Perhaps ... but I had a feeling that commerce and politics weren’t for me. There was one thing I’d started and had yet to finish—my memoir: ‘Too Close to the Wind’. Writing it was a cathartic, confessional experience—my way of confronting the past, admitting my mistakes, moving on …
Writing was certainly an immersive activity. I got as much of a buzz from it as I did from windsurfing. Each word, sentence, paragraph and chapter posed a challenge as unique as a gybe, jump, or wave-ride. Nothing else mattered when I was writing or windsurfing, but the big plus was that I could write whenever I had a free moment—no need to wait for wind and waves. So it was the perfect foil for my other passion …
But perhaps it could be more than that? More than a mere obsession. Perhaps it was the answer, the goal, the dream.
Was that who I was: a writer?
I could give it go.
Why not?
So, that was that. I was a survivor and I was free now. Free to leave my ledge and climb the cliff. Free to go anywhere, do anything I wanted. As free as my friend—the wind.
25
Epilogue: Why?
El Médano, Tenerife. One year later. Rick’s Sunday starts, as usual, with a hangover. The previous night he’d worked late in his workshop finishing a new board and then gone into town to celebrate. The sangria and cerveza had been flowing, and Saturday night had already become Sunday morning before he staggered back to the little apartment above his surf shop.
He’s hardly slept. The wind woke him as always, even before the sun hit the window. Looking out, the mountains are caught in that unnaturally pink light. The sky is immense here, and every dawn is a performance. The beach is still in shadow, deserted, but white horses are dancing towards the bay, driven on by Los Alisios, the northeast trade-winds.
Now he’s awake and the day has a purpose. He grabs a ‘WHY Boards’ teeshirt, surf shorts, a strong black coffee, and heads downstairs to his basement workshop. It’s like descending into the Underworld. The walls are painted black and there are no windows, no distractions. It’s claustrophobic, chaotic, cluttered with half-finished boards ... his sanctuary—a temple to his dark art.
Rick is the owner of ‘WHY Custom Wave-Boards’. He was one of the first windsurfers to make El Médano his home and he’s kept the business alive for three decades, through thick and thin. But it’s taken its toll on him—all that fibreglass dust, epoxy resin, alcohol, partying … He lives for a day like today, with exceptional conditions and a new board to test.
He switches on the harsh fluorescent lights and cranks up the volume on the sound system. Heavy metal blasts from the speakers. He sits down next to the new board and waits for the caffeine and guitar riffs to defeat his hangover. Rick has been half deaf for the past decade and his customers know to bring earplugs with them to the basement. In exchange, they get his craftsmanship, banter, and to smoke a spliff or two.
The shaper sits there for a moment assessing the new board, running his hands over her, feeling the subtleties of the rails and rocker. It’s a prototype—a radical new shape, and Rick can’t wait to try her.
He fires up his laptop and checks the online wind meter ... twenty-five knots NE’ly, with gusts in the low thirties—¡Perfecto! He paces around the workshop, using the music to fuel his adrenaline, feeling the expectations build. Then he grabs the board and heads outside to the boardwalk.
The morning has real promise. The wind is the perfect strength for a 4.7 metre sail—every wave-sailor’s favourite size, and the swell has been building all night. The waves on the reef look excellent—decent size in the sets, peeling cleanly ... and hopefully, he’ll have them to himself for at least the next hour if he gets his act together.
It’s still early and the other surf shops aren’t open yet. A few tourists are having breakfast in the cafe on the boardwalk but there’s nobody on the beach, and Rick is the only windsurfer rigging up. Today is Sunday—the busiest day on the water, and he’s eager to get going before the crowds arrive. He has a new toy to test and he’s in a hurry to escape gravity for a few hours, into that other world where he dances on water.
He throws the equipment together in something of a frenzy, working on autopilot. His brain doesn’t need to be engaged—he can rig in his sleep, the movements familiar from decades of doing just this whenever the wind calls. He unrolls the sail onto the boardwalk, sleeves the mast, pulls on the downhaul, clamps the boom to the mast and attaches the outhaul—all without taking his eyes from the horizon, his focus still on the waves.
A set rolls in. Rick watches as geometric lines of surf march across the reef, mentally picking one and imagining himself riding it, his body making strange little movements, like a bizarre dance to a private soundtrack.
Taking his eyes from the water he meets a tourist’s startled gaze, bemused by his antics and intrigued that his morning has such a clear purpose. Rick looks away, and glancing down he sees he has everything ready to go. A gust of wind swirls up the sand, impatiently tugging at his sail. Jamming the rig into the new board, he picks them both up and sprints to the water.
But then, just as he’s about to launch, something catches his eye—another board, sitting alone on the beach. One of his own designs, in fact. Rick gazes at it and a wave of nausea breaks over him. No! It can’t be! It’s not possible! He’s shaking now.
He remembers this board only too well. It was always one of his favourites—a classic, elegant shape with flowing lines and brutally effective graphics. The customer had wanted a pure white board with just Rick’s company name in bold, black 3D letters. But he’d wanted something unique, a one-off, so he’d asked Rick to add a question mark after the WHY logo and specified that his should be the only board ever produced with it.
