“And you may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself, where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself, Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself, MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
letting the days go by, water flowing underground
into the blue again, in the silent water
under the rocks and stones, there is water underground.”

“Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads

Let's get one thing straight before we begin. Waves are not cars, dogs or houses. They are not your favorite pair of baggies or your Wet, Wet, Wet CD collection. Waves belong to no one. You do not own them. Next time you feel the urge to say anything that contains the following two words "my wave" rather slice your tongue off with your fin. Do you have any idea what it took for there to be such a thing as a wave? Let alone an ocean? No?

Well you're in luck because I am about to tell you, and I hope that when I am finished, you will have a better understanding of what actually transpired and made surfing possible in the first place. The events that I am about to describe to you, took place over billions of years ago, and I hope they completely eradicate the notion that anything ever again, really, has your name on it.

We are surfers and not scientists, so bearing this in mind; I am going to keep this short, sweet, and to the point. What do we need in order to surf? A board of sorts is paramount, then, depending on your levels of pain endurance, a wetsuit. If you are lucky enough to live in a warmer environment then a pair of shorts will suffice (but not a Speedo, never a Speedo, they are never cool, no matter what your girlfriend told you) and lastly a leash.

So now you have your kit in order, what comes next? Oh yes, you are going to need something to stand on other than your board, how about a nice new planet? Unless you are the Silver Surfer of comic book fame of course, he doesn't need any of that stuff, he simply shreds in space. Sadly we are mortal, so planet bound we stay and get our kicks elsewhere.

Now we need liquid, and lots of it. A cup of tea simply will not do. What we are looking for is liquid in the shape and size of an ocean. And how did the ocean get here? That big blue wobbly thing that makes you go wet at the knees and fills your heads with visions of tubes and barrels, where did it come from?

“Day after day, day after day,
we stuck, nor breath nor motion;
as idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
and all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
nor any drop to drink.”

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

Like I said, your surfing experience has been billions of years in the making, so round about the earliest stages of the Earth’s formation; our humble planet was a cold body floating through space filled with solid matter but devoid of any type of water what so ever.

The atmosphere and the hydrosphere where still forth coming attractions but we did have one thing going for us however; we did have all the chemical elements to be found in Nature. The surface of the earth was completely devoid of life though; Politicians where yet to slither their way out of the primordial mud.

But because of gravitational forces, energy released by the breakdown of radio-active elements began to heat up deep within the Earth’s core. When it got to such temperatures that the melting of iron oxides and other compounds could occur, the active processes began the formation of a nucleus and the main environment of our planet.

The denser and heaviest elements sank to the centre of the planet increasing the size of the core and the lighter elements rose to the surface forming the Earth’s crust. Massive volcanic activity pumped out huge amounts of lava, gases, and most importantly water vapor, with gravity helping it to form a primitive proto-atmosphere.

Heat was radiated into space as the surface of the Earth began to cool and all the water vapor started to condense and form liquid water. Step one in our quest for surf complete. We now have water, but what else do we need to be able to do our thing?

“Screams break the silence,
waking from the dead of night.
Vengeance is boiling,
He’s returned to kill the light.
Then when he’s found, who he’s looking for,
Listen, And you’ll hear him…
Bark at the moon… ”

Ozzy Osbourne

You guessed it, the Moon, because without it, we would have very little tidal action. And where does that big ball of green cheese come from? Well approximately 4.45 Billion years ago a young planet Earth got hit, and hit hard. What connected us was something roughly the same size as the planet Mars. You see it had formed very near to us, and its orbit took it on a direct collision course with Earth.

When it hit us, it hit with energy levels 100 Million times larger than what it took to take out the dinosaurs and create the Ice age. Large amounts of our planet went hurtling off into the void to coalesce and in as little as 100 years we had a moon. So what role does the Moon play in our sport? Well without it, it would always be low tide and surfing would suck.

How do tides happen? Well Tides are created because the moon and the Earth are attracted to one another. Not like in “wow, she is hot, I would dig to score her” kind of way, but the way that magnets are attracted to each other.

You see the Moon pulls at everything on Earth and tries to pull it closer, but the Earth manages to hold onto everything except the water because it is moving, so every day there are two high tides and two low tides with about 12 hours 25 minutes between high tides. As the moon travels around the earth and as they, together, travel around the sun, the combined gravitational forces cause the world's oceans to rise and fall.

A few of the tides that we get because of this interplanetary spade work are Spring tide, lunar tide, neap tide and last but not least the proxigean tide. What is that I hear you say? Well I have no fu%$#ng idea but my science handbook tells me that “It is a rare, unusually high tide. This very high tide occurs when the moon is both unusually close to the Earth (at its closest perigee, called the proxigee) and in the New Moon phase (when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth). The proxigean spring tide occurs at most once every 1.5 years.”

Right then, there you have it, straight from the Brain boxes mouth. So, let’s recap on what we have so far, a planet more water than Earth with a moon that gives us tides both high and low. There is one last thing we need in order for us to show off in front of our mates and better halves though, and that is? Waves. And how do we get waves? From the wind of course, and what is wind and how is it formed?

“The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow.
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
the tiny island sails downstream because the life that lived is dead
and the wind screams Mary

Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past?
And with this crutch, its old age, and its wisdom.
It whispers, no, this will be the last.
And the wind cries Mary…”

Jimmi Hendrix

Well, the light from the sun heats up the surface of the Earth and in doing so this heats up the surrounding air. The now heated air starts to rise because it has expanded and when it does it is replaced by air from somewhere else. This in its most primitive state is wind as I understand it to be, and rest assured I am no expert, but my High school Science teacher would be proud (I think).

So in a nutshell, wind is caused by air rushing from one place to another, and when this happens over large bodies of water you get waves. Tsunami waves are different however; they are formed when there is hectic seismic action underwater like earthquakes etc.

I asked an expert on the interplay between wind and the formation of waves and this is what he had to say.

“When the waves get to shallow water near the shore, there is friction between the waves and the sea bottom. The effect of that friction is to turn the waves so that they come straighter in toward the shore. If you're standing on a lookout point above the shore, you can often see this effect as it happens.”

“Now imagine what's happening on a day when the waves are coming in toward you, even though the wind is blowing out toward the sea from the shore.”

“The waves breaking on shore got started someplace, possibly hundreds of miles away, where the wind direction was more or less blowing toward the shore and they have continued, despite, having the wind now blowing against them.”

“At the same time, there are new waves being formed by the wind you feel, and they will build up and head away from the shore. At some time in next several days, they may be breaking on a beach on the other side of the Ocean, and cause some curious surfer to wonder where they came from.”

And with all of this having been said and shown to you, I hope you can now understand that what you are out riding on is billions and billions of years old and deserves some respect. The waves you are catching are almost prehistoric in a way. I am sure this will give all those soul surfers out there something to contemplate when next they are hanging in the backline waiting for a set to come in. And if you feel the urge to say “get off my wave” think of everything you read here today and ask yourself, is it really all about you and your ego?

No it's not. Safe surfing till the next time and remember, be nice out there, it belongs to us all.

A. Cunningham (Doctor Bill.A.QuickLizzard)

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