Winney - 11/04/24. A little Too Close

I'm one of those cocky bastards who thinks they are in control, regardless of the situation. Couple that with living in the same, small, beachside town my whole life and you can begin to understand how sometimes, it leads to situations that are, how do you say, less than ideal. Even though I'd read the "Hazardous Surf Warning" the night before, yesterday morning showed signs this was a bad idea. Still, I got up at 3:30am, through my camera and a couple of lenses in my bag, and set off to my favourite little place for taking astro photos.

I could here the surf in bed, waves pounding the beach near my house, but literally didn't give it much of a thought. Even as I neared the rocky cove, that is a second home to me. As I caught my first glimpse of the ocean by torch light, the noise it made on the trek down made me pause, which is not a natural reaction. I waited for about ten minutes, my stupidly bright torch sowing a couple of sets rolling through, that with the dead low tide, meant that mother nature was all talk, as she had been many times. This was mistake number 1.

As I rounded the first point, lit only by my torch ( it was 4:00am by this time), I stepped in a puddle that shouldn't have been there. In a rush, I put this down to the heavy rain a few days prior, and kept walking. Mistake number 2. I then reached a crevasse in the rock shelf, created over centuries of water flow, that showed waves had washed up high. Recently. It was still underwater. Mistake 3.

Shuffling a little quicker, I pushed myself high up in the only sandy cove, reaching a point where the scattered rocks were dry, putting down my bag on a dry rock, and then BOOOOM!!! A wave crashed into the rock shelf so hard, that what was left of it smashed the cliff where I'd just been standing. As I sung around, the spray must have been two storeys high, illuminated only by torchlight. This was not awesome. Taking stock that I may have placed myself in a situation that was not good, I did what anyone would do. Setup my tripod in the damp sand and took about 10 mins worth of astro shots that were NOT worth risking life and limb for. The beauty of hindsight.

Then, being smart enough that self (camera) preservation kicked in, I packed my bag, knowing that making my way back was the only safe(ish) option. I waited for another huge set to completely engulf the rock shelf in water, I then quickly ran through the knee-deep water still draining back to its home, and back to the safety of where I came from.

At this point, it was obviously still pitch black, but instead of heading home, I jumped up on a larger boulder, to shoot some blue hour shots, while I waited to see just how big the surf was at daybreak. The shots carried a telling sign, with seaweed littering what was almost always, a dry area.

The scene seems calm in the above photo, but as the sun got closer to the horizon, it became obvious that this was not the morning to be anywhere near here. After snapping a couple of waves hitting the adjacent rocks, the coffee and adrenaline soon made way for the cold touch of being wet almost to my waist, along with the reminder that no matter how well you know an area. Regardless of a lifejacket (I had mine on, for what it's worth), or a lifetime of experience with the local ocean. One of those waves was enough to easily be the end of anyone stupid enough to be in its path.

The lesson? No photo is worth your life. And once again, I'd simply been lucky to get away with it.