The Sea Urchin’s Magic (Part 1)

by Emilie Marx
(PART 1/2)

Sea urchins definition, as found in most dictionaries:
Sea urchins are small, globular, spiny sea creatures, that have a hard shell covered with sharp points. They occur in shallow marine waters.

It must have all started with Halloween.
I was working that night and a friend of mine had suggested I come dressed up as a kitesurfer (he had kindly volunteered to pick the bikini… Too bad I only ever kite in boardies!).
Not too sure how to get the kite to fit inside the pub, I decided to skip that idea but to stick to the flying object register. I had already gone for the butterfly few years ago so I opted for the bee (as it’s always good to bee happy!). The outfit got polished with some high heels.
I’m known to become quite spastic in my mobility when wearing such shoes (how do women do to wear stilettos is an absolute mystery to me), so my co-workers started bidding on how long I would possibly last before going bare feet or tripping over (or both, in the opposite order…).
Were we that busy that night that I forgot the pain -or that drunk that I didn’t feel it?-, probably both, but I amazingly managed to last the entire evening!
-At the very high price of blisters all over my feet…

Anyone who kites daily knows how big of a problem a tiny blister, constantly soaked in salty water and rubbed against footstraps, can become after few weeks….
Following their expected evolution, my tiny blisters had become holes twice their original size and half a centimeter deep, when I decided to go for a full moon session couple of weeks later.

Actually, a drunk full moon session, which may be wasn’t that good of an idea to start with.
The conditions were perfect: the wind steady, the sky clear, the spot magical, the only minus was the dangerously low tide. The sand bar usually partially underwater was completely dry and I knew I’d have to be extremely careful -but sensibility and me are sometimes an unlikely match-.

My session was fabulous: I love night sessions, everything’s different.
I love the feeling when jumping in the dark, having no longer the visual sense to evaluate distance and establish marks. One’s got to feel what’s happening below, guess when the landing will take place, feel the wind and the water, it’s really magical.
I had schools of fish jumping out around me, the water was glassy as a mirror, everything was gorgeous, so much that I got a bit carried away… and forgot about the tide…

Oops…

My board still remembers it, and so do my feet: some sort of ocean’s pot pourri -delightful mix of coral, shells and rocks- greeted them after a rather graceless flight off the board that had got stuck few meters upwind…
I found all sorts of nice souvenirs the following day (my sincere apology to the reef), during the course of which I remember someone mentioning that I was “walking funny”….
I guess I was!

Few days later, the island got hit by some big north-west swell. Solid three meters sets were coming in. Way too big for my surfing skills, but it was an opportunity to ride some waves on spots I had never been to, and put to the test the two last months of daily surfing I had just gone through.
The landscape was phenomenal.
Magnificent sets were entering the bay of Anse des Pères, covering the horizon. The wind was off shore, and a gorgeous left was breaking all across the bay. I looked for a spot offering some “Em size waves”, and I managed that day to only get hit by my fin…
-on the foot, right where one of the original blisters, now become crevasse was located. Nice.–
It’s the next one I got to discover the content of the bay’s underwater ground.
After the epic session I had had, I came back with a friend the next morning.
To our big disappointment, the place was unrecognizable: the swell had totally dropped.
Having done the mission to get there, we went in the water any way (it amuses me when I write things like this: it took us forty minutes to get to the spot. A year ago, when I was in Australia, driving three hours to get somewhere seemed to be next door. Now that I’m in Sint Marteen, any drive exceeding half an hour is the end of the world!).
We actually had a great time, in spite of the fact we realized quite too late that there was absolutely no water under the breaking wave that morning. There was actually so little water my leash was getting caught in the reef when I was sitting on my board!

We soon realized that the bottom was full of rocs, rusted iron and sea urchins. That session turned out to be a real challenge as we had to be certain of what we were paddling for. No mistakes were allowed.
And, well, there still were a few…

My souvenir from Anse Des Pères

Our boards miraculously got out of there untouched, but I got sea urchins all over my feet, was scratched on my back and my friend had her thigh bleeding too.

For the next three days, I spent hours digging in my sole to extract the dozen of spiky bits that were now inhabiting my foot!
I was then walking “real funny”….
My neighbors would hear me scream, worryingly knocking on my door asking if everything was okay. They’d find me sitting in my living room in the weirdest positions, a foot in one hand, some tweezers in the other, swearing like a drunken sailor….
They got used to it!
We’d meet during the day and they’d ask: “How are your urchins?”.
“They’re doing great, thank you!”
Yeah, we lived in perfect harmony…

The following days were windy: while some spikes were finally extracted, others were painfully pushed in during my landings….
For some weird reason, it’s while my feet were full of sea urchins that I landed my first railey in ages (I hadn’t gone unhooked in nine months)…

- Well, my sail was way too high (photos can be painful sometimes!) but I was still stoked I landed it….

I believe in “everything happens for a reason”. May be I was meant to step on sea urchins while surfing in order to land my unhooked tricks when kiting?
It’s so hard to find a reason to be to urchins: bloody spiky things that like to stand right where your foot lands….
But what if urchins turned out to be some sort of secret booster, making the one who steps on them improve?

May be they’re filled with super power poison! – Yeah, I know I’m doted with an overflowing imagination.
I liked the idea though: it would give some sort of credit to the urchins living…

I got comforted in my theory few days later, when I went for a surf at Wilderness.
That morning was meant to be big, and I wasn’t sure I would get in the water. But when I got to the spot, the size was way manageable to me (some good “Em size waves”, actually!).
I waited a fair while, surprised the sets weren’t any bigger, waiting for the evil one that would put me off… But everything seemed steady so I decided to get in.
Wilderness isn’t the easiest water entry (basically walking at the edge of an urchin packed reef and jumping in at the right time), but I usually handle it fine.
“Usually”…

Wilderness water entry on a small day. Photo taken in August 2008.

I knew right away this was gonna be a fuck up session: on my first jump, my leash got caught on a rock; on my second try, a wall of white wash smashed me backwards. When I finally managed to get in, I had spikes hanging out of both feet.
“What’s up with me and urchins lately?” I wondered as I paddled away from the reef.
I didn’t get a chance to feel any pain though: I had much bigger worries than some black dots on my feet.
I had just spotted what I had been fearing to see ever since I had got to the spot: here was the evil set…
It was so far away, yet so clearly visible. And it looked absolutely monstrous…
I started paddling as fast as I could.
All I could see on the horizon were lines forming, coming towards me like hundred meters wide moving buildings…
I know things look a lot bigger than they are to someone lying on a board, but man, these waves were absolutely huge.
I was in one of those “but what am I doing here?” moment. I could see the waves growing as they were coming towards me, their size was way out of my league.
“Girl, this is way too big, you just gonna die….”


To read “The sea urchins magic” part 2