Blogs

Belinda Baggs, body surfing mumma

Little baby Hunter turned 4 months old last week, a milestone in those early stages of life, and a milestone in the mumma rehabilitation effort! After two weeks of constant rain the sun finally shared herself with the east coast of Australia today, perfect timing for the return of good friend and amazingly talented surfer/artist Karlee Mackie. Despite a couple days of flying home from England, Karlee was in top form hooting up the street and dragging my tired butt down to the beach for a body surf in the punchy beach breaks.

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India Surf Festival

Two years have passed by since our first expedition to India. Those who have followed my blogs and our Surfer’s Eyes website have seen the photos and heard the tales of golden sands and slick warm waters, India as host to liquid gold without the crowds. As we foot stepped our way around the west coast, surfing with the tiny handful of locals it never once crossed my mind that a couple of years later India would host a Surf Festival. Well, that time has come.

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2012 rolled in with a perfect set, leaving only the foamy remains of 2011.  As naive and optimistic as it may be, we all make new years resolutions with a fresh positivity on what the new year will bring. 

For most, these resolutions revolves around weight, career, success and love, but there are the rare few bleach blonde, tanned individuals that grasp this new year and dream of moments of perfect lineups, crystal clear water and being inside the ultimate barrel.

I’ve been compiling my resolution list for seven days now, constantly adding new surfing resolutions for 2012.  As per normal, number one on my list is …

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Kuni was reminiscing of his first days learning the ropes of photography. His sensei, ‘Akira’, sent him out to shoot anything he liked under the theme ‘passion’. Kuni took him back a bunch of photos representing his theme and from there he learned the basics of how to blend individual creativity with skilful photography.

The theme ‘passion’ is a great one to incorporate into our daily lives. With passion life becomes a blank canvas for us to decorate with each step we take towards our dreams. As surfer’s we can relate to a universal passion for the ocean, nature and that special feeling of riding over traveling water.

Sometimes it is worth reminding ourselves of our own interpretation of passion, so I decided to put together a little photo essay that gets my passion flowing!

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We have just come off a full moon and subsequent sizey swell here on the east coast of Australia. Whilst the waves were not perfect, the days and night either side of the moon were time for reflect and consideration of that word – perfection.

In the cabin where we are living just out of Byron Bay, our bodies dismantle peacefully at night with the departure of the sun, and reassemble early with her dawn return. In between there is silence, peaceful and bright. As I lay in bed the silence grows deeper and my body attunes to her melody. I smile as my senses awaken to the depth of nothingness.

The darkness is annulled in the moonlight. The sky above is littered with stars, twinkling like a child’s nursery rhyme. The distant ocean is roaring, alive with nature’s silent energy. Kuni stirs and peers through the bedside glass, the night’s weight dispersing swiftly from his eyes at the sight of the farm’s bordering trees, still in the windless air.

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My first son was born at the beginning of Japan’s typhoon season. It was great knowing that I’d got him out and my stomach had shrunk in time for the big swells, but I underestimated how much time it would take me to get the strength to surf solid waves again. Despite remaining incredibly fit right throughout the pregnancy, only us mothers really can know just how draining childbirth is. Hours, sometimes of days, of incessant pushing through extreme pain is followed by feeding like a dairy cow every two hours adding to the sleepless nights that many husbands don’t realize we experience right throughout the last months of pregnancy. Then there’s the hormones…jumping and twirling all over the place, launching us into barrels of tears and bouts of depression no matter how grateful we are for our little bundles of joy. And that’s just scratching the surface.

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The annual cruiser’s migration in the Eastern Caribbean goes as follows: in the winter sailboats move inside the hurricane belt and explore the Leeward and Windward islands in a very comfortable climate. November 1^st to May 31^st is the high season in Caribbean waters. In the summer months, most sailboat owners travel outside the hurricane belt, north towards the United States or south towards Grenada and Trinidad. Or, they leave their boat somewhere safe and fly home, escaping the sometimes intolerable heat and humidity. Some sailors head further west, not being bothered by the hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1^st to October 31^st. Another Caribbean trend, weather wise, is that the wind blows from the northeast during the winter season and from the southeast during the summer season. What this means is, that whenever you want to follow the island chain down to reach the safer islands south, you have to beat into the wind and … when it is time to sail northeast again, the wind happens to exactly come from that direction as well. Ironic?

