Learning to read Raglan's waves

By COLIN MOORE

Tim Duff probably got his first look at surf at the age of two weeks. The family bach at the end of Calvert Rd, Whale Bay, near Raglan, overlooks two of the country's finest surf breaks and it has been the youngest Duff's spiritual home for all of his 26 years.

Duff, known far and wide as Timac, has remodelled the interior with demolition timbers, left unpainted to expose their character. The central table is a huge slab of swamp kauri taken from a friend's farm.

Another slab of swamp kauri is chained to the wall under a feature window, like a giant windowsill.

From here the view of the Whale Bay lagoon, where Maori found shelter for waka traversing this otherwise rugged coast, and the surf breaking off the point at Indicators and the reef at Whale Bay, is unchanged from when Duff first saw it.

The Raglan surf was featured in the world's first major surfing movie, Endless Summer in 1966, and has had international recognition ever since.

I am sitting here, watching the best surfing in the country taking place live in front of me, and talking surf slang with Timac, Charlie Young, Jimbo and the Rock because at a ripe old age I have been apprenticed into the surfing ranks. I have stood up. For at least four seconds.

My success was thanks to the tutelage of the Raglan Surfing School that Duff and his partner, Young, started last summer with the enthusiasm of relative youth and the wisdom of riding waves around the world.

Their enthusiasm is paying dividends. Like the surf at Raglan on most days, the surfing school is "going off."

The week before a group from Waikato Diocesan School in Hamilton took lessons for several days. Duff says the word got around and Raglan has rarely seen so many young (male) surfers.

The girls had a good time, too. They learned to surf and filled Duff's telephone voicemail the next week with messages of thanks and requests to come back for more surfing.

To be honest, Timac is not your stereotypical surfing guru. No long blond hair, faded board shorts or arms covered in Polynesian tattoos. It's just that when he starts talking you know that here is a Kiwi joker whose broad shoulders have paddled a surfboard in a lot of waves.

We meet in the carpark at Ngaranui Beach, which Duff chooses for novice lessons because its relatively small beach break is the least crowded of the Raglan surf spots and thus the least likely place for novices to get up the noses of the locals and the regulars. Surf lesson one: First carry your board. It could be worse. These are longboards but are a far cry from the heavy Malibu boards that pioneered surfing at places like Raglan in the 50s and 60s.

Duff's boards are especially crafted for teaching with a soft deck and edges and rubber fins. Fall off and get hit by one and you'll hardly notice it.

Lesson two: Lie on your board with your toes tucked over the back.

Lesson three: Paddle with an overarm swimming stroke.

Lesson four: Jump up in one fluid movement, landing with knees bent, arms out in balance, looking straight ahead.

That's it. Well, hardly. If it was, Duff would soon be out of business.

For a start, this is not gymnastics. You need to be able to read the waves.

Young, an American, gives the class a brief lesson on why surf is surf. Young is not a stereotypical surfer either. He's short and stocky. He's also fit and tanned from years at the beach.

Young taught surfing at the Mission Bay aquatic centre in San Diego, California, for five years before becoming deskbound as an employment contract negotiator for a group of United States shipping companies.

Two years ago a mate in the airline business gave him a free ticket to New Zealand.

Young and his wife, Erin, picked up a campervan at Auckland airport intending to tour the country with their first stop Endless Summer's Raglan. Thirty-five days later they drove the van back to the airport having gone no further than Raglan's Manu Bay and its famed left-point break and the Whale Bay reef break.

As soon as they could, the Youngs sold up and moved lock, stock and surfboards to Raglan which they reckon is an endless paradise.

Young joins the Rock on the beach as shorebound tutors.

The Rock spends his winters propping rugby scrums in Waikato and his summers surfing anywhere.

He's built like a bear with longish, golden curly hair and a ready, infectious grin. Woman love him, everyone loves him. And he's famous, says Timac.

He and Raglan surfing were featured in an international magazine and now people come to Raglan and ask for the Rock.

