Paignton Drop-in.

Paignton is not well known for it surf.

It does have, if you half close your eyes, a vague simularity to famous breaks like Huntington. You have to really squint though, and it's only because of Paignton beach's main feature. The pier. The sparkly blue of the Pacific is swapped for the dubiously odoured brown of the English Channel, and the crystal gutters of the California coast are traded in, downmarket, for the sloppy fatness of the sheltered corners of the North Atlantic.

Piers seem to be great for surf, the sand gets clogged and builds up under the pilings giving a consistent sandbank and if you're feeling rowdy there's always the fun of shooting the thing. Slaloming through the pilings with barnacle encrusted steel inches from your flimsy body adds an extra something to the thrill of catching waves, even if those waves are only the wind-driven slop that Paignton is world-renowned for. The pier also adds the amusement factor of watching and laughing when your mates get it wrong and either go headlong into the metal or frantically scrabble to undo thier wrapped-up leash before they drown.

PANORAMAS

These classic days are bound of course, to be the coldest, harshest days. The days when you get an ice-cream headache while you're still dry and getting into your wettie. Torbay sticks out into the English Channel pointing Paignton directly at Scandinavia. This wind was special delivery of the coldest kind, direct from Siberia.
This was one of those days.

Everyone was out, as ever, and the popular right-hander side of the pier was getting a bit crowded, so some of us decided we fancied some lefts and paddled under the pier to the other side. Me and Dean were sitting close to the pilings, trying hard to look as much like Kelly Slater as possible and impress the too-young girls hanging over the railings and calling us 'dudes'.

Nearby these surf-groupies was a dishevelled drunk bloke. Might have been Scottish but that's dangerous stereotyping. He was yelling at us, 'och let us have a go!'. He seemed to be impressed by our surfing prowess and wanted to join in.

He was utterly pissed, slurring his words, and in full-on comedy drunk mode. He was definily cramping our style with the chicks. 'Lemmeeee have a gooo, yabastard basssstards...'

For fucks sake. He was shouting at us from 20 feet about our heads as we tried to surf. It's not often your year-best waves get interupted by a drunk bloke who can barely stand.

Dean had had enough.

'Fuck. Off. You. Twat.'

'aaagh, I c'c'cn do thaaat surfing thing....!!!'

We tried to ignore him.

A huge splash came from next to the pier.

He'd jumped in. 30metres from the beach, in 7 degrees water, we had a fully clothed, extrememly drunk and loud nutter trying to catch waves with us. It didn't take long for these things to filter through his Special Brew clouded mind as he tried to splash towards us.

'Aaaaahhh, lads, aahhh think I'm a bit fucked....' and he dissapeared beneath the surface. I looked at Dean, Dean looked at me.

'Stupid twat' said Dean, and caught a wave, casually riding over the stream of bubbles coming up from where the drunk had submerged.

I sat there wondering if I should be diving down and trying to find the drunk bloke in the sewage-browned water. I didn't really want to do that.
Dean paddled back out and the drunk suddenly made a re-appearance, bursting out of the water, swearing, and coughing up water.

'ahhh laaads, um..aaaah...help....ya basstards...'

'I suppose we should rescue him' I said.
'Fuck that, let the stupid twat drown.' replied Dean.
'hmm, no, but yeah...but we should rescue him really..'
'No fucking way, he jumped in, he can jump out.' Drunk bloke was sinking again.
I caught a wave to think about what to do.

Paddling back out, drunk bloke had gone.

'Dean, where's that bloke gone?'
'He's there' said Dean, shrugging towards a stream of bubbles on the surface.

'Ah shit, we really should pull him out y'know..'
'Don't you fucking dare..'

Drunk bloke re-entered the conversation. The cold was getting to him and he had even less motor-control over his limbs than he did previously. He was flopping about making weird slurry coughing noises. He smelt funny.

'Fuck it, we'd better pull him out.'

'No, he's a drunk cunt. Let the fucking twat sink.'

It was tempting.

I cracked and paddled over to the floppy diamondwhite addled bloke.
I didn't want to get too close, so I stopped out of range and pushed my board over to him. He grabbed it while I tried to stay as far away as possible from him as my leash would allow. I pulled him into the inside and into the shorebreak. We were really close to the pier, and I didn't want him to tangle up my board on a piling.

He kept sliding off the board as I pulled him along on the leash and I was starting to lose patience when somehow he managed to catch a wave. To my surprise he flew past me making gurgling noises, arms wrapped around my board in a death grip, bouncing up and down. 'Fuckin....' I suddenly got pulled over as my ankle leash went taut and got dragged in behind him underwater.

As the wave closed out he fell off, of course. That was it, I'd had enough of being a good samaritan. I pulled my leash hard underwater as the tension went slack, and got away from him as he popped up to the surface yet again.

'Yeerrrrrr bastard, I th-th-thought you was helping meeeee...' he slurred at me as I went to paddle back out.

'Stand UP, you twat.'

He stumbled to his feet unsteadily in the waist deep whitewater.

'ahh, yeah....thanks mate, I-I-I'm a bit of a twaat me...'
He staggered up the beach and collapsed on to the sand. I paddled back out.

Dean was annoyed with me.
'You should have let the twat drown.'

I turned and watched the drunk guy stumble up the beach, his sodden clothes leaving a wet trail behind him.

'Well, he'll probably die of hypothermia now' I pointed out.

Dean visibly brightened and, cheerd by the though, we went back to catching waves.

By Jon

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