DESERT LEFTS: PACASMAYO, PERU
DESERT LEFTS: PACASMAYO, PERU
DESERT LEFTS: PACASMAYO, PERU
Bernd Roediger reflects on his return to Pacasmayo, Peru where he competed at the PWA / IWT World Cup in epic conditions. We hear about life in the camp, what it is like to ride one of the longest waves on the planet and how he dealt with one of the toughest heats of the competition!
Words: Bernd Roediger // Photos: Fish Bowl Diaries
Ah Peru! The beauty of a simple life. A traveller here can live with his feet in two worlds. That is, at once the country that contains mythic levels of aesthetic appeal, archaic mystery, the sensuousness of the jungle, here you can become a lover of all things archetypical to South America; and then in seconds the noise dies down, the fog rolls in, the mountains spill out into a vast coastal desert, this is the Peru that windsurfers will come to know, and here one is a hermit. There is something about miles of sand, a cold sea, the sun and moon, that allows one to unfurl his being out onto the nondescript features of that land and explore himself in it. In the movie Lawrence of Arabia Peter O’Toole as Lawrence says he is drawn to the desert because “It’s clean”, the real Lawrence said: This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.
RETURN
If the impetus that draws humans to the great seas and to the great sands of the world are different, then they find synthesis in Pacasmayo. Pacasmayo, where the surreal sterility of dusty Andean steppes come to form a point in the temperate bath of life that is the South Pacific.
I feel so at home here in a land of slow and long waves, slow and long days in the sun. Still, I would be remiss if I did not say it had been ten years since the first time I stepped off the plane in Lima, and nigh on seven since I have returned to the longest left in the world. Why? I guess sometimes the pace of life outruns opportunities to visit with tranquillity. Just as a foiler outruns the best sections of a set at Pacasmayo, I came out of sync with this place a few years back! Tack on a pandemic and suddenly I was beginning to forget the El Faro Hotel, and its namesake point with the old black and white checkered lighthouse. I was losing my memories of the longest and most unimaginably satisfying windsurfing waves I had ever sailed.
You don’t have a relationship with a place, if TripAdvisor told you to go there.
Meaning arises when you have experiences that compel you to an action, an association, an awakening, an arrival.
You cannot reliably generate the conditions for this feeling, unless by some mantic means. Nothing avails to guide us like our feelings, which lead us through personally perplexing paths. A first-time encounter may have a mundane effect, but there is an undeniable clandestine force working in a place that beckons: return.
PACASMAYO
Initially I came to Pacasmayo for very straightforward reasons. Back in 2013, I was in the midst of an AWT (American Windsurfing Tour) campaign. I did not have a chance at the title, but as I would say I was “there for the experience”. I would have no idea what the depth of that experience was until I’d truly had it, and had it twice over again, and taken seven seasons off from it and then gone back to have it again.
AWT Pacasmayo Classic was my Summer of ‘69. Through winter in Peru, the sun seemed an eternal fixture providing the longest days for the longest waves in the world. Deserts of tranquillity surrounded this grove of perfectly groomed lefts, so that we always felt as though we were the blessed inhabitants of an oasis, its chosen keepers. In this place, we dropped the pretences of being champions or contenders and became friends, that kinship could extend beyond the usual boundaries of the skill-gap. Something most sailors find too glaringly apparent in a frenzied place like Ho’okipa to ever truly get past. Despite my non-existent experience with port tack wave sailing, I could feel like a peer to the likes of Camille Juban and Kevin Pritchard. It was a surf spot for sails, positioning meant something here, as did patience and rhythm. Here aggression and commitment mean less than timing and approach, less arete more Eudaimonia, the happiest and lightest riding was truly the ideal to strive for. This is something achievable on all skill levels, it is a great equaliser. The same could go for those with even less windsurfing knowledge and background than I, anybody could get the wave of the day. Dinners were egalitarian affairs as pros and amateurs alike revelled in their perspectives on memorable set waves. And this breaking down of barriers moved us all in an orbit around one central theme, a music we could all play to, a windsurfing jam.
And I realized here that my whole life up to this point: practicing my sailing and earning little competitive accolades and gaining sponsorship support; all that was just an avenue to get to enjoy a place like Pacasmayo for two weeks, one path of many. Some people I met there were doctors and teachers saving and planning for this experience, some writers, some nomads, all sorts of backgrounds, so colourful in comparison to the homogenous histories of a purely professional field of sponsored athletes. It was here that I met Alex Vargas, a would-be household name in windsurfing that would not go pro in the “PWA” sense of the word, because it was just too damn expensive to get anywhere from Chile. But if you saw that young man sail, you would know in an instant he was a gifted artist with a style, flow and interpretation of sail and board dynamics all his own.
