Beyond the Break

CHAPTER 6MALDIVES: Routines are magic

Right in front of my home about 700 metres out to sea is a submerged reef shelf, which creates big waves in the middle of the ocean. A First Nations name for these kinds of deep-water breaks is ‘Bombora’. The locals call the one near me ‘Northy Bombie’, and it has a mythical-monster kind of folklore around it.

Even with hundreds of world-class surfers in the area, you only ever find half a dozen crazy enough to attempt the Bombie. Maybe what puts people off is paddling out across nearly a kilometre of deep, dark abyss, imagining white pointer sharks lurking beneath. Or perhaps it's the exhaustion of going all that way and then still having to push through enormous waves on the inside sandbank before you even get to make the long paddle to the catchable waves further out — and experience the sheer rush of gliding down a wave the height of a two-storey building.

But the power of the uniquely shaped waves produced as water passes over the reef and steepens is too much for some. Many surfers have attempted it, only to have the giant waves in front of the Bombie repeatedly wash them back to shore until they're exhausted and give up. Others have gotten stuck out there and had to be rescued by a jet ski.

The thrill of surfing the Bombie has always got the better of me, and one day when the waves were huge I paddled out. After ploughing through the broken white water of the beach-break waves, I was faced with unpredictable fifteen-foot waves pounding ...