winning the cactus cup: part 2
by Graham
Super tight turns-- trying to come back on my own lines
This is the second installment of the trilogy that is my cactus cup story, making this essentially my Empire Strikes Back– a tale of hardship and misdirection setting up the eventual return to the top in part 3. For that reason, I’ll keep this account brief. (all photos by the amazing Clark Merritt)
After driving down to San Diego in the late evening with my good friend Ruben Lemmens, we tried to find a hotel or motel for the night. But alas, there were none. San Diego is mysteriously the city of all the world’s conventions, be it for comic books (a la comicon) or something entirely unrelated like aerospace engineering. The perpetually sunny weather and stunningly sterile architecture are breeding grounds for these swarms of like-minded people. And all these people (for whatever convention they were in town for) had booked every single hotel room in the entire city. Neither budget rooms nor lux rooms were available to us. So? What were we to do?
Our answer was simply to stay up all night till the rest of the crew woke up to leave for the border at 6am in their prebooked rooms at the Day’s Inn motel. We didn’t have to leave till 10am, so that afforded us a solid 4 hours of sleep. Remember, I hadn’t slept the night before, so at this point, I’m approaching delirium.
I love 1-hand goiters down in Baja.
Ruben and I hung out exploring San Diego on foot. We basically walked the entire city in our flip flops, getting lost and asking random taxi’s for direction in our misdirected walk. At 4am, we found a 24hr restaurant that seemed the answer to something, even if that something was not the question we asked. Seated inside as one of two groups of people, we order their extra breakfast sandwich special, which is basically the highest concentration of calories and cholesterol I have ever seen: triple layerGrilled cheese with sausage patties and bacon.
After more aimless walking, we arrived at the hotel at exactly 6am, just in time to score some beds for much needed– though all too brief– sleep.
We woke at 10. Ruben went to meet his plane and I met the van that was driving me on the 10 hour journey down into Mexico to reach Punta San Carlos. Most people much prefer the more comfortable but more expensive fly-in option over the rugged multi hour drive through harsh Mexican land. However, in my tired state, I simply passed out and slept for most of the drive.
The next day we competed. I was still rusty on the wave and was unsure about which board I wanted to use– a more conventional shape or a fish. I managed some good turns on the fish and made it to 4th. I thought that a decent start but knew that I could do better. The next day promised us more waves and I promised myself that I’d finish in the top 2.
Pulling a 360 back inside the wave at The Point
With more waves, day 2 was looking to have even better waves and wind. In my first heat, I was performing exactly how I wanted. On the horn signaling the start of the heat, I threw around a massive goiter, landing bold upright. Of course, all the photographers were figuring out a boat angle and missed it, but I was pretty happy. In the next heat though, I can’t say the same. I caught one of the set waves early on and killed it. I had a sick turn into an air into a floater into a taka– it was the highest scoring wave of the heat. But I couldn’t find another wave for the entire heat. So I lost the heat!
Sitting unhappily in 7th after a good performance on the wave but bad performance competitively
This meant that after day 2, I was in 7th place overall! People were joking with me that I was possibly sailing the best but that I didn’t know how to catch more than one wave in a heat. I laughed, knowing that the comment stung with the truth.
On the 3rd day, we didn’t compete. That day, I worked really hard on my tricks to be ready for day 4. I wanted to be able to pull a goiter or a taka on call on any wave. And preferably one of the 1-hand variations. Sitting well below the podium, I pushed myself to be ready for the new start of the competition.
Only finding 1 wave but riding it well-- here's an air