Sure, it looks inviting from the air, but from the water it’s a whole different story. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Bodyboarders often don’t get the credit they deserve. Sure, there are the kind of bodyboarders who buy a $30 hunk of foam from an ABC store and a floral print rash guard before throwing themselves into the whitewash. Then they’re thrown onto the sand, spluttering and happy, with their trunks half way down their butts and their rash guards over their heads, but those are not the kinds of bodyboarders I’m talking about. I’m talking about the ones who spent years throwing themselves over any ledge they could find. Ledges that surfers wouldn’t consider surfing before the bodyboarders showed it was possible. When it comes to riding slabs, bodyboarders are often the ones who do it first.
Shark Island is a terrifying place to ride waves. A rocky outcropping off the coast of Cronulla, New South Wales, it’s one of the most notorious slabs in the world. It’s stupidly heavy, and if you blow the takeoff you’ll likely end up on White Rock, which is not a place you want to end up on. A shallow ledge covered in sharp barnacles waits for a body to land on it. The barrel that ledge creates is a weird one, too — it’s generally wider than it is tall, and the lip is about as thick as a lip gets.
When it’s truly breaking, it’s often basically breaking over dry rock. The crowd can be daunting, too, since it attracts a certain kind of person: one who wants the thickest, deepest, scariest barrel.
“Shark Island has to be one of the most incredible waves that you can ride on a bodyboard,” said Australian bodyboarding veteran Dave Winchester. “It breaks quite close to the land, it is extremely shallow, and the locals charge harder than anyone. Although many people have been hurt there, it’s a break that you just want to go to and score. It’s so good.”
In the short video you see here, Shaun Petersen shot drone footage on a relatively gentle day… but “gentle” is very, very relative.