 Irie on her way out of Simpson Bay Lagoon in St. Maarten                                            © Liesbet Collaert

For this reason -sailing dead into the wind is impossible- weather windows are very important when you plan a long sailing trip. Not only are you looking for northeast winds or “better” to head southeast, you also desire a velocity of 10-15 knots. This keeps the waves at a reasonable height and brings the apparent wind to 15-20 knots (since you are moving into it at about 5 knots), creating a nice speed and pleasant motion to get somewhere. Of course, these are ideal situations and they are rare. If one can get winds out of the east as late in the season as June, one should be lucky and happy regardless. Sailing very close to the wind still beats motoring directly into it and the waves…

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Peter Stevens has been known for creating rain for farmers in Australia during the drought…but he would never admit to it, not wanting to be held responsible for other incidents that arise from tampering with the weather.

For some it might be hard to believe, but yet we are more than happy to believe and allow humans to create nuclear fuel, reactors and dangerous substances that have indeed caused trauma to the greater population of mankind.And what about the Americans playing with the weather…what, just because they are a big company means that what they’re doing is for real, but a smart man from Casino in NSW can’t make a few raindrops too?

Regardless of what you think, Peter has a few other inventions up his sleeve, involving natural water purification. His tests on active nuclear waste in Australia came back with radioactive readings of zero. Think what you like, but it’s either guys like him or trusting in TEPCO and the Japanese government…I know which way my vote is heading.

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You can only keep surfers out of the water for so long. Recently goregous weather and very nice waves have had Japanese surfers on the east coast of the island itching to get their feet wet, and many have given in to the wait despite the ongoing fear of radiation contamination.

Here in Ichinomiya, Chiba, we are close enough to the Fukushima plant to be concerned about drifting currents bringing highly contaminated water to our breaks. For the first few weeks after the Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake, tsunami and outbreak of the Nuclear disaster at Fukushima, we were lucky to see one or two brave soles entering the waters despite the obvious risks. But as time has passed, despite the ongoing desperate nuclear situation and constant release of radioactive material into the air and ocean, warm weather and very attractive surf have lured the Japanese back into the water.

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We keep counting the days as more than two weeks pass by since the Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami and Nuclear disasters hit our island.

The Tohoku region was hit hardest, however the whole country has felt the pain.

Surfers lost their lives up north, and as the rest of us mourn for our community we are also running or anxiously waiting for the outcome of the ongoing nuclear emergency at Fukushima.

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A quick break from my pregnancy posts, but more to come I promise.

As many of my readers know, my husband, son and I are based in Japan, in a surfing village called Isumi city, in Chiba prefecture. The earthquake hit us hard on March 11^th, whilst our little son was at kindy, but as our self-built wood cabin house and studio remained in one-piece during what was the most intense serious of earth movements you will ever feel in your life, we were never to know what the nation was in for next.

We were safe, our boy was safe, but the tsunami warnings started coming over the town’s loud speakers and everyone was in panic. We evacuated, taking almost nothing with us, got our son from kindy and threw the dogs in the car, and got up high for the rest of the day and night. The tsunami did hit our waters, but the majority was up north, so aside from a few boats strewn into the port’s carpark, most houses including ours were spared. We were lucky. Friends up north weren’t.

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Food for fuel-pregnancy super foods

There’s no doubt surfers who surf regularly need more calories in keep their energy levels on par. For pregnant surfing chickies, our need for calories is much greater. Here are some great little calorie pick me ups to enjoy before/after surfing or anytime you need a quick energy kick.

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For me it was hard to take. My cousin had surfed right up until she was seven months pregnant, and being my personal surfing inspiration I had planned to do the same. But when my bulge started poking out well beyond my own control, at around 4½ months, I had to give up a hard surfboard and look for alternatives.

I still remember that day. The sun was shining, Japanese spring had approached and we were all out of 5mm semi-dry steamers and into 3mm jerseys. Torami, one of our local breaks here in Chiba, was offshore, small and glassy-perfect for the new twin fin Kuni and I had received as a wedding present from shaper Ryosuke Hori. Trying to ignore needing to stretch my wetty far more than I had predicted, I kept reminding myself surfing is my key to a happy, healthy pregnancy and nothing would stop me dancing along those waves on my feet, right up to delivery if possible.

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World travellers, surf destination searchers, team photographer and writer couple; how were we ever going to keep up our dream lifestyle once the little one came along? As we began to start hoping for our first child, these thoughts were constantly running through the back of my mind.

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In particular, there’s one person in my life who I owe my love for surfing to. A brave woman, who in an era dominated by men would dare to show her skin in a two-piece bikini, took to the ocean like a fish and in her teens begged her inventor/boat builder father to build her a wooden surfboard.

Her name is Christine Cox, better known to me as Aunty Chris - a past inductee into Surfing Australia’s Hall of Fame, tireless promoter and pusher of women’s competitive surfing, pro level judge and surf coach for decades, supportive wife for half a century to a never surf deprived wave junkie husband, and of course devoted mother to four surf-crazed kids (all Australian champion surfers in their youth).

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