Humbling moments and soaring highs for a Dubai executive who thought his big wave days were behind him.
It all comes down to this… Do I sit out here on my own, in what feels like the middle of the ocean? Or do I catch the wave of my life?
This might have been the mindset of Glenn as he sat more than 500m outside at Back Bommie, Long Reef, during a freaky day of early-winter swell.
The Dubai executive had grown up surfing at Longy with friends Nick, Garf, Ewok and Werris, in the 1980s. But he’d been overseas for decades, working hard to become general manager of a big hotel.
About a year earlier, he’d begun stand-up paddle boarding off the Dubai coast, in the Arabian Gulf. Why? To be close to the ocean and for fitness, all the while inadvertently working on his core and balance. There was no way he could have known how important this would prove to be.
As a young bloke, he surfed the Bommie at Long Reef many times. A nor-east with just a modicum of swell was enough to make the break a potential candidate for a session. But Back Bommie? That was different.
It only worked with a big storm swell, when the wind was right, and usual surf spots were closing out. It was the place young Glenn would watch in awe as perfect monsters rose up, pitched and threw glistened, pile-driving symmetrical sheets ahead of their advance to the coast. At once, beautiful and terrifying.
It was on one of his visits home that he caught up with friend and big-wave tragic, Werris. “Going to hit Back Bommie at 10am,” he texted the previous night. “It’s going to be 10ft. I have two guns in my car.”
Werris, Glenn and Bella clutch their weapons and ready for battle.Glenn didn’t think too much about it. Something ...