The shorebound tutors get a front view of what you're doing.

Jimbo is in the water with Duff. At last, someone who looks something like a surfer. Young, longish hair, weathered look. When he's not teaching surfing he teaches snowboarding at Mt Ruapehu.

Duff and Jimbo stand in water not much above their waists. We are going to catch the "reformers" - waves that have broken further out and reformed into small, clean waves closer to the shore.

My surfing son often grizzles about longboards which have been making a comeback in recent years.

Old surfers are pulling old Malibu boards from under the house, donning a crash helmet to protect old and less daring skulls, and heading off to the surf of their youths.

You ride longboards with "style," savouring the power of a wave rather than dancing acrobatically on it as do modern shortboard riders. You walk on the relative stability of a longboard so as to maintain position on a wave, perhaps getting to hang five toes over the tip - or maybe 10.

Best of all - or annoying to people like my son - is the ease with which a longboard, with its greater length and flotation, will catch a wave when it is not much more than a swell and has hardly begun to steepen.

It means that longboarders can hog a set by catching waves further out, forcing other surfers into an unethical drop-in manoeuvre.

We can't get accused of that when surfing the reformers. Jimbo turns me around, holds the back of the board and then commands me to paddle.

One, two, three and up.

Old, unflexible bones need a bit of practice to get this right. The youngsters in the class seem to have no problems. But on the third attempt I do manage to stand up long enough for my photographer colleague to take a picture.

Standing up is important. It's the breakthrough, the proof that you have surfed a longboard and got your money's worth from the lesson.

It's the point where those who bungi-jump or ride tandem parachutes may choose to add surfing to the list.

Duff, the youngest in his family, spent his childhood surfing at Raglan.

"All my memories are here," he says. "I spent all my summers hanging out here."

When he left school Duff went surfing, chasing big waves in California and Hawaii.

For three years he lived across the road from the famed Pipeline at Waimea Bay in Hawaii. Big waves are his passion and he has the scars from coral grazes to prove it.

Duff never chased the board riders' circuit or surfing fame. He just chased waves.

He was back chasing waves in California last year when he met up with Richard Schmidt, founder of the Santa Cruz surf school, near San Francisco.

Schmidt, who is recognised as one of the best surf teachers around, took the young Kiwi under his wing and encouraged him to turn his passion into a profession and a business.

"Schmidt taught me how to teach others," says Duff.

He returned to Raglan as a qualified surfing teacher with a ready-made base and a determination to succeed that the corporate world would pay big bucks for.

Duff would probably be uninterested in their overtures. Raglan is his home. Forever, he says. He's already chairman of the ratepayers' group, president of the Raglan Boardriders' Club, and is involved in tourism promotion groups.

"When you know you're going to spend your life in a place you have to make a contribution."

His surfing school is gathering momentum and becoming popular with school groups as well as tourists.

The tourist riders are mostly people who will never get into surfing regularly but under Duff's care they can experience the thrill of riding a wave. "They will never get out the the back of the surf but they still want to experience the surfing thrill," says Duff. "When they stand up you can see how stoked they get."

Duff also has a surfing academy for top surfers.

Back in the Duff family bach, Timac, Young, Jimbo and the Rock knock up several bowls of hot, spicy nachos and rap about surfing.

On one wall there is a huge mural of a surf scene on a pohutakawa-fringed beach, the gift of a grateful bunch of American surfers who wanted to leave Duff some koha for his hospitality.

"Surfing is all about sharing," says Duff. "You share waves, experiences and a lifestyle."

Out the window is a never-ending surf movie. "Wow, look at that, he's got a barrel," says one. "Yeah, they're shredding now."

Even a novice like me knows what they mean.

* A three-hour lesson with all equipment, including wetsuits, provided costs $70. Contact Raglan Surfing School, ph (07) 825 6555, (025) 603 5856 or surf the web at Raglan Surfing School