsters, and these only came with the high tide. Thus, although the lighthouse flashed the start signal, none of the surfers rode a wave yet. Pearls of sweat appeared on their glistening skin due to the burning summer sun above and the burning tension within, but they were dried quickly by the strong and warm summer wind. It blew through Ashley’s brown hair, which was as beautiful and wavy as the sea but differed from the latter in color, of course. Overhead cried the seagulls. From time to time, they snatched a fish from their watery hunting grounds.
The first of the giants rose thirty feet high behind the surfers, but they simply let it roll through under them. The reason became apparent when the second giant rose forty feet behind them. Two surfers paddled forth and stood up on their boards to ride this large wave. And what a ride it was! The wave drove them into Shipwreck Bay. Soon, it had reached fifty feet and went on to grow taller. When it had driven the two surfers into the mouth of Stonemason River, it towered a hundred feet high. From there, it drove the two surfers up the river. Yet mighty as it was, its thrust was finite, whereas the flow of the river had no limit. Thus, the wave broke down a hundred feet before the apple. Unable to reach their goal, the two surfers were swept back downriver. Defeated, they paddled ashore and left the water. The other surfers still wavered; on the one hand, someone to ride a wave that would reach the apple could get the fruit before those who didn’t ride it, but on the other hand, if the wave would fall short of reaching the goal, its riders would lose. The next surfers to set off reached the apple pole alright, but by the time they passed under it, their wave had broken down and wasn’t high enough anymore for them to pick the prized fruit.
The tension of the remaining surfers rose. Their mood was nothing like the relaxed summer atmosphere which the sight of the blue sky and the sunlit bay and river and the sound of the summer songs spread. At last, a gigantic wave rose up behind them some sixty feet high. The more experienced surfers knew that this was the one. Gwen, the twins, and Raymond and his gang got ready to ride. They paddled furiously with their hands and feet and stood up on their surfboards once the forepart of the wave reached them. Those who wavered too much were left behind.
“Yeehaw!” shouted Raymond and his gang as well as Gwen and her friends.
The two teams splashed surf water onto each other as they sped over the water’s surface. Behind them, the wave rose to unbelievable heights. When it reached Shipwreck Bay, it had topped eighty feet. The crowd who had gathered on the cliffs cheered the surfers on. Their cheering mixed with the seagulls’ calls and the music of Shakira’s song Waka Waka, which the band was currently playing. Ashley and Ashton waved to their parents, who were standing in the crowd and waved back to their young grownup children.
