Melissa Volker, South Africa

Melissa Volker found a way to obsess about surfing in any conditions--by obsessing about writing about surfing! A mid-life blooming writer and water woman from South Africa, Melissa’s delicious fiction blends “surf noir” with “environmental romance suspense.” (Check out the addictive Shadow Flicker!) In our pod, we chat about the coastal topography and bathymetry of South Africa’s breaks (get out your pencils) and she indulges my obsession with South African sharks. (Did you know you can get a gig as a Shark Spotter in Cape Town?) The South African waters are wild and intimidating, and though she grew up learning to paddle on flat water in an estuary, the ocean felt menacing to her well into her 40s. She still considers herself one of the most frightened surfers in her lineup, but she has braved sharks, orcas (!!!) and kilometers of open water on paddleboards, SUP’s and longboards. She credits a community group focused on supporting women for getting her off the beach and into the lineup. She also finds inspiration, and courage, in books and courses on surfing, the ocean, and, yes, sharks. Recognizing how her own life has transformed from surfing, feeling “older, but stronger, happier, braver, and stoked” she created Saltwater Sisters with her BFF to share their love and stoke and to empower other women to experience the joy they have found themselves. Melisa wraps up with one of my fave pieces of advice so far: “Get to know the ocean, because not every day is your day.”

Mentions:

Shadow Flicker by Melissa Volker

Stoked by Chris Bertish

https://melissaavolker.com/

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Transcript

Sheila: Welcome to the Dropping Into Power podcast, where we'll be hearing stories about the transformational power of surfing from women surfers of all ages, all levels and all over. We'll hear about courage, commitment, struggles, frustration, epiphany, and, of course, life transformations, large and small. I'm your host, Sheila Galleon, and I am stoked to share these conversations with these amazing women full of so much passion with all of you. Aloha. Welcome to the dropping into Power Podcast. I'm super excited today to be talking to Melissa Volker, aka Missy, to her friends. So Melissa found me on Instagram. This is becoming such a fun place to connect, and every now and again we just have a little exchange and I think, oh my gosh, I've got to talk to this woman. So we connected really briefly, and one thing that totally fascinated me is that Melissa is a writer and she writes in a genre called surf noir. So I'm going to go ahead and just read her bio. She's a writer and a waterwoman. Oh. The other reason I was fascinated is because she's from South Africa, a place we have not gone yet on the podcast. So she's a writer and waterwoman from South Africa. She was born and grew up in Port Elizabeth, which is about 80 km from Jefferies Bay. She took time off from her career as a beauty therapist and started writing, and she now writes about women's stories in surfing as well as fiction. Her books are described as surf noir and environmental romantic suspense. It is really fantastic description and I will talk about later when I just read Shadow Flicker, which was exactly that and I loved it. Her first novel, A Fractured Land, was published in the US in 2018 and was republished along with her second novel, Shadow Flicker, by Caravan Press in South Africa in 2019. Shadow Flicker won the Romance Writers Organization of South Africa's Stritzia Prize for the most promising manuscript in 2017. And Melissa's short story, Spa Ritual oh, this cracks me up. I've got to read. That was published in the South African anthology hair Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity. That sounds so interesting. Her novel at the Pool Guy was published by Caravan Press in December 2021, and her next novel, another work in the surf noir environmental fiction genre, will be published soon. Melissa learned to surf a stand up paddle board in her mid 40s you don't even look like you're in your mid forty. S. And to surf a long board in her late 40s, she and her surf buddy Megan Smith facilitate a women's SUP surf group in Cape Town called Saltwater Sisters. Melissa lives in Cape Town with her husband and two daughters. So there's just everything about this that I want to know so much more. So welcome, Melissa.

Melissa: Sheila, thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to be here.

Sheila: I'm so excited. We've been trying to make this happen for a while, like many podcasts, because we all have busy lives. But also South Africa is literally as far as you can possibly be from Hawaii. We are 12 hours and a day apart. So. 08:00 A.m for me, 08:00 P.m for Melissa. We finally made it happen. So just starting, first of all, little basics. So you kind of mentioned how old you were when you started surfing, and we're going to talk about your whole journey, so I kind of go from there. But I also need to know, are you goofy or regular?

Melissa: I'm regular.

Sheila: And did you know that when you started?

Melissa: I think so. From okay. I think so, yeah. My husband has served for many years, and I think he's goofy. So we can split an Aframe peak.

Sheila: If it hasn't yet that needs to go in the surf more somewhere. Like, my husband and I can surf together because we spent the Aframe peak. Unless you're working on your backsides. Oh, that's so cute. So you started in your I mean, seriously, looking you on camera, you look like you're in your 30s. So how long have you been surfing?

Melissa: I've been surfing now. I started at 45, and I'm 53 now. So I've been surfing for eight years. This is my APA. In August, it'll be eight years, and.

Sheila: That'S including stand up.

Melissa: I started on a stand up paddle board. My husband surfed, like I told you, he surfed like, 20 years. Well, he surfed his whole life, and we were married for 20 years before I decided to try surfing. And by that stage, he had done short board, kiteboarding, all different types of boards, and he had a stand up paddle board, and that's how I got into surfing.

Sheila: So I'm going to jump ahead from my plan here. What was the moment, what was the shift that you said, okay, I'm going to get out there and try it?

Melissa: It was a women's stand up paddle surf group. I have my friend Megan Smith, she's a bit braver than I was, and she said, Come, let's try. Let's try surfing. And I thought, oh, no. And she tried on a stand up paddle board. And then she said to me, they've got a group down at our local beach Muizenberg, and it was called Wahini Wednesdays. And she said, Come, let's try. They teach you. They've got boards. Let's go. And it was her persuasion, really, that got me to go, and then I was just hooked. Once you stand up on a board, I think you never see the world the same again.

Sheila: I mean, I have that same memory. As soon as my feet hit the foam, I was like, oh, this is it. Yes, of course. Well, that's so cool. I love that how just the shifting world invited. There really is this thing about women being drawn to the water right now, and it sparks interesting conversations because a lot of us that have been in the water a long time aren't always as loving and welcoming as maybe part of us want to be. And this whole concept of scarcity that comes up and if there's just not enough waves and people get grabby, but when it's really in that place and you've got this lifting up of each other, it's so fun. And it's not just fun, it's like I don't know, there's something very magical empowering. I don't really have the right words for it. Maybe you do, but it is, I.

Melissa: Think, also like for me, I grew up very the coast where I grew up, near Jeffrey's Bay and St. Francis and Port Elizabeth doesn't really have waves, but further down the coast it's quite dangerous. It's quite a wild coast. There's lots of rocks and big waves and so I was always too scared to go beyond the white water. And my husband did try push me onto waves on a surfboard. But I think the female communities that exist now make it feel like a safe space where it's okay, someone's watching you, someone's helping you. And also they have a different way of teaching, of teaching you. I needed a more nurturing approach, like, you're going to be okay, you won't die, it will be fine. I think that's what I got from that women's surf group.

