Day 8

Brendan would sit and wait to catch the best waves he could. It usually worked out pretty good for him.

Dry reef at Maccas.

Another sunset

Bear the boat driver

Everyone was excited to get to Macaronis (Aussies call it Maccas). When we pulled up there were already three boats there. Two new ones and the damn Freedom III that had been following us the whole trip. We quickly headed out and everyone scored a few good ones before breakfast. The wave is the end section of a long piece of reef, so you can usually see your wave breaking farther up the reef before it gets to you. This works out because like most of the waves in the Mentawais, Maccas is a pointbreak and there is a gentleman's rule in place which means you wait your turn, then you get to pick whatever wave you want. It was really hard to decided which wave to go on that first day because it wasn't really that consistent so by the time it was my turn, I was ready to go on the first wave that looked good enough. There would usually be better one not too far behind it but I didn't care. It was a little onshore which gave the waves a little texture. The wave itself will let you do whatever you want to do to it. Even I was able to get a ton of turns in and make every section. By the time the wave is over it's really shallow and magnified by the super clear water. I never hit the bottom or reef even though I thought I would a few times. We surfed three times that day and at one point it was only myself, Nick and an older guy named Keith. Keith was retired and spent his days sailing on a 26' sailboat. He said Maccas was his favorite wave in the world, so he comes and docks his boat in the cove nearby. He lives on rice, curry and cereal and surfs every day. He told us he's traveled the world over and we even started talking about the Chesepeke Bay and crabs once he found out Brendan and Andrew live there. He told us he'd been there before and got hooked on Old Bay seasoning.
By the end of the day I was exhausted. The boat was anchored about 150yards from the take off spot, so if Bear or Jeb weren't doing anything we'd ask them to take us over, otherwise we'd paddle. The wave is nearly 100 yards long so you'd have to paddle back out once you rode in too. After ten or so waves that got to be tiring, but addicting. I think we all had a few Bintangs watched the sunset and passed out. We'd be heading in to a port that night to refuel and get water (we ran out of fresh water for showers earlier in the day).