Surfing: The art of learning from your mistakes

The surf-break at Molasses reef:

He launched the Lucky Roller about three in the afternoon from the Port Largo homeowners park in Key Largo. The weather had been downright nasty even for late March. Though not hurricane season, he felt one was coming. For many days a front had been blowing 25 knots or better out of the southeast and that morning a strong cold front began to blow down from the north. The wind slowed from a hard run to a walk to a crawl. The feathered clouds above seemed to want to form their own disturbingly calm vortex, like when the eye of Hurricane Irma when it went through the Keys and sucked all the water out of Florida Bay. He could feel the air temperature begin to drop.

He floated the Lucky Roller, fired her up, backed her around and headed out. He wanted to see if the abrupt wind shift from SE to NE coupled with the surf buildup of a week’s worth of heavy winds out of the southeast might create a surf break five miles offshore at the edge of local Molasses reef. His was a novel thought, and one that might change his world; for surfers are a unique clique of dreamers, willing to travel and wait long distances and many hours to sit on their surfboards in dangerous shark and jellyfish infested waters, waiting for just the right wave so that they might become one again with the force of the sea.

This is what he found.

Photo by Ian Wilson