COMMUNITY
I had never gone to summer camp, I had never been in a situation like this, eating three meals a day with thirty other people, with whom I share my sleeping schedule, morning routines, and of course windsurfing sessions. It is truly wild, the idiosyncrasies that you pick up on when you actually spend time with people are insane. And this is all overlaid on the backdrop of a relatively empty landscape, and a hotel setup to be more or less a windsurfer’s convent. Sailing was like attending prayer, the entirety of our intention cantered around it, charged with the competitive urgency to flourish and learn.
As the newest Aloha Classic champion, I was shown that competition was in many ways just a means to an end, or rather a means to an unending journey of curiosity! Whereas competition as an end in itself was a finite road that ran straight, to the exclusion of so many wonderful possibilities.
I am happy to report that ten years later a person can still come to the El Faro, and listen in on a room full of windsurfers waxing poetic about their longest waves, exchanging histories and backgrounds, sharing in the pirate-culture of managing worldly affairs just enough to sneak off into this far-flung desert for a few treasured waves. I am heartened to see this event, a 4-star on the Wave Tour, keeping the spirit it had at its foundation. Because now it is international like never before, competitors from the whole windsurfing world in attendance.
Now I am 26, and the dream of attaining that eudemonic ride has worked its subtle magic into my life, disrupting in some ways, but always guiding to a higher ideal of riding waves with greater meaning and joy. I have maintained just about the bare minimum of success necessary to keep fresh sails in the wind. And because of that, after long and roundabout roads I am back in a land of freedom and fantastic waves. And my oldest friend Morgan Noireaux is with me, as ever, my contemporary and experimental-move confidant. Antoine Martin, a once rival and explosive combatant at Ho’okipa, somewhere between Japan and Cape Verde we became besties. And Baptiste Cloarec, who is coming to Pacasmayo for the first time coming off his recent victory at Cloudbreak, and I watch him moving about the El Faro having conversations with windsurfers he’s meeting for the first time. John Lennon told Muhammad Ali “The more real you get the more unreal it’s going to get.”. Pacasamyo’s message to any windsurfer whose wave sailing passion, surf-seeking journey, brings them hither: “the more you follow this unlikely path, the more that improbable possibilities will present themselves.”
COMPETITION
And suddenly I find myself in a heat with these three guys, and for a few minutes the coolness becomes a battleground, the waves rising with an influx in the tide, the period extending as Pacasmayo’s “Swell of the Year” progressed, twenty-second intervals, mast high waves, super light winds and a mingled atmosphere of mist and dust in the sun.
The moon was full, and the tide was in full flux by the beginning of our quarterfinal heat. It is almost 2km from the El Faro Hotel to the very top of the wave at the El Faro lighthouse, and sailing up there in marginal winds, with the current going against us, takes about an hour. The current is constantly ejecting all the trapped water from twenty wave mast high sets, each a kilometre in length, it is literally like sailing against a river or a riptide. So, the four of us set out well before our heat, slogging over these megastructure lefts undulating in ferocious froth at the tail end of the break. Slowly we made progress into the obscure haze where hid Pacasmayo’s looming sets.
THE WAVE
It is a big wave and an intimidating amount of water roping in long lines across the bay, and when you are rested in the trough of these swells it feels that you are way too deep. It is by virtue of the flawless ocean floor topography, that so much water comes reeling off the point, in so uncannily uniform rows of concentric arcs. The heat was now on, the four of us had reached the point after fifty minutes of sailing to be right on time for the start. I followed Antoine out over one submersed mountain after another, Morgan and Baptiste behind, all of us knowing that as big as they were, they would grow as we sailed deeper. After five waves pass you feel you might have missed the set wave, Morgan and Baptiste turned on two respective waves, I wasn’t worried though, in a twenty-wave set there’s an adjustment in judgement necessary. This wave requires also an adjustment to your sense of timing, as Antoine crested a wave that seemed to feather at one kilometre from shore, I feigned to follow but then tacked onto it and held on the face, stalling, though every inclination was to start gunning down-the-line. Feathering in the early stages for a mast-high bomb at Pacasmayo, which shifts over the gently sloping sands of the submerged desert beneath it, like a colossal subterranean snake. I have to wait until the wave is so steep and critical that its cresting lip is nipping the heels of my board, that’s when the true energy emerges from the depths and jacks the wave up to even more intimidating heights! The wave is now crumbling and churning, I am practically forced out from the pocket. You see the wind out at the El Faro point is side-shore, and since the waves break around the backside of the point for another score of miles, there’s almost no wind once you drop into the wave, so the position of almost certain disaster is the only avenue for success, that’s the moment when speed from the wave overcompensates the wind shadow and apparent wind. Descending this wave is a dream of fluttering silk, its gentle curve like an open palm guiding your board forward. Again, getting the sail through the apparent wind is the main challenge, as there is not a lot of wind coming up the face. Once you sent your rail in, it is a matter of keeping the sail in a neutral attitude to the wind. The wave is generally throatier up at the point where there are some smatterings of shallow reefs, so as I came off the bottom of my first turn, sail held in suspension, I eye up a looming lip ready to throw. Leading into the turn with my front hand raised in front of my face, I navigate the apparent wind to place my board with the lip, then swing my front hand around my head and forward, slashing the lip and rotating my shoulders through to my feet. There’s an extra level of finesse and technique crucial to riding in such challenging conditions, really it is a return to the fundamental tenets of proper wave sailing, and an opportunity to appreciate those tenets’ deserved hegemony.