Sheila: Yeah, I love that. So I do want to start a little bit just generally about South Africa because of course your friends that listen will know more about this and people in your local community, but it is very far for a lot of people. And so I don't personally know anybody that served in South Africa, maybe. Yeah, I actually don't. And I'm also curious, you touch on this in your book a little bit about the inequities and the division racially and economically. So I'll start with a question of just generally well, you know what, let's go backwards. Let's talk about because you wrote this sentence which sounds so romantic and you said, my parents had a weekend shack on an estuary between J Bay and Cape St. Francis. So let's go back to your growing up and we'll start there as sort of a picture of South Africa too. So what is this beach shack like? Is this a common thing? And describe that whole experience.

Melissa: I don't know if it's not a common thing, but my dad had her friends who leased a portion of land on a farm where a river runs out into St. Francis Bay. And it's the Crumb River and it forms an estuary as it goes out. And there's a farm that borders on the sea and the river. And he and his friends leased a section of property there and there were old fishing shacks on that piece of ground. And I think we started going there from 72 when I was really small and there was no electricity, no water, no inside bathroom. But my parents used to take us there for weekends, and you kind of drove past Jeffrey's Bay to get there, and St. Francis. K st. Francis is on the other side of the river, so I grew up going there for all my vacations. My parents loved it there, but there was no bridge across the river at the time to go to Cape St. Francis. And my dad wasn't a surface at that time anymore. He was the 60s long boards, the shortboard revolution. He stopped surfing, so we spent a lot of time there. But on the flat water of the estuary, sailing, windsurfing, paddling, that kind of thing.

Sheila: What's the water temperature like there?

Melissa: The water temperature is quite warm. My parents still have that house, but it's now a proper cabin, not a shack. So when I go there, I still wear a wetsuit I don't like cold water, so I don't think it's Hawaii warm, and it's not Durban warm up the East Coast. But I don't only need to wear three two there. I don't have to wear the four three that I wear in Cape Town.

Sheila: So you would drive by Jeffrey's Bay. So how far from proper surf were you when you were sort of hanging out in that area?

Melissa: Close.

Sheila: Oh, close. Okay. So you saw surfers?

Melissa: No, not really, because we did mostly river things. But I remember once, must have been in the late 70s or early eighty s two guys walked from Jeffrey's Bay. They knew my parents. And I just remember, like, no shirts and, like, shell necklaces. They'd walked along the beach because you can actually walk along the beach from Jeffrey's Bay and then down the river. I think they must have run out of supplies and knew my parents were there and came down.

Sheila: Oh, that's funny.

Melissa: But then in the 80s, there was one of the neighbors there. At those by that time, houses in Me built there. We weren't using them as weekend shacks. People have built little cabins. But one of the people there, their daughter, Lindy Brink, she became a surfer for South Africa. She surfed on the ASP tour, I think, so she's the only female surfer I ever knew and I'd ever seen.

Sheila: But yeah, did you know oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Melissa: No, I would say growing up, she's the only female surfer that I know of.

Sheila: Wow. Well, you knew your dad had surf, so did you run surfers? Just generally or when you were out, did you go down to the shore?

Melissa: I had friends in Port Elizabeth who surfed, a couple of the guys that I knew. But no girls, no women.

Sheila: That's so interesting. It's interesting that the one was pro the one woman, you know? Right. So I'm sure that didn't say speak to you, like, oh, go surf. It probably sounded pretty intimidating, and I'm hearing, Go ahead.

Melissa: My dad had two surfboards, those old nine foot, like, long boards. I said, we still have one. It's got like a plywood fin. Wow, that he must have surfed in the yeah, like a proper log. Yes. In the river.

Sheila: In the river. So the river would go into the bay. Did you go actually into the bay, too, or just pretty much stay in the river?

Melissa: We stayed in the river. Like I say, the the sea there can be quite wild. It's quite big and dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. And as children, my parents didn't want us in the ocean. They like, up the river mouth. But we could go further up the beach. You could walk up the beach toward Bruce's Beauties on the other side of the river. If you walked up the beach, you can actually see Bruce's Beauties from there. We could walk up there and swim and stuff there. But yeah, like I say, we I don't know why we just didn't surf.

Sheila: It wasn't which sounds yeah, harrowing, for one thing. Yeah, you had a whole other and when you're a child, the small world is a big world, that world right in front of you and the river to explore. Now, this is all sounding very familiar to me because of shadow flicker. There was a farm. There was a woman. Well, I don't want to give anything away about the book. Just read the book, everybody. I love knowing nothing about it, having no idea where any of the characters were going. So I would say, get it. Don't read anything about the jacket. Like, Melissa is so great just pulling in all these pieces, like, you know something's going to happen, but you're like, but what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And it just has this whole surf fantasy involved in it that is really cool. So describe the beaches there, because all I can think of I just have one thing I think of besides Dave, which is sharks. So I don't know if that's been overblown, but what's the beach going community like? There are people out swimming. Are they nervous about sharks?

Melissa: No. I think in Kwazuli Natal in Durban, they had a lot of shark human interactions from the 60s through the years, a lot of lethal shark interactions. So they have a shark net and they use drum lines now. So they have quite a lethal shark mitigation strategy up there. So those beaches are a lot warmer. And I think the sharks are Zambizi sharks, which are possibly what you call I think they're bull sharks. We call them Zambizi sharks. In Durban, I think without the shark mitigation strategies, people are quite nervous. And then from Durban, you go through the Wild Coast, which is very sharky. But there's no shark mitigation there. So people surf or no surf. I don't think many people swim there. And then East London also, as you're coming down the coast toward Jeffrey's Bay, you get East London and Port Alfred and they're also pretty sharky, but people still surf and swim. And then where I live, there were no sharks in Port Elizabeth. It's quite a protected bay, but we all know there's a shark or two at Jeffrey's Bay. I was out about a year ago at St. Francis near Brewsters. There's another wave there called Hewlett, which is like a little gentle reef break. And Rick, my husband, said to me, I was sitting down on my stand up paddleboard, and he said, Missy, stand up. And I knew what that meant. And he said he saw a big shock under me.

Sheila: Okay, I knew you didn't see it. Is the water pretty?

