Great odds for a tube going left or right, with the odd bigger bomb to keep it interesting. It was obvious that the waves were going to get better as the tide filled in so there was no great hurry to get out there. On the contrary, I found myself putting off going surfing as long as I possibly could.
At first I just took a bit longer than necessary to assess the conditions. Then I decided to fish the deepening gutter behind the shorebreak. You may be wondering why would anyone hesitate to launch themselves into such a dreamy little surf session? This is a debilitating level of fear no matter how you slice it. Then I took far too much time to get in my wetsuit and walked slowly down to the water's edge, scanning up and down the beach the whole time, silently willing someone, anyone, to turn up and join me.
The crazy thing about fear is the way in which it warps rational thought. I approached the water as though it held certain death. The whitewash, which would traditionally invigorate my senses, felt as though it cloaked the presence of a malicious beast lurking in the clear water below.
Despite the apprehension building to an almost physical sensation, as I sat on my board and waited desperately for a wave to momentarily lift me up and save me from the gory death surely about to unfold, a funny thing happened: No shark materialised to violently take me in a shower of bloody froth. Not a single one. A rare coherent thought penetrated my adrenaline-induced stupor: Was my fear rational?
Was it justified at all..? I also place much faith in an animalistic sixth sense which alerts us to the presence of stalking danger. Did this mean an attack was likely? No, of course not. While sharks regularly take up temporary residence in an area for a few days at a time, there was no certainty the shark responsible for the attack was still around and still hungry, or that any of its fellow sharks would be either. Commonsense told me that it was the sense of fear which had grown more imposing, not the likelihood of falling prey to a man-eating fish.