On a wave that is one kilometre long, there is going to be a few different moods to a single ride. Once that initial bang resolved with a few follow up turns, it then grew calm, after another two short intervals of intensity and rest, I came, still on the same wave, to a kind of clearing where I knew I would need to really pause and wait for a reform. It is there that I could see the sail of Baptiste Cloarec barely visible in the mist, and closer to me the sail of Morgan Noireaux, whose slashing turn projected a spray that I could see fanning far and away out the back of the wave, landing in a light plume two waves in front of me. The mist was so impenetrable at this point, all the coastline was obscured, and I had to wonder whether or not the judges could truly make out what was happening on this wave, or on the waves behind me, where Antoine surely was opening his account.
Irregardless, it was impossible to shake the feeling that the four of us had transcended to another world, a watery heaven of giant ocean rollers in a desert cloud of gaseous glow, sunlight mixing with the fine particulates of dust and salt air, an ancient sparkling snow globe, a time-lost pocket of rolling depths and shifting mists. My wave was regaining its face, I drew my sail out over the front of my board and wafted out in front of the flat section, over the silt in the listing waters, then racked the sail back as I dug my heels into a powerful roundhouse to reengage the white water, connecting with it and redirecting down its rapid falls into a bottom turn, I could see my last section lining up. Delaying just as long as I dared to, I faded deep and rounded on the section to connect under the throwing lip, the resulting projection was less “up and over” and more “down and out”, again the apparent wind playing a factor. I was able to barely squeak my rig out despite landing right in the clutches of this wave’s maw, its massive length coming to a roaring close after a lifetime of riding.
LIFE HEAT
I did what I wanted to do on that wave, in many ways realising a calibre of Pacasmayo that I had never before experienced. I had never sailed a day at this wave that was even remotely this big, nor had I shared it with three other guys so close in age, ability, and approach than Baptiste, Morgan and Antoine. I saw some insane riding from all of them, right in my face, and I laughed and cheered for what that inspired in me. Lots of people told me I was a victim of a ‘Death Heat’, I would rather think of it as a heat of lasting memory, of renewed excitement in an old and meaningful place, a ‘Life Heat’, an experience to cherish. I hope to remember it for a long time, already it has the quality in my mind of a great moment, its detail keeping fresh longer than other recollections which have already grown stale on the shelf. I do not remember much from events that I have done well in, even ones I have won. I keep a few finals, a few close matches with a stacked lineup, a handful of reinforcing moments that sing with the voice of my happy heart, and this is one such heat.
NEW BLOOD
All that aside, my heat, though central to my experience of Pacasmayo, was just one in a slew of wonderful windsurfing moments. And I encourage everyone to go back and watch the live replays, it is all there, and some of it I even commentated! Look through the Pros and be wowed, but take special consideration for some of the very young, very promising, sailors that attended this event. The likes of Alexia Quintana and Sol Degrieck are pushing the limits on the Women’s side, and they are just teenagers. And of course, Hayata and Takara Ishii need no introduction. But there’s a lot more to this event than can be found online, unfortunately the entire Amateur fleet is unavailable on the live broadcast, as well as the Master’s, and nothing is online in regard to the human happenings of the El Faro Hotel. I can not recommend this place, this event, enough to anyone looking for a rich wave sailing experience. Every sailor owes it to themselves to engage in such a windsurfing rendezvous, and I for one will not make the mistake of waiting so long before I am back again.
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