Melissa: It wasn't a white shark. I think it was a regular sea shark. And they don't usually they just mind their own business, but the beach culture is quite I mean, people enjoy the beach, and then from there you get the garden route going down toward Cape Town, and that is also a little bit wild and sharky plenty. We've had a fatal shark incident recently. And then coming down to Cape Town, there's been a number of shark incidents here as well, fatal and non fatal. But in Cape Town we have a program called the Shark Spotters Program, and they instigated they setting that up in Claytonburg Bay as well because of the mountains, cape Town's geography. There's mountains above the beach, so they can put a spotter up on the mountain, and they put a spotter at the beaches, and they look for sharks. And if they see one, they sound a siren and then you must paddle in.

Sheila: Oh, wow. Okay, there's a siren.

Melissa: I found that that most successful around Cape Town because there was a lot of wild shark activity in the early sort of bit from 2010 to 2015, 2016, and I can't remember the exact date they started Shark Spotters. But they do a wonderful job in Cape Town. I'm very grateful for them being there. And you can actually see the little cabin from the surf break where I surf at Muzenberg, can see it up on the mountain. And, you know, they're watching.

Sheila: That's a whole new career.

Melissa: And they do warn people and they do set off the siren. But at the moment that we don't seem to have white sharks. In False Bay, where I usually surf in Cape Town, there's a pair of orcas that seem to have driven them away. So there's mostly bronze whaler sharks, and they're not as dangerous as a shark shark. But then a white shark.

Sheila: Okay, wait, but then there's orcas so, you know, I mean, we all, you know, all of us surfing have I mean, you know, here on the big line of Hawai'i, we have an episode every year. It happens. And some of them are really explainable, some of them are not. I think I've said before, oh, my cat's going crazy. Okay, all right. I'd Chicko. He was asleep on my bed when I started this, and I knew that that might happen. But my daughter studies shark behavior. In high school, she just went on a shark swim, actually, over on Oahu. Do you know who One Ocean Ramsay is? She's this woman who's done a lot of work educating the public about shark behavior. And she has these really famous photos of swimming with white sharks and gigantic white sharks. And she's this lovely blonde, very well spoken, and so she's had a wonderful marketing campaign in terms of educating people about sharks. And she has an enterprise over on Oahu, and she takes people out, or her company does, and they swim with sharks, not in cages. So they actually go out and have, like, a wild shark swim and only certain kinds of sharks. But my daughter just went out and she showed me the video. I've got to post it somewhere. So they just turn on the engine and that invites the sharks up. They're interested in that. So it was bull sharks and galapagos. I'm sorry, sand sharks and galapagos. So these are typically not aggressive, but they're still like five to 8ft. And so literally, she shows me the footage of the book. I mean, there are fins, flapping, flapping, flapping. Like, literally, there's like 30 sharks around the boat, and then they're going to get in the water like, oh, that looks so inviting.

Melissa: But.

Sheila: It'S a subject that's hard not to talk about. But clearly they really aren't interested in us. They're really not. It's just that when that mistake happens, it's significant. And I'm not sure I'd have to see actual numbers if it's really as well, I think it actually is much darker in South Africa. I think you guys have the numbers.

Melissa: We have a very strong beach culture. Everybody enjoys the beach, and I think the volume of people in the water, obviously it's terrible and it's tragic when there's like a fatal shark incident. But I think we all know you're going into where the sharks live, right? Yeah.

Sheila: I mean, that is now okay, let's get back to the orcas. That would be intimidating to me, but again, I know once again, luckily, apparently humans, my daughter told me we actually do taste bad. It has to do with the iron in our blood. We have very high iron content, and so we're not tasty at all. Plus we're rather bony and stringy, especially compared to seals and things that taste better. But anyways, yeah, the orca would give me a heart attack too. I have just this mixed feelings, like, they're so magnificent, but I just wouldn't trust myself to not have a full blown panic attack if I saw one in the water.

Melissa: I've seen them, but not I've seen them from land. I've seen them in False Bay. So Cape Town, we have False Bay on the one side, and then we have the Atlantic side, and I've seen them on the False bay side, which is the side I live, the slightly warmer side of Cape Town. But I was on land, so that was good. And then at night time, I was doing a downwind on a stand up paddle board. There's a downwind across Falls Bay. I'm not the bravest soul, but I do it from time to time. And I didn't have contact lenses in, and I didn't wear my glasses, obviously, on it, but apparently there was I'm.

Sheila: Getting a theme here.

Melissa: I saw one of the girls is, like, really strong, and she never sits down on a stand up pedal board. And for some reason I thought she was sitting down or I was catching up to her. And there was no way that I could catch up to her in speed because I just don't have what it takes. But she was actually sitting down because she saw an orca, so she thought she'll just sit and let it pass by.

Sheila: Oh, I was going to say wait, I'm not sure. Sitting down, I guess. Yeah, you don't have to put your feet in the water. She just sat down to let it pass. Okay.

Melissa: If you understand a pedal board, you don't want it to knock you off. So rather sit down. Don't let a splash or something knock you off. So she sat down on the stand of pedal board. Well, she kneeled down probably, right? Yeah.

Sheila: My daughter said she learned, too, like, you don't want to be parallel with a shark because then they think they're measuring themselves against you. So then that's a competitive action. So I don't know if that means, I don't know, swim straight at them or swim straight away. Anyways, I do know they live there and they're spectacular. I mean, I love and admire them, but geek. That's hilarious, though. Yeah, exactly. That one swam under you. So what is a downwind? Yeah. I want to talk more about what you've done with your board. Let's talk about the journey of your board surfing. But what's a downwind?

Melissa: So downwind is, in some main, Cape Town is mostly on the False Bay side. It's predominantly onshore winds, and it's very windy. So they actually have an international cardboarding competition called King of the Air.

Sheila: The Red Bull. King of the air.

Melissa: It's so windy. The kite boarders come from Europe. They come from all over the world, so there's not a lot of surf. And so downwinding, you can do it on a kite board, you can do it on a wing, can do it on a surf ski, and you can do it on a stand up paddle board. So you go up the coast to a place called Millis Point, and then you launch yourself, and the wind is at your back, and you go with the wind to the beach across the bay.

Sheila: Okay.

Melissa: They do that in Hawaii quite a bit, but I think is it the Molokai Run or something? Like that?

Sheila: Yeah, they paddle across the channel from Maui to Molokai. That's a big one. So how long of a journey is that?

Melissa: It's 12 km. So it takes about well, it depends how good you are because part of it is to try and catch ocean swell. So you're on a standard pedal board that's got some rocker. It's 14ft long. You're supposed to surf it, but the better you are at it, the faster you go. So some people will do it in an hour, but that's not me.

Sheila: How long does it take you?

Melissa: Probably an hour and a half.

Sheila: Okay, all right. That sounds really fun and kind of terrifying because you're basically out because you're basically completely out in the open soul with orcas swimming underneath you. Oh my God.

