It was spring 2014 when I first realised I could breathe under water.

My head
was still above water, my feet barely touching the sandy bottom. My legs
dangled between the water and the beach. It was about 10am, early for the surf
but I had seen a friend surf the previous day so thought I would give it a try. It
wasn’t until I started to make progress that I realised that I was in fact surfing
in the first place, that the ocean floor beneath me was the board.
I started to make small steps across the sand as I gained momentum. There
was the tussle with the water, each pull back to the surface was a victory. I
remember one of my first times in the sea, my feet found the bottom and it felt
like a switch had been flicked. I was being carried away, the water seemed to
push me towards the horizon. The board beneath me was a small thing at first,
but with each step that board grew, the ocean did too. I was just a small part
of a mighty and huge ocean.
I had learnt to swim by the time I was five years old. By the age of eight I had
been surfing at least once a month. In the autumn of the same year that I first
surfed, I found myself paddling out into the North Sea on a bright, cold and
windy day. I was seven. The sea was choppy and I knew I could not paddle
against the waves, so I swam, just to learn. I remember being so afraid of getting
caught out in the middle of the ocean on a stormy day. The fear was such that
it was just easier to paddle in the shallows than try and find a wave or paddling
spot on the open sea. I would go to school, sit there quietly and think about
whether it was safe to go to the sea on the day. I used to think about it every
time I walked out to my bike.
I did learn to surf eventually, but it took me a little while to make the first break
and to catch my first wave. As I grew older, I began to learn that the ocean,
although seemingly very big and full of dangerous waves, was also filled with
safe places to surf. After surfing for two months in the winter of 2009/2010, I
found that I was comfortable with the waves and the ocean. I became so used to
them that it was easier to catch waves when they were coming in off the ocean
than when they came in off the bay.
My fear of being on the ocean when it was stormy and there was a high risk of
breaking waves became less than when I was surfing. My fear disappeared and
my love of the ocean grew in its place. This book is all about how a child’s fear
can turn into a love of the ocean.
As I got older, my life became intertwined with the ocean. I worked on board a
sailboat, spending most of my free time in the boatyard doing jobs like cleaning
boat and engine bilges, scraping barnacles off hulls and sanding the decks.
When I worked on a boat in Bonaire, the owner asked me to take on a job. I
had heard of a huge and beautiful cave in Bonaire that had been turned into a
surf cave. I took a boat out to this place, climbed into the cave and discovered
the perfect place to surf. I began going out there on every spare moment and
in no time at all became more experienced. Soon after, people from all over
started coming to Bonaire just to surf in my cave.