Going out with Alba's Surf Club

G'day mates!


After going out for our own a couple of times now we joined Alba's Surfclub. Alba is a Spanish PhD student who's in Melbourne for 3 years and as she is passionated of surfing she started a club where people (mostly students from abroad from France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, China....) can join and share cars to reduce cost of driving to the Surf Coast. Most of the peoples are beginners or intermediate surfers but there are some advanced surfers (like Alba) and even a World Qualifing Series surfer joined a few times. There are almost 50 peoples in the club and normally 15+ participate on a day of surfing.
We left the house at 8:15 and walked 15mins to Alba's apartment where the meeting point was set. Those who had their own boards mounted them on the roof racks and we packed our stuff into the cars and headed out of the city to Torquay. We had a rendezvous at a coffee shop and ate a cake which Alba's made the day before (*yummie* Thanks to Alba!!).
Stupidly I forgot to put a memory card into my camera but I was lucky to by a 1GB card in a shop around the corner for a very reasonable price. You'll see it would have been really sad if I had not been able to make some photos!
After the short break we went to the same shop where I rented my surfboards before and this time I selected a 7,6 foot board a lot shorter than the ones before but I paid attention that it was about the same width. In addition I got some booties.
We jumped in the cars and headed to Jan Juc where I have been surfing the last two times but the conditions weren't so good (very messy and a lot of onshore winds) as you can see on Sylvain's and Frank's face.

So back into the car on further to the south where Fairhaven probably would be a bit better. It was an half an hour drive on the Great Ocean road with some nice scenic points but we all wanted to get into the water and do some surfing. When we arrived at Fairhaven beach we unpacked our surfboards and put on our wetsuits.
Though it was not as messy as Jan Juc it was still very messy and the gaps between two sets of waves was very short. It was really hard to get out a few meters and I think it was worse than the week before. Nevertheless I made some good rides and I realized that I can handle a shorter board. After 2 hours of surfing I took a break and the following pictures are the result of it:
After taking these pictures I went back into the water and scored some white water waves. Though the waves were not so nice it was fun being surfing with some people who still enjoyed it despite the hard conditions for the beginners.
While listening to the greatest hits of The Offspring we changed back into normal clothes and talked about how the surfing was.
Back in Torquay I decided to buy me a own board because it was so much fun going surfing and renting would become more expensive if I'd go surfing more often. Thus I had a look in several shops until I found a nice board at the Flick Outlet center:
(picture missing)
It was so much fun to go surfing with all the different people and I certainly go out with them again. And more than ever I'm already looking forward to test my new surfboard out. So make sure that you'll come back to read about it!!!