Melissa: Yeah, I've seen penguins and you see seals and I have seen what I thought was a bronze whaler shark. But you don't want your leash to break or something like that and lose your board.

Sheila: I'm feeling like such a chicken. I used to feel like I was pretty brave, but I just like I.

Melissa: Don'T do it very often, let me just tell you. I think I'm known as the most frightened person in Cape Town. My life jacket. I wear a life jacket. I take a flair, I take a phone, take everything.

Sheila: I love it. Well, I'm impressed, personally. I'm super impressed and any of that. It's fascinating. I'm trying to kind of expand my consciousness of types of board sports, in a way. I mean, I know that I'm kind of just I'm sort of a purist, or I was going to call it a purist, but I like to have my body on the board and I like to have I went to a short board as I like to be closer and into the water. But I see many other types of things that look fun. If I had it in me, I would probably learn to foil, but I don't feel like being harpooned by that thing. They're just so sharp and then wind foiling looks so incredible, but that just looks like a lot going on to manage. And then kite surfing looks super exciting. But maybe if I'm ever hopefully when I have a lot more free time I still have so much health, but I'm still not sure when I'm going to be flinging my seven year old body out and around, like hiding, pulling arms out of sockets, I don't know. But Jesse, who I interviewed before, said there isn't I didn't realize there was a harm like you can release it, you can release the kite because I always imagine just arms getting pulled out of sockets.

Melissa: But anyways, I know that from helping I sometimes help my husband launch his.

Sheila: Cut.

Melissa: And I know he once pulled that release thing. He was using an old cut, like when he was first learning, and he pulled the release and it didn't release, so that wasn't great.

Sheila: So then what happens?

Melissa: He got dragged up the beach.

Sheila: I don't know if you've ever seen Coop Slams on an instagram. So then he's on cook slams. Okay. So what was your journey? Because you mentioned that you had started sort of flat water paddling. Did that come through the women's group too, or did that something you started on your own?

Melissa: No, I did that at Chrome at the estuary. I took standard paddle boards and surf skis and stuff out on the river.

Sheila: Okay.

Melissa: I already knew how to paddle when I got onto the waves. I was scared of waves, so I didn't know how to surf, but I already knew how to paddle, so I just had to take it to the next step. And then from there, I learned to surf. And then from there, long board. So it was a long circle around.

Sheila: Right. So on the river, near the river mouth, would there be some sort of wavelike, sort of current, or were you really just paddling in Flatwater?

Melissa: I was paddling in Flatwater because there is a marina there. St. Francis has a canal system with beautiful houses, and it's not where our house is, but I can paddle across the river and paddle in that canal system. It's quite fancy in there. It's nice to paddle and it's flat and there's no creatures. It's just safe and fun.

Sheila: Oh, we haven't even talked about the river creatures.

Melissa: The sharks come in the river.

Sheila: Okay, all right. Those are cute. Do you have snakes?

Melissa: Yes.

Sheila: Snakes in the river. Okay.

Melissa: Not in the river? No.

Sheila: Oh, good.

Melissa: Snakes at our house. I mean, not at our house, but in the trees around. But you know, the worst snake story I ever had was in Austin.

Sheila: Tell us. Tell me your Austin.

Melissa: I went on a wakeboarding boat in Lake Austin with my family there. And we're in the middle of Lake Austin and far from any you know, far from it's quite a big lake. You've far from any kind of bank. And I'm leaning back, like, watching whoever's waistboarding, and I and I turn to look to the ward, the nose of the boat. And I thought, that's a very thick brown rope on the boat with me. And it turned out it was not a brown rope. It was a big fat snake coming out of the hull of the boat. And it just more and more snake just kept coming out.

Sheila: I wish my face was showing. Yeah.

Melissa: And I was like, Snake. And my cousin's like, It's not a snake. We're here in Texas. Here. We're not in South Africa. And then she's like, It's a snake. And everyone's, like, jumping up and down on the boat. My uncle, who's driving the boat couldn't see the snake, so he lifted his feet up, but the snake wasn't there. It was on the hole. Anyway, it was funny in retrospect, but not in. The middle of the it's like snakes on a plane. It was snakes on a boat.

Sheila: Well, what happened with the snake? Did you get it off?

Melissa: Let it off the boat eventually off the nose and it swam off. I would say it was a six foot snake.

Sheila: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And like a water moccasin. I mean, those are cotton mouth.

Melissa: They're not a water moccasin. I think we had a lot of time to look at it because it took its time getting off the boat and we decided it was a Texas rat snake.

Sheila: Oh, okay. All right.

Melissa: I think it's a constrictor.

Sheila: When I lived in Texas for six years, and I know we chatted about that, I think over email. That is the bitingest, crawliest place. So many good things about Texas. I met some amazing people. Music is incredible, fantastic food, but, man, everything bites and stings you there. And I remember finally going to Lake Travis.

Melissa: Right?

Sheila: And just I was so excited to finally get in the water. And then as soon as I'm walking out, I literally saw a snake, a water snake. And I'm like, are you kidding me? There's nowhere you can go. Everywhere is creatures. Oh, gosh.

Melissa: Yeah, I've seen snakes. I saw Water Marcus, and once there as well. And I've seen a snake in each of my relatives garden, like, one on the boat, one in my cousin's garden, one in my uncle's garden, and one water moccasin down there. I don't know, in the city where the river runs.

Sheila: Town Lake. Yeah. Town Lake River. Yes. Right.

Melissa: Yeah.

Sheila: And then you got your scorpions, you've got your general mosquitoes, you got the fire ants, and then you've got the chiggers. So anyways, nothing against all you Texans, but, man, you can handle some venom. So yeah, I can see how you would really have a masterful, like a real comfort level on the paddle board. So what was it like suddenly being on waves?

Melissa: Also, I thought that it would be easier than what it was. And I finally got to the back and I tried to catch waves and I got absolutely hammered because you can't duck dive, you can jump. I got so beaten up that day. I lost my paddle. I swam. I couldn't get back on my board. I think I eventually washed up. I was like, I think I'm going to go home because I'm done. And then I saw all the other women were still out there, and I was like, okay, I cannot be the only person who can't do this. So I paddled back out, and then when I got out, I was like, how am I going to get it back in? And I even cried. I was like, what? I've done? And then I did manage to get in somehow. I think I caught a wave on my knees, and then I just stayed in the front and just caught foam. And then I was like, this is fun. But I just thought, I can't go through life being the person who can't do the thing. In many sporting endeavors throughout my life, I've not succeeded. And I just thought, this cannot be another one.

