Yesterday morning, approximately 67km south of Gisborne Emari asked me, How we looking for gas as we passed through some town with gas stations. I responded, "looks good" but wouldn't you know two more mountain climbs and passes put the gauge at an 1/8 of a tank and I began my silent freak out, like somebody with OCD and control issues does.....oh the torture! About 20km south of Gisborne I was delighted to spot a small station and gas up.
The first opportunity to turn right and head for the beach I took, no idea where I was at but the surf report indicated good offshore winds until 11am ish before turning on-shore. I ended up surfing a beach break south of the "Pipeline" at Waikanae Beach, the surf was chest high, offshore and fun, though got soft with the high tide....Frank Sarno would've been stoked! the wind did come on-shore and Emari and I searched the coast of Gisborne and North and with a fair sense of accuracy located nearly every spot in our surf book, just site-seeing and killing time since the decision was made by our camper van company to have someone drives a new camper van from Auckland, a six hour drive, and what I fucking upgrade we got. I went from a van driver to a bus driver, 5 speed manual transmission shifting to my left. Just when I thought I was getting this driving thing figured out, the new learning curve arrived. So we camped in our new rig at Sponge Bay, a really cool set up but unfortunately the swell was really not getting in there.
So that was yesterday and it is now August 6th and with Sponge Bay looking small we headed North and eventually picked a stretch of beach called Stock Route and Wainui Beach. When we first pulled up no one was in the water, off shore long lines and easily overhead with a good paddle. I was silently wishing I had someone to share this with and actually watched for a while and eventually a few paddled out and once the line up had a good 7 people in it I suited up and surfed about an hour in a half, catching about 8-10 waves, 3 good ones. The surf was on average 6-8 foot on the faces, some bigger drops and when you picked the right one you ended up with an open faced wave. The swell looks like it is dropping all day so I will try to get another session after lunch before we head north up the East Cape, then into the Bay of Plenty. Should be able to find some small surf along the way, might go flat Tuesday/Wednesday but next swell looks like it will be arriving this Thursday......some ample time to practice driving our new bus!
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