The phantom swell

Well our swell here in Mita has been taking the phantom route. First she decided to show her head almost 3 days late and it got good but not too lined up. Hrmm.... Joe and I got a boat to The Cove yesterday morning and it was big but not working that well. It was a solid 6 - 8ft with some bigger set waves coming through, but like I said, not that good. The first 5 minutes we were out there I had another brush with disaster. Im paddling toward this major set wave to try and get under it before it unloads on my head and I see this guy trying to take off on it. My first thought was "wow, this dude has some balls, thats a major drop and she is already looking like a closeout". I see him struggling and Im waiting to see which direction he will go so I can paddle out of the way when the wave starts pitching. He makes eye contact with me just as he eats it coming down the lip. I try and duck dive as hard as I can and just before I go underwater I see his board coming straight at me. I decide to not go too deep and I kick the tail of my board to angle her nose up and block my face. Good move..... kinda. It worked but the wave was so big it picked up me right as his board hit me in the head. I get flipped backwards and my own board is ripped from my hands by the force of the wave and I feel a leash wrapping around me. I became seriously entangled in his leash with both of our boards being wrapped up too. So here I am in the rinse cycle, now being dragged and hit with random boards and I cant make the surface. I really, seriously thought that I was going to drown but I did my best to stay calm and not fight the entanglement. I came out of the mess and immediatly saw another wave bearing down on us and got the fuck out of that disaster. He was apologizing profusely but I said it was all cool, I was just scared more than anything.

So that little incident set the stage for the rest of my session and I could not for the life of me make myself calm down and relax and just enjoy the waves. I took only one ride and it wasnt even worth writing home about. I got caught inside on a major clean up set and the second wave of that set decided that duckdiving a serious overhead wave as it slammed on me was not going to work. Yes... backwards through the rinse cycle again and that one had me coming up gasping. That was it for me. I paddled back out and sat there. I waited for the boat to come and just couldnt get my shit together. I had a lot on my mind as well and that didnt help either. So for the next 45 minutes, I sat there, like a fucking kook, dodging waves, and trying to rationalize some things in my head. I hate that crap. Sometimes surfing can get me to clear my head of all my problems and then other times it does nothing but make me think even harder about them.

Well Mita has been being nice to us again this year. Not surf wise but just meeting some cool people and all that mess. I think we have been invited to more free dinners and boat trips than I can recall. Im not ready to go home. My time is coming. We need to hit the road this monday or tuesday and Im not looking forward to it at all. I love Mexico. I love being on the road. I love surfing. Dammit...... what does it take??