Rick stares at the board, with its unique logo, and tries to picture the individual who’d commissioned it. He was a young Australian dude with surfy dreadlocks and tattoos, that much he’s sure of, but Rick is struggling to remember his name. He was a loner and no-one in the town knew much about him.
What Rick does know is that three years ago this Ozzie hombre disappeared, in tragic circumstances. Now, as Rick gazes at the board on the beach next to his own new design, he begins to piece together what happened …
It was a windy Sunday with good waves, just like today, and ironically this dude’s board, like Rick’s, was brand new when he vanished with it. He’d only just collected it from the workshop the previous afternoon. Rick remembers being relieved that at least he’d paid in full, and then feeling guilty for such an uncharitable thought.
It’s all coming back to him now. Of course, the night before he disappeared they’d toasted the new board in the bar where the Ozzie dude worked. Rick still can’t remember his name, but fragments of their conversation are playing in his head now ... Rick had joked that he reminded him of a Clint Eastwood character—a strong-and-silent loner like the ‘Man with No Name’ ... but this hombre did have a name ... what the fuck was it?
Rick looks around the beach with wild eyes, searching for the missing piece of the jigsaw. Then, suddenly, he remembers … Nick! Of course, that’s it!
Their conversation had been brief, and awkward. They’d both had a few drinks and they had to yell over the racket in the bar, but that wasn’t it. This Nick bloke clearly had a few problems. Rick had become impatient with his reticence, his secretive, reserved manner. Nick explained that he wasn’t being arrogant, just that he had nothing worth saying about himself. He tried to justify this by suggesting that perhaps even Clint suffered from a lack of confidence, low self-esteem, shyness—and that was why he didn’t say much in the movies ... but Rick didn’t want to know about that. It was a ludicrous idea. In fact, as a huge fan of the ‘Man with No Name’, he’d been offended by Nick’s suggestion and walked out of the bar in disgust.
Later he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps Nick had been joking about Clint’s personality and he was too stupid to get the joke. The more Rick thought about it the mor
e worried he became. Why would anyone make a joke like that? Probably because he, Nick, was lonely, depressed, fucked-up himself. Maybe he’d needed someone to listen to him, to help him. But Rick had ignored him, perhaps even let him down that night.
When Nick went missing the next day, presumed drowned, Rick felt guilty. If he’d been a better listener maybe he could have helped—perhaps even been a friend, a windsurfing buddy. Then Nick might have called him that Sunday morning, told him he was taking the new board out early, arranged to meet at the beach ... They might have sailed together ... Maybe then Nick would still be alive. Shit! It was three years ago and now he’s haunted by guilt again.
At the time Rick presumed, like everyone else, that this Nick dude had broken something and been swept out to sea, behind the vertical cliffs at the foot of the red mountain. Once hidden behind Montaña Roja no-one would see him again—the next stop was South America. That’s how people had been lost before.
His rig had washed in down the coast a few days later, with a broken UJ, but they never found his board or his body. The Guardia Civil still had him listed as a missing person and no death certificate was issued, but most people assumed he was at the bottom of the Atlantic, or in some lucky shark’s stomach.
His disappearance was briefly the talk of El Médano. There was a mention in the local newspaper, La Opinión, but he was forgotten soon enough. After all, he’d been living incognito, like a ghost. He had no friends and no-one to miss him.
Now it seems his board has returned, to haunt the town.
Rick scans the beach, the boardwalk, the rocks … but there’s no sign of the board’s owner. How could there be? He stares at the logo and it confronts him with a simple rhetorical question: “WHY?”1
Afterword
Thank you for reading ‘Too Close to the Wind’. I hope you enjoyed it, but even if you didn’t I hope you’ll post a review on Amazon (and tell me where I went wrong :-)
Indie writers depend on reviews, shares, and word-of-mouth recommendations. If you post a review and share my books on your social networks you’ll motivate this author to Keep Scribbling (my motto).
Click HERE and it should take you to the book’s Amazon page to post your review.
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My motivation for writing ‘Too Close to the Wind’ was to ‘share the stoke’ (as Nick might say) with both my fellow surfaholics and a wider audience. It would be fantastic if you could take a photo with the Ebook on your screen on your home beach (if you’re a windsurfer), or in an exotic holiday location, and share it.
You can connect with me via my WEBSITE or my FACEBOOK PAGE … I’d love to hear from you, and it would be great if you could help to help spread the word about the book.
A Note to my Readers
Reading a novel differs from watching a film, listening to music, or looking at a painting in one important respect: the reader lives with the story, characters, and themes for a lot longer—anything up to several weeks (if, like me, you’re a slow reader and/or like to savour a book). That’s one reason I love novels. The best can live with you long after you reach the last page … but there’s always a poignant moment when you put the book down and say goodbye.
