Tom Roberts Tillamook Head 1947 Cedar 10'0 x 23 x 3 SUP • NEW

Jack, Tillamook Head | September 1947
He paddled out where the track ended, south of Seaside. A beautiful day of promise with a soft westerly breeze. Babs had dropped him off and would drive her Willys south towards Cannon Beach. She planned to pick him up near Indian Point in about two hours, a beach near a logging road they had scouted out.

Babs had argued against this paddle, but it seemed small-beer to a fit man in his mid-twenties who had previously paddled PV Cove to San Pedro against a south wind.

He was making good time at a steady pace, knee-paddling the sixty-pound wooden board he had made in his parent's Redondo Beach garage ten years and a lifetime previous. As the sun reached 30 degrees arc, he rounded Tillamook Head ahead of schedule. The NW swell had picked up- combined with the onshore southerly current gave him a speed of about two knots. His young body reveled with the steady rhythm, while his mind imagined himself as Jason upon Argo, speeding towards new and unknown horizons.

Within the next hour he neared Indian Point- decided to cut the corner near the line of offshore rocks. As he drew abreast of those hazards, an atavistic sense of caution caused him to look back over his right shoulder.

A rogue roller was bearing down upon him, maybe twice the size of the existing swell. His first thought was to turn about towards deeper water, paddle like hell and let the behemoth pass underneath him, at the same time noticing that the wave was now feathering along its translucent top - threatening to break at any moment- now it was too late for the easy way out. Facing imminent danger, the mystic within him sensed that Providence was giving him this challenge, a point in time without witnesses. Dispelling all doubts, he turned his board shoreward and began to paddle with the wave. Riding straight into the rocks was not an option, he felt the power of the wave's steep face take him and he began the slide, rising to a crouch- in the same movement beginning a slow lumbering turn of the 10' 4" board so as to position himself across the face of the wave, heading to the right- away from danger as the wave began to break with explosive force against his backside, the energy and speed causing his board to vibrate beneath his feet and give off an audible hum as it dealt with momentum and forces beyond its design- continuing across the clean-open face of the wave for three-hundred yards until the spent energy of open-ocean water pushed him upon the clean grey sand of the beach.

The next morning Jack slept in, touched Babs who was purring alongside him. He thought about how he had slept all night for the first time since coming home- not dreaming of Iwo and the killing. He decided to put his life priorities in a new order, he would give-up law school and keep Babs. They headed north up the coast.

Jack and Babs spent the next half-century living a full life with few regrets. They ended up settling in Victoria B.C., where they opened and operated a successful gallery, specializing and supporting NW Native art. Jack and his board Argo still found time to paddle with orcas in Juan de Fuca.