Sheila: I love that it's not an unfamiliar story from women I've talked to. Like, there's something about surfing. There's definitely women who've been very athletic and have started later in life, but there's women who have not athletic and are like, I'm getting this if it's the last thing I do. It just gets in us. It's just got to be so important to us. I mean, like, me shortboarding. Oh, my God. This is not a natural. My daughter pops up. She has this beautiful natural form. This is not me. I'm athletic, but I wasn't an athlete. So those are different things. But trying to just everything on a surfboard, it's just everything about it is so hard. Especially, I mean, when you learn as an adult, I don't know. I see a lot of kids take to it naturally, but I see a lot of kids not stick with it too. So it's not just being a kid, but it certainly helps. I'm sorry. I'm getting a picture of you just being washed in. Oh, gosh. Lena, who I just interviewed, she had got completely I don't know if you listened to her interview, but she was talking about and the board just hitting her over and over again, be like, this is my life. This is it. Not knowing sets would end, oh, my gosh.

Melissa: That really resonated with me when I listened to that episode, because I also didn't know sets ended. And then I took a course. It was called A Winter Swell Course, where I learned about how waves work and how they made. And I also read a book about surfing, and I came to understand how waves work and they come in steps. And I thought, you know what? You don't have to be sort of frightened then, because it will stop. It will be a lull. You will catch your breath and you will come up and also learn the kind of beach that I surf at. As a beach break, you're never going to get a big pitching barrel. It's going to drive you like a pipeline. It's just a little crumbly beach break. There's only so much it can do no more. Yeah, it helps get your fears into perspective. And I found just educating myself on I also took a course on sharks, actually. So just like educating myself on how waves work, how surfing works, all about sharks, it really helped me to put fear into perspective.

Sheila: I love that. Plus, it just gives you a whole other connection. I started reading a bunch of things on magic seaweed. Oh, no. Not magic. Seaweed. A friend of mine gave me another site, Oceans. Well, I've got to ask him again, but I'm curious if you. Do you remember the name of the book?

Melissa: It was stoked by Chris Bertish. He wrote about he's a South African surfer, big wave surfer. And he wrote about his experience at Mavericks and how they were tips for big wave surfing, but they were for me.

Sheila: And plus, it's a fun way to read about it not dry. Because I remember before I surfed, I think I considered myself just poet of the sea or whatever. I would sit and perch and I would watch and I tried so hard to understand sets and I thought, like, somebody had told me there's seven waves in a set. And I remember thinking, but that doesn't seem totally true. And then almost counting and trying to make them into seven and none of that made any sense at all. And I've still had people say, well, yeah, well, there's, like, two to four waves in a set. And I'm like, no, I mean, it really depends on I have studied up quite a bit. I like you. My very first surfing experience, I took a classroom class at a university. It was something that they were just offering kind of as a community class. And I love that part. I mean, it was like 6 hours. I always tell the story. It was like a bunch of hungover kids and me like scribbling notes. I was a total nerd. Like, drawing the diagrams of how the ocean floor was shaped and how then I would read the buoys. And I know that if it's 3ft or 2ft at 18 seconds, that's going to be gigantic. Even though it doesn't sound big anyways. But it does. It demystifies it. And sometimes it doesn't seem to help. I mean, yesterday I seriously got caught inside. It was like a 1ft day. And I swear there's just times that you can't get out. It's a reef break, so technically, we should have channels. No, I kept taking, like, all right, maybe it's a two foot day and you just get hammered for reasons that you can't even understand. I'm like, why am I not moving? I could not get through these waves. And I'm on a shortboard, I'm trying to duct dive. Nothing, just paddling. And then here comes the next two footer just wiping me out. But I love that. I love reading up on that. And I love the idea of taking class on sharks. I really loved having my daughter give me information because, yeah, it really is their home and they're endangered in a lot of ways. I mean, there's the number. Oh, gosh, she told me the number. I'm going to totally misquote this. It's like 100 million sharks a year that are killed. Like, it is a crazy, crazy number. And for the fins, oh, that's just so awful. So how did you get started? I know we'll go back and forth about the surfing stuff because I love that stuff too. But how did you get started. What inspired you to write in the genre that you're writing?

Melissa: Well, it goes back to that little beach cottage in Crom River between St. Francis and J Bay. The government wanted to build a nuclear power station in that area, and there was a big protest against the nuclear power station. And then also there's a lot of conservation in the area. They conserve plants, which rightly, so they conserve. There's various rules, especially where our house is in the share block of how you can build, and environmental impact assessments and so forth. So it's really a place where people want to conserve nature. And so they were very much against nuclear power station. And then there was a proposal to build wind farms, and I was really shocked when there was such a massive protest against wind farms. I thought, how can you want to conserve nature, but at the same time you don't want a nuclear power station, but you don't want wind farms either. And a lot of the protests that I heard against wind farms were because they spoiled their view or they impacted. And bearing in mind that these are all holiday homes and we live in a country where some people don't have a home, and people were trying to protect almost a luxury. And I thought, there's a story there. And I'd always wanted to write a story and write a book, but it just was something I felt quite strongly about, and it sparked me wanting to write. And at the time, we were moving a lot because my husband works in construction, so we were going from project to project, and it was very hard for me to keep my beauty business going, so I thought, why not do something new? So I stopped working for a while, and I focused on writing, but I didn't really know how. So I took online courses, a lot of them, while we were traveling and moving. And my girls were small then, so I had some time to work on my book.

Sheila: Did you study a particular genre in your writing, in your class?

Melissa: No, I took a short course in how to write a fiction story, and then I took another short course in how to write a nonfiction story. And then I had this idea, and I just thought I could get it started, but I just couldn't get the momentum going. And then the guy who facilitated the writer and teacher of the short course offered a year long supervision course where you had to submit big sections of the book every month. And so it kept me accountable, but the two lecturers guided us on the way, like, oh, you're not 100% right here, and you're not going try this, and you can't just do this over here. You've written a novel. You know, as you go along, sometimes at the end you realize, oh, I shouldn't have done that right in the beginning. Fix it whereas this I was sort of guided along the way.

Sheila: What an awesome program. Yeah, that's incredible.

Melissa: She enrolled again ten years later for another project that I'm working on also, just really to keep me accountable.

Sheila: Accountability is so huge, especially when you have a very I mean, all of us have complex lives, but your mother a wife, you've got your own business, like you're trying to surf.

Melissa: I think if you grow as a writer also, and you'll know this as well, you know where the pitfalls are, but you can't always see them.

Sheila: Exactly. Yeah, I had a whole business oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. There you go.

Melissa: You've fallen in those pitfalls before. So that's also why I've got a specific manuscript I'm working on now that I'm finding quite difficult. So I thought if I'm in that program again, at least I know I'm being sort of guided in the right direction. If I'm going down at dead end, at least someone's going to tell me before I'm at the end of the first job.