‘Parting is such sweet sorrow’ and this is my parting gift to you. Thank you, again, for reading ‘Too Close to the Wind’. You finished the main course, so here are a few extra pages for dessert—a ‘look behind the scenes’ for anyone who’s curious about how, and why, I wrote it; and a way to connect with you for a little longer—a bit like the ‘Extras’ clips that you find on a DVD.
Write about what you know ...
As I say in my ‘About the Author’ copy: I always wanted to be a writer but was diverted into a career as a media music composer. Plenty of water had flowed under the bridge before I sat down to write my first novel1—a lifetime of material, in fact. So what should it be about?
Well, the usual advice is: write about what you know and are passionate about. I asked myself what that might be, and I came up with these three ideas:
My life story.
A novel about a musician.
A novel about a windsurfer.
Obviously, I knew a bit about the first of these, and it seemed the most straightforward to write, so I started working on an autobiography, with the title: ‘The Wind of Change—memoir of a Windsurfing Baby Boomer’. However, my wife, Nikki, persuaded me to shelve it. She pointed out that nobody would be interested in the true (but arguably mundane) story of an unknown composer and average windsurfer. She suggested that I should write a novel.
When it comes to these sorts of decisions I trust Nikki 100% (even though I thought she was a bit harsh re ‘nobody’, ‘mundane’, ‘unknown’, and ‘average’ :-) so I put the autobiography in the ‘Future Projects’ folder and started thinking about the other two ideas.
Music and windsurfing have been major distractions in my life—simultaneous, but very different obsessions. I’ve spent half my life exploring these parallel worlds, getting to know the people in them, amassing a treasure trove of experiences, adventures, anecdotes ... so the raw material was already in place. A story based on either of these themes could be a fictionalised version of my autobiography. That was Nikki’s point: fiction is sexier than real life—especially when it’s the real life of a nobody! ‘The Wind of Change’ would have to wait until I was a somebody (and the jury’s still out on when that might be).
The other two ideas competed to make it out of my brain into my word processor and become my debut novel. Windsurfing won, but an outline for my next book: ‘The Rhythm of Time’, with music as the central theme, has joined ‘The Wind of Change’ in the Future Projects folder.
What windsurfing means to me (and Nick) ...
I’ve been a windsurfer for most of my life. Since discovering it, with Nikki, in the mid 1980s, windsurfing has influenced many of our decisions: where to go on holiday (somewhere windy), what vehicle to buy (a van), what to spend the rest of our money on (windsurfing kit) ... and more crucially: what job to do, where to live, and even whether to have children!2
Windsurfing is an obsession that has taken us around the world searching for wind, waves, and adventure. Like Nick (my narrator) I sometimes joke that it’s my ‘religion’. A primary motivation for writing ‘Too Close to the Wind’ was to ‘share the stoke’ (as Nick might say) with both my fellow surfaholics and a wider audience.
Marketing ...
A further reason to write about what you know and are passionate about, is that after writing a book you have to market it to the right people. This is less daunting if you’re trying to connect with readers who already share your passion—the tribe of English speaking windsurfers, in my case.
It isn’t exactly a mass market, more of a niche, but equally, there’s not much competition. I jokingly describe my book as the world’s first windsurfing novel. There are a few, non fiction windsurfing books (technique manuals, memoirs, location guides, for example), and no doubt windsurfing makes an appearance in other fiction, but I’ve yet to come across a book that you might call a proper windsurfing novel (if you know of any please let me know).
There are far more books that feature surfing, and even a few authors writing surf fiction3. So, although windsurfing is a smaller niche than surfing, there is a gap in that market. There may be fewer windsurfers than surfers (especially if we include the wannabes, hangers-on, followers of surf fashion etc who like to call themselves ‘surfers’ without necessarily going near a proper wave), but there’s no reason why the search for wind should not be as authentically chronicled as the search for the perfect wave.
With all this talk of a niche tribe of core readers, you may be wondering: what about non-surfers, wind or otherwise? Does he have anything to say to them?
Well, yes, I certainly hope so
. I’d like to think ‘Too Close to the Wind’ has cross-over, mainstream appeal and that my windsurfing readers will share it with their non-‘windie’ friends. If they do, then perhaps their friends might understand our obsession with surfing the wind and waves. Word-of-mouth and personal recommendations are the best way for an author to build a readership, so of course I’m also hoping that another reason to recommend my novel to a non-windsurfing reader is that it’s simply a good read.
I’m not a climber, but I love reading about mountains, travel, adventure ... and being a novel (as Nikki suggested) my book also has plot, characters, and a few other themes besides windsurfing …
Philosophical Chess ...
My main character, Nick, talks about playing ‘philosophical chess’ with the Master. I studied philosophy for my undergraduate degree and I’ve always been fascinated with the interplay of ideas. I wanted to weave philosophical threads into the story without it becoming as introspective as, say, Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ or Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’.
Two thinkers have always intrigued me: Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, and Carl Jung, an associate of Sigmund Freud, who become influential in the twentieth century with concepts such as the ‘Collective Unconscious’. I had fun playing with their ideas—moving them around like chess pieces to see how they might impact on each other.
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