I am a little jealous of my friend Dr Phil Chapman — and then also not jealous. At age 60, Phil is in ripping good shape and on a good day he can still put in six or eight hours of water time. He has a ready smile and laughs a lot and I am tempted to think that he has got life made.
However, in amongst the mist in his eyes, I can also see pain, soft marks of trauma, quiet fatigue of crisis and adrenaline and the kind of stuff that genius would have to live with. Phil is a surgeon and he is trying to pull back a little and enjoy just a bit more family, but he runs emergency medicine and critical care at Busselton Health in Western Australia. When he is not doing that, one of his favourite waves is Shipsterns in Australia.
It is hard to describe to non-surfers what Shipsterns is like. It is a gargantuan right-breaking monster wave and Phil is a goofy foot, with his back to the face of the wave. Natural foot with your chest facing the ride is easier.
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That Phil is still surfing this break is a testimony to phenomenal good health. One might think that after a steady diet of adrenaline in emergency health, Phil might want to surf Waikiki on a 9’0” longboard? Some guys are just built differently This wave dredges up over shallow rock slab reef and throws tube rides that in my mind are best surveyed from afar.
Like in the pages of a magazine. Even my nightmares will not go so far as to put me in the water at Shipsterns. Then there is the not too small issue of how the break gets its name.
This wave slams into the foot of a cliff as it passes and the geography does not look far different from the stern of a giant ship. Some guys are just built differently. In amongst all of this Phil is the founding member of “Surfing Doctors”, with their headquarters in Jawa Jiwa in Gland.
In history past, surfers have been searching for exotic destinations, especially in areas like Java and Indonesia, and were sometimes accused of a lack of respect for local culture, no contribution, hedonism, consumption and departure. But Phil and his likeminded friends like to give something back, creating a better world and a better way.
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