Sheila: Yeah, having somebody inside your story like that, even if you don't agree, sometimes you'll get a note that doesn't really make sense, but it will activate like they're touching on that there is a problem. You know there's a problem. Sometimes it's the solution and sometimes it's just having it validated. Like, I had a whole business doing that. I actually was a consultant for writers, so I did screenplay consulting primarily, and I had worked for a really famous writer when I lived in Austin, of all things, and I was his kind of little mini story developed. I was his assistant, but I also read all of his scripts and gave notes and listened to the production notes and the producer's notes and the director's notes. I mean, I had this master course in it, and I know when I did it for people, well, I really got in there, and I think that was almost the most valuable thing was just having somebody there that you can talk that story with and somebody knowledgeable that can tell you, oh, yeah, you're going to go off a cliff here. Look back here in chapter one. Plant a seed for that. And yeah, I know what you mean when you make you get to the end and you're like because everything you change it's even more so in a screenplay. But it's in a novel, too. It affects everything. You change one sentence, you change you insert anything and all the probabilities change. She's nodding, nodding, nodding. Yeah. It's challenging. I feel like you've had the conventions so clear of, you know, I definitely don't consider myself in any way an expert in the noir novel or whatever, but you're just a wonderful storyteller, so you knew how to tease like something's going to happen. I also really loved how you did the omniscient, the full omniscient point of view, getting in everybody's head. And you have a villain, and then suddenly you're in the villain's head. It was really seamless how you did it too. So I really enjoyed it. I thought you really had that. It didn't feel how do I put this? So it didn't feel like you took multiple classes on how to write a mystery or something. It didn't feel like that. It just felt like you had authorial control of what you were trying to do. So anyways, I can't wait to be more of your stuff. And one thing you did touch on oh, did they ever build the wind farm there?

Melissa: Yeah, they did. They didn't build one that was super close, but the wind farms are there.

Sheila: Okay.

Melissa: You know, you're close to JBay when you see the wind farms.

Sheila: Interesting. So one thing you touched on the book that I mentioned a little earlier and we didn't get back to was the sort of changing landscape through apartheid, of course, ended a long time ago, but you're talking about people that don't have homes, and has there been anything that's changed in the beach going communities? And as that is sort of lessened or has it lessened? Do you see more black people coming to the water? And is that changing at all?

Melissa: It is. I wasn't surfing in the you look at surf history, you can see all South African representative surfers were white. So that has changed. We had Mikey February on the world tour. As far as the beach going culture is obviously in apartheid. The beaches were segregated. So South Africa definitely didn't have a fair opportunity for people of color to learn to surf because a lot of the beaches with good surfing waves were reserved for white people, so people of color wouldn't have been able to paddle out there. So that has all changed. And when I go down to my local beach, it's completely everyone's there. It's diverse. It's beautiful.

Sheila: Okay, that's good to hear.

Melissa: It's still a complicated place with lots of problems, but I would say that we have many surfers from all cultures, backgrounds, women, men at the beach that I surf at. It's amazing.

Sheila: So are you seeing the impact at all of women in the lineup changing over time since you were sort of part of it coming in? And I don't know how many other places you've surfed, but how is that affecting just the overall? Are the men in shock? What's going on?

Melissa: I don't surf a very radical wave. I surf at Muzenberg, which is like a gentle, longboarding wave, but there's men and women in the water. I mean, you get the odd guy who's grumpy. There's days where there's more women in the water. There's many, many women in the water. The way I surf, I would say that there are times where when I first started surfing that I thought maybe the men were getting more waves than women. Actually, I wrote an article on that in our local surf magazine on where the men get more waves than women.

Sheila: Oh, I want to read that. Okay.

Melissa: Send you a copy of that.

Sheila: Yeah, send me a link.

Melissa: Because coming from not having a surfing background into surfing in my middle age, I did think that perhaps that was going on. But I would say over time, it's possibly improved. Also, sometimes I'm not sure because I started life surfing a standard pedal board. So sometimes I'm not sure if it's a little bit of pushback because I'm on, right?

Sheila: Yeah, that's probably true. Is it mostly longboard at the break that you serve?

Melissa: Mostly longboard. And when it's bigger, like in winter now the swell comes. Then it starts with short boarding, but it is predominantly a long boarding wave. It's really a lovely wave. There's multiple peaks. So again, it's crowded, but there's lots of space for everybody and a lot of beginners, a lot of surf schools because it's got a sandy bottom.

Sheila: Right.

Melissa: And then the more experienced surfers will go on the Atlantic side, there's Long Beach Comic, and then up the west coast, Elante Bay.

Sheila: Clearly, I'm going to have to look at a map. I had to do this.

Melissa: Yeah, because it's a peninsula. You've got west coast with that cold water coming from Antarctica. And then we've got the False Bay coast on the sort of southern side going eastward. And that's got warmer water because the Mozambique Current is coming down from the equator, so it's slightly warmer on one side. So I would say that on the Atlantic side, there's some ways, like landadno where the waves break a lot harder. And at Sea Point, when there's a big swell, there's some breaks there. They get really big. But I don't really surf that side because I live that side. And I don't like that cold water because it's very cold.

Sheila: Yeah. Oh, interesting. It's so fascinating. So have you ever served JBay non board?

Melissa: Because I don't know about something out there on a stand up billboard. I know.

Sheila: I wonder if you can because I've only ever seen JBA at a contest, so I don't know what it's like when it's not just pumping. I don't know if it gets smaller or.

Melissa: And also, there's a number of ways. There's a wave, like for beginners and called Kitchen Windows. That's a super beginner wave. And then there's Lower Point, which is far down the point from super tubes. And that's also a wave for longboarders and beginners. So Point has got a lovely long board wave. I actually heard Shannon Hughes in her podcast saying one day that that's one of her favorite waves for her long board is the Point.

Sheila: Interesting.

Melissa: You wouldn't see that in the contest. It's a long board wave.

Sheila: Yeah, I don't know if they have yet. I heard in one of her podcasts, too, that they were saying there's almost no events right now in South Africa, so there's no development of the pro surfers, which is really unfair and a shame because I'm sure the talent is like everywhere else, where people are progressing so quickly.

Melissa: Yeah.

Sheila: It's hard for me to imagine surfing a place called Super Tubes. It is one of my dreams to get barrel, but it hasn't happened yet, so it feels like a long way off. Although this is my fantasy, I'm just putting it out to the universe that I want to go visit all the women I'm interviewing on my podcast so I can take a world tour. My dream is if when finally the movie ever really gets made, then we'll have release parties everywhere. That would be so much fun.

Melissa: Oh, thank you.

