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Why Surf?
For joy and fun.
Rule 1: When it isn’t
fun anymore, get out of the water. (Everyone will
appreciate it.)
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Is
Surfing Fun?
Oh, yes.
There’s nothing more improbable than
standing up on a stiff board and trying
to steer it with your feet through a collapsing
gyre of water. And it’s amazing that
we’ve evolved so far that we can actually
learn to do it. And when you do it right,
you feel like one heck of a monkey.
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I’m
a Little Nervous, What Should I Expect?
If you aren’t
living in the tropics, the water will be cold. You’ll
want to wear a wet suit. Today’s wet suits
are excellent and aside from an initial damp seepy
feeling as you wade into the water, within a minute
you’ll be comfortable and warm. Unless you’ve
decided to learn to surf in the dead of winter.
Why did you decided to do that? Well, here in Northern
California we surf year round, and in the dead of
winter it’s cold. But the wet suits are good.
You can surf on Christmas Day, if you can get away
with it with your family. (Unlikely.)
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What About...
Falling?
You are going to
fall in the water. Your head will go under. Depending
on how big a wave you fall on, it’ll be like
falling into a cross between a cement mixer and
a fast flowing river. Waves are pretty powerful,
even the small ones. Medium size ones can act like
a Sumo Wrestler stomping his feet, picking you up,
and slamming you down. However, you’re going
to learn to surf on those little 1 to 2 foot waves,
right? Not in those big Sumo Wrestler waves, right?
Generally, surfing is a shallow water sport. So
after you fall, wait a few seconds for the bubbling
and pushy water to stop, and stand up when you need
some air.
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Is Surfing
Hard?
Ah, there’s
no way around this. Surfing takes practice, in big
doses. It takes months and years to get good. It
takes weeks to master fundamentals. The ocean is
a weird, sometimes chaotic environment to the newcomer.
You have to learn how waves behave. You have to
learn what your surfboard can do. You have to learn
the skills of catching a wave, standing up, riding
and judging bulging tumbling water. The answer:
No, learning to surf isn’t hard, it’s
fun. It just takes time.
Helpful, But Lame
Advice #1: Watch other surfers who know how to surf,
figure out what they’re doing. Do it yourself.
Helpful, Non-Lame
Advice #1: Taking a couple of lessons with an experienced
surfing instructor can save you a year of pain.
(I didn’t, I know.)
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What Kind
of Surfboard?
A long one. Beginners
need a long board. A longboard is between 8 to 10
feet long. Of course, you’re tempted by those
pointed, streamline arrow-shaped boards that all
the other great surfers are slicing and carving
up the ocean with like men swinging chain saws.
They’re all on 6 to 7 foot, three-finned shortboards,
called thrusters, so why not you? Yeah, why
not you?
Because you’re
a beginner. Those short little boards are shaped
for maneuverability, which fits into the highly
technical nomenclature of being “squirrely.”
That mean’s it’s tippy, turns fast, accelerates,
and requires great skill to control. Does that sound
like your kind of board? (Before you answer that,
remember, you’re a beginner. You’re what
all those champion surfers will be laughing at if
you chose a shortboard.)
A longboard is easy
to paddle, catches waves easier, catches waves earlier
giving you more time to stand up, is a long smooth-riding
wing that gives you a stable platform to stand on,
rides well on small or big waves, turns slow, is
forgiving of a moderate mis-step, and you’ll
be getting up and surfing it within an hour.
With a shortboard,
you’ll be getting up and surfing it within
a year.
Test #1: What kind
of board do you want to learn to surf on?
a) a longboard b)
a longboard c) a longboard
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What’s
the Best I Can Expect?
There is no other
feeling like standing up on a surfboard and guiding
it in a jumping, sliding rush across glassy water:
speed, thrills, and fun. Joy exists. You’ll
know, you’ll feel it. Surfer’s have an
apt term for it: it’s called stoke.
There’ll be
a moment when you get out of your car, see a beautiful
sunlit ocean, easy rolling waves, other surfers,
and your chest will pound with an undeniable urge
to get out there, to surf. Now you’re stoked.
Stoked and ready to burn!
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What’s
the Worst I can Expect?
In the routine events
of a surfer’s life, there are a few unpleasant
things. It’s not sharks, those are rare rare
events. Surfer’s don’t worry about sharks,
anymore than they worry about lightening blasting
their skulls. It happens rarely.
Old Surf Joke #1:
Surf in a crowd of one hundred. You reduce the chances
of the shark biting you to 1 percent. Use your friends
as bait.
Old Surf Joke #2:
Two surfers see a shark and one starts paddling
like crazy toward shore. The other surfer calls,
“Hey, you think you can out paddle a shark?”
Other surfer calls back, “I don’t have
to out paddle a shark, all I have to do is out paddle
you!”
So what is the worst
you can expect. For a beginner, learning to surf
in small waves, you may fall and your surfboard
hit you. Your surfboard is the hardest thing in
the water, and it can hurt. Always fall off your
board, never fall onto it.
War Story 1: I was
surfing a chest high wave, when I messed up the
take off, the board flipped over oddly and came
up like a baseball bat between my legs. This was
a surprise. Let me tell you.
War Story 2: I was
surfing a chest high wave, when I messed up the
take off, on the same board, and it flipped over
and hit my leg with the fin. In surfer parlance,
it “skegged” me. That cost me four stitches.
