Most surfers hire a boat to access the lineup at Teahupo‘o, Tahiti, but Liz Clark took her own dinghy and tied it in the channel before paddling out for her maiden session at the notorious break.
“The cloud cover gives the surf a gray, angry look, as wave faces suck up and heave into cavernous water cylinders,” Clark writes in her exciting new memoir/travelogue, “Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening” (Patagonia, $35), which launches this week with three Honolulu appearances by the author.
Readers — surfer, sailor or not — will be hooked.
Clark is filled with trepidation, but it’s “only” 2 feet overhead, and when a guy yells “Go!” she paddles hard, gets under the lip, grabs her rail and makes the wave.
“That wasn’t so bad!” she thinks.
The bigger, badder stuff is yet to come.
Swell is the name of Clark’s sailboat, a 1966 Cal 40 updated with a solar panel, wind generator and radar. The native Californian, whose family had taken and trained her on sailing expeditions since early childhood, cast off in the winter of 2006 dreaming of surfing remote breaks, mastering tube riding, learning from other cultures, raising awareness of environmental issues from plastic pollution to nuclear tests, and finding happiness. Various friends, her mom, dad, sister and a cat joined her along the way.
Logging 20,065 miles from Central America to the South Pacific in her decade-plus as a nautical nomad, Clark, now 37, found laughter, love, good people, unspoiled nature and barrels, along with reef cuts, lightning storms, boat damage and repairs, sexual harassers and an alcoholic, abusive boyfriend. Such are the rhythms of a voyage of self-discovery.
Rich with color photographs and illustrations, “Swell” is an honest, searching book, reflecting on such personal crises as an accidental pregnancy one year into her voyage, when Clark decided that she wasn’t ready to have a child.
“I’m appalled by the thought of ending my voyage … stopping my dream now seems unthinkable,” she writes.
Here and later in her odyssey, she receives comfort and support from her mother, and the two grow close after a sometimes troubled relationship.
Clark’s colorful, gritty tale, like life itself, is filled with pain and joy.
Liz Clark will speak and sign copies of her book from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Bess Press, 3565 Harding Ave.; 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Patagonia store at 940 Auahi St.; and 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Patagonia’s Haleiwa store, 66-250 Kamehameha Highway.