Sheila: It would be so much. Yeah, it would be gosh, wouldn't it be fun? It'd be so cool. We could do live broadcasts and I could meet because so many of the women I'm interviewing, too, have built these incredible communities, or a part of these communities. So it would be really funny. And before we talk about Saltwater Sisters, one observation that another friend of mine has had is actually where that hasn't happened, where there hasn't been community. She's found that the men are actually more helpful to her than the women, which is really interesting. So I think when we don't have these conversations and find a way to really I don't know if it comes back to our primal part of competition, women competing against women, it brings up we can sort of go one way or the other. We can be really uplifting or we can be competitive. So you obviously began surfing with a group of women, and that was your kind of uplifting experience. Have you had any different one to one encounters with men versus women? You have a husband who serves, so obviously you probably get as much help as you want from him. Sometimes that's less welcome than we want. But I'm just curious if you've had any of that experience, like one on one, if you've had men be more helpful or more generous than women or the other way around.

Melissa: When I was surfing with the Wahinis before, when they were teaching us to surf, three of the coaches were men. The person who started it was a man, Gary Fenroyan, down here in Cape Town. He owned a surf shop that they ran it out of and his stepdaughter, Taryn King, and her husband, Tom King, would also coach. So they've coached me quite a bit. And then there was another male coach who helped me a lot. So they kind of started the group and then they had sometimes the men in coaching, sometimes the women.

Sheila: That's interesting. It's more like where somebody's heart is their love of sport, their love of surf rather than gender. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to ask about Salt. Yeah. So tell us about Saltwater Sisters and how it's formed and what you guys do yeah.

Melissa: So the surf shop they used to do Wahinis, they were hit quite hard in COVID, so they had to move this shop and then they weren't able to run that program anymore. And so we noticed that lots of women were the group had kind of faded away, but we felt that we had learned so much and really it had changed our lives. Learning to surf and stand a paddle board. We were older but stronger.

Sheila: I love that. Older but stronger.

Melissa: Older but stronger. We were braver, we were happy, stoked. And we just thought they had given us so much through the ocean and introduced us to something. I mean, I'd been introduced to something I never believed I could do. I never thought that I would be able to ever surf a wave. And it just felt like something we wanted to give back. So we thought if we could start a group and get women who wanted to surf but maybe they also needed community, they needed help to get a little group going. So we started Saltwater Sisters and we actually don't mind if people want to bring a body board, if they want to swim, if they want to bring a long board, I can teach them on a stand up paddleboard. I can't teach them. I don't know the ins and outs of bodyboarding, but I can certainly keep an eye on them. So we tried to make it inclusive and we've got some women who've gone from being on the beach to catching waves at the back.

Sheila: I love that. So how often do you meet? Is it official meeting or just when you are all out there?

Melissa: We meet on a Friday, every Friday, regardless of the weather. So tomorrow we're on at 830 in the morning and we have a little group. They just need to let us know how many are coming so we can prepare and then we take them out, even if it's onshore offshore raining. I think we've only had to cancel once because of a terrible storm. But if it's like windy and horrible, then we swim because you learn something every day in the ocean.

Sheila: That's fantastic. I love that. And it's commitment. Yeah, it's commitment.

Melissa: And I wouldn't go out if it's like onshore and terrible and I've now had to go out in whatever weather and I've learned so much from that. From going out. I've learned that you can find a way where you don't. You'll find a way. Right?

Sheila: That's so true.

Melissa: And you know what? Water splashes in your face and you just feel a lot better.

Sheila: I've been out in the most ridiculous conditions and I'm somebody that's a huge proponent of going out in every condition unless it's dangerous, that's a different story. But in fact, my daughter and I went down a couple of days ago and I think I actually went out and she didn't. And she was talking to a friend on the beach. And he said, yeah, your mom's hardcore, man. She goes out in anything. Like, I'll go out if it's an inch. I'll go out if the tide is so low that you have to jump off the point, because I have my hour pretty much every day while I'm navigating work. And right now I have two jobs, so it is what it is. I go, and that's what I have. So it definitely helps you focus, lower your standards, but also open opportunities. I mean, you're right. I always learn something. I learned something about current. I learned something about myself. I learned something about patience. I learned something about acceptance. I learned something about how the tide works. Just so many different things. So on that note, is there anything? Because often I think when we surf start later in life. A lot of it is about the life lessons as much as the joy of the surf is you're constantly having experiences that translate. Do you have something? Is there something for you that's been like a big life lesson that you transfer from surfing to land?

Melissa: I think there's a couple that I had in mind, but the main one is just don't give up. Just keep trying. Paddle back out. When you get hit by a state, you just paddle back out. And also, I find it translates to writing a lot, actually, because I think writing is almost a compulsion, like surfing is a compulsion. Like surfing, if the waves are good, you feel like you've got to go. And if you're not surfing, you're kind of thinking about it. And I feel it's the same with writing. It's something that you want to do, and you've got a story and you've got an idea, and when you're not writing, you're also thinking about it. But I also think that the two are almost similar in a way that sometimes you can't when you start writing, sometimes the narrative takes you in a direction you didn't think you were going, but you've got to go with it and almost adapt as you go. And it's the same with surfing. It's like adaptive attunement. You've got to be in tune with a wave and adapt to it, to surf it. And with writing as well, you need to be in tune with your narrative and adapt. Does that even make sense?

Sheila: Oh, it makes perfect sense.

Melissa: Makes sense? Yeah, because you can't always force your will. So you might have, like, an idea. I find in writing, I've got an idea, and it's got to work, and I put it on paper, and it doesn't work. And it's the same if you go out and you decide, okay, today I'm going to do a top turn, or whatever, but the wave isn't that kind of a wave. I'm not the kind of surf. I'm not on the proto. I'm not going to make it happen. With writing as well. If the story. Is not going that way. You have to sort of lean into it to go with where the story is going. So I would say I've learned that from surfing and also just not giving up.

Sheila: Well, putting those things together, that's really powerful. I mean, it really is. It's sort of the dance of life there, but you make the effort whether you put yourself out there, whether it's on the wave or on the page, and you go for it. Right. And then who knows what's going to happen? Like, you could go well or end and yeah, similarly, in writing, we'll continue the metaphor. If you keep trying to go left and it's closing out, you better try going right. So it's kind of thing or go straight, whatever. But those are both really profound. And, yeah, I think together is what makes life fulfilling, because you're putting yourself out there, you're going with the flow, and then when you're repeatedly bashed and shut down, you never give up until you get that moment right. And you get I was tracking up yes. Or a pounding or whatever it is, or then you just can't stand up. I have these days I call bambi days when it doesn't matter how long I've been surfing, I can't stand up. I can't stand up. It's just embarrassing. And it's always when somebody's there that I wouldn't say necessarily want to impress, but for whatever reason, you don't want to completely suck. If my ex is out there who's like, pro level surfer, I can't even stand up. I'm like the worst surfer ever. He's not thinking about me, but just the fact that he exists and that I don't know, it'll get in my head. So there's all that stuff, too, like all the things that get in your head. But I was cracking up because yesterday I went out and I was like, yeah, I've been doing my wave key and I was going to work on my bottom turn. It was just crumbling. Yeah, there was no bottom turn. There was no wave for that. So I just traveled. So, okay, let's get nerdy with surfing and then we'll start wrapping things up here. So I always like to ask, what is your best surf moment that you can remember?

Melissa: Oh, I've had so many best surf.

Sheila: I love this answer.

Melissa: I think I've taken off on some on some big waves and made it. And that'll be my big my well, big for me, where you can hear the white water, like, booming behind you and it's not on you, then I can remember taking off on a wave like that at my home break and also at St. Francis. Bruce's Beauties is on the one side and on the other side is Hewlett's Reef. And I surf there. When we go down there and there's a wave, often the rife connects right to the inside and you can ride that wave for such a long time. And I've had a really fun ride there where it just feels like it's never going to end.

Sheila: Oh, I love that I'm right there with you. Yeah, that sounds intimidating, hearing the freight train behind you. I love it. And then what is your favorite thing about your own surfing? It can be any version of that, just whether it's spiritual, physical, something you do, or just your own experience.

Melissa: I really like when I'm surfing, just being in the moment because there's no phones and no distraction. You can't do anything else except be there. And often, even if I'm not catching a wave, I'm just grateful to be there, that I have the time, that I have the health, that I have the opportunity to be out there. But then I would say when I'm catching waves, I've got a 14 foot stand up paddleboard. It's really long and it's one I'm supposed to use for ocean for downwinding. But on the small days when it's quiet, even if it's a little bit onshore, you can catch waves, like super far out. So I go far away from the surfers and I go and catch waves, like super far out. And then you can ride them for so long as well that you can actually have time to look around. Wow, I love that I have so much fun on that board. Like I say, just being in the.

Sheila: Moment on the board, I just feel this spaciousness. It's just this openness. There's a wave here that I love when I get it just right. And as you go over it, you can see the reef. It looks like it's just pulling up underneath. So it's just turquoise water and fish and reef, and there's just that moment where you're going along it. And I guess mostly I've been on my longer board when that happens. And, yeah, it's like you're fully present, but the world's going by and your senses are so full, I can really feel that. How do you manage I'm assuming you have some bad days. How do you manage that? What goes on in your head when you're having a tough day? And how do you get through that?

Melissa: A surfing tough day or a general tough day?

Sheila: Oh, you know, they're probably similar. We'll start with surfing.

Melissa: Surfing tough day. If I'm having a general tough day, I go surfing good day. I'll just try and get another wave until I'm not having a surfing tough day. Or I guess I'll just go catch a wave in and go, wait a.

Sheila: Minute, what happened to never give up? Oh, no, this is surrender.

Melissa: If it's a tough day, you mean like big waves? And I'm like I guess for me.

Sheila: I just get in my head sometimes that's when I have a tough day, everybody starts bugging me because they're getting waves and I'm not or whatever, stuff like that. But I just like to ask people, I mean, if you've got this wired. That's awesome. Yeah, go ahead.

Melissa: I think if I'm having a tough day like that, if I'm going to go in and I'm going to leave the surf, I never go in unless it's a good wave. So stay there as long as possible and make sure that I get a nice wave in. Because any session can be finished and by a nice wave in, even if it's like going straight to go in. But it must be a nice wave. And if it's not a nice wave, then I try to sneak out and get another one if I've got time.

Sheila: Okay.

Melissa: I just make sure that the last wave is like a satisfying wave. Even if I've been if you pound it on the midbreak, you can always get a nice wave on the midbreak, too. Then you have to go all the way back out.

Sheila: I sometimes get my last wave just on my belly. I've just accepted that sometimes because I usually don't have the window to wait, that every now and again that'll be my best wave is the one in. And I've learned to just let myself. So I put my arms out and I ride in like it's the best thing I've ever done as far as I'm concerned. It was a great session. I didn't even realize I was doing that until you said that.

Melissa: It means that you're getting the stoke as you go in.

Sheila: That's what it is. Yeah.

Melissa: Sean Thompson said something in one of his books about making sure that you get a wave in because it's about like you don't leave any unfinished business in the ocean. Like by sort of walking in or whatever. Yeah, like I did that day that I washed up, I paddled back out.

Sheila: I'm going to keep that image in my mind for a long time. It's just like there's something about the paddle and the board and the leash and just I don't know. I've got a picture in my head I'm sticking with. All right, there's always more questions, but I'm just going to wrap it up with this one. What is you've kind of already gone there. But just in case, because you're working with women. You're working you're bringing women out there. So really would be speaking let's speak to the people who just are still putting their heads down and crying sometimes. And it's just not or whether it's fear or frustration or they're not progressing the way they want. Do you have a word of wisdom for those women?

Melissa: I think just keep going, keep trying, keep going. Find helpful. But this is like a nerd thing is I watch videos on YouTube, like how to especially with surfing and stand up paddleboarding. And I think sometimes you can only work on one thing at a time. There's so much going on when you are out in the surf. For me, if I think of, okay, today I'm going to work on this one thing and then you just do that thing and then eventually that will come, right? And I think also get to know the ocean, because not every day is your day. Sometimes you can't fight the ocean. You've got to work with the ocean. So, like, when I get new ladies come to Saltwater Sisters, I'll say to them to get to know the ocean, don't be frustrated because it's not going away today, because look at the waves. You've got to learn to see what the ocean is sort of handing you on the day. And if it's a big day or if there's strong currents or if the swells from a certain direction, it's not possible to have the best time ever.

Sheila: That is really brilliant and wise, I think. And there's more even to unpack with. It just it's with expectation. But also going out into the ocean, unless it's unsafe, of course, and feeling the currents, feeling how the waves work, feeling even if you're never going to stand up that day, there's something profound in it. But what I really, really love, this will for sure go in the write up when I write it, is not every day is your day. Get to know the ocean. Not every day is your day.

Melissa: And sometimes you might just sit there and have coffee, but you're looking at the ocean and getting to know it.

Sheila: I love that, too. I love that, too. Well, I think that's a wonderful place to end. Melissa, thank you so much for joining and for sharing all these parts of yourself with us. And I'm going to definitely post your books in the notes so that people can check that out.

Melissa: Thank you so much. It's been such a wonderful chat. I really enjoyed it. You.