Yeah, that’s
the worst. Two events like that out of ten years.
But hey, man, you got scars to show for it! He-man
surf scars!
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Safety
Now I scared you,
I’ll talk safety. Know the beach where you
surf, know where the rocks are, if any. Know how
the currents work. Never paddle out farther than
you can swim back in without your board. Never go
out in wave conditions you aren’t prepared
for. Don’t surf alone. Have good equipment,
including a leash that keeps your flotation device
close. Know your limits. Fear means something. If
you’re tired, go in. Don’t turn your back
on the ocean, cause sure enough there’s a great
big wave waiting to sneak up and lion-pounce on
you. Don’t fall off your board and shoot it
at innocent bystanders. Don’t hang around inside
in other surfers’ way so they shoot their boards
at you. Don’t hold your board or let it float
between you and the next oncoming wave—it can
turn into a big bulldozer blade and you’re
the dozee. Oh, there’s just a lot of things,
things that you’ll just never have to worry
about if you stay in your depth and height of wave
(small) to learn the art.
You can probably
break any one to three of the rules above. If you
break four or more, you may pay for it dearly.
Rule #2: Respect
Mother Ocean (Tick her off, she’ll kill you.)
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The Thing
About Waves
A wave is a pulse
of potential energy traveling vast distances across
water. The water doesn’t move, just the energy
through it. It’s created by meteorological
stuff. Stuff like wind and fetch.
You can only catch
a wave as it ends its long journey, coming up on
shore. As the wave hits the sandy bottom, or reef,
whatever’s under the water, it begins to well
up. It’ll begin to get steeper, stand up in
a C, then fall over in a white wash. During the
time it begins to get steeper until the time it
falls over, that potential energy converts to kinetic
energy, and the water actually starts moving. It’s
in that small range of this energy conversion that
surfers catch a bit of force, get up, and surf.
They catch some energy to get started, then they
sled along on it.
That’s the theory.
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What’s
a Rideable Wave?
If a wave is a squashed
A, low like a Chinese hat, it’s uncatchable.
When a wave starts to steepen, inclined like a small
stepladder, then you can catch it. If it’s
a C shape, getting ready to fall over, you can catch
it (although you may not want to, for reasons I’ll
explain later.) After the wave breaks into an on-rush
of white water, you can also catch it. In fact,
as a beginner, you’ll want to start out standing
hip-deep and going chest-down on your board to catch
white water coming in. The broken waves still have
plenty of power and provide a good opportunity for
learning the motion of the board on the wave. As
a wing of white water comes up behind you, belly
onto your board, and just let the board ride in.
Don’t even try to get up. Just learn how your
board sleds.
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Wave
Positioning
Of course, experienced
surfers don’t surf the white water. They paddle
out just beyond where the waves are breaking and
wait. You’ll notice that they all paddle out
to roughly the same spot, longboarders a little
farther out, because the waves tend to break in
the same area. Surfers stay out beyond this area,
then paddle into it when they see a wave they want
to ride. They paddle in so that the wave catches
up with them just at the place where the wave is
getting steeper, rising into a rideable shape. With
experience, you’ll get to recognize the position
where waves form. You’ll see a wave approaching
and get an intuition that it’s big enough to
take you with it. You’ll decide if you want
to go with it, and if you do, you’ll paddle
in just far enough to catch the wave as it builds,
but not so far that it’s already falling over
in a throwing C shape.
Wave Catching Secret
#1: As a beginner, it’s difficult to recognize
the proper wave position. Look at the experienced
surfers, it’s where they are.
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When
Not to Catch a Wave
There is a critical
moment when you should not catch a wave. Generally
this is when a wave has formed into a C and is throwing
water forward at high speed. If you catch the wave
at this point, you’ll be treated to a new experience:
Going Over the Falls.
There are three main
flavors to going over the falls. First, you can
catch a wave too late, just as it is pitching over,
and fall with it into the abyss. Just you and several
hundred tons of water falling in a graceful arch
to the sea bed. It’s a very jarring experience.
Because once you hit, then the whole wave dog-piles
onto you. You’ll likely do a little tumbling
and rolling under the water. Maybe a flip or two.
The second flavor
of going over the falls happens when you fall in
front of an arching wave. You hit the bottom, or
bowl, just as the wave is throwing a lot of water
up. Of course, you take the up elevator too, then
are thrown forward to continue the normal over the
falls crash and bubble experience. The last time
this happened to me, I was literally upside down
in fetal position as the wave spit me out in a cannonball
toward the bottom. You have a lot of time to think
over your mistake.
The last over the
falls flavor happens to “he who hesitates.”
Bigger waves stand up and crash over in roughly
the same spot. Sometimes waves just form a mushy
slush of moving white water, other times they pick
up and drop sledge-hammering tons of water in a
hard curtain drop. X marks the spot. Say hey, do
you want to be on X-marks-the-spot when the curtain
drops?
No you don’t.
This is the voice of experience talking.
Rule #3: When practicing
as a beginner, stay safely inside where the waves
break or paddle all the way out beyond where they
break, don’t dally in between.
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Here
are the Parts of Your Surfboard
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Board
Positioning
When you lie on your
board, you want to be in the center. As you paddle,
the nose should be about an inch or two above the
water surface. Being in the middle of your board
is critical to catching waves. Here’s why.
If you’re too
far back on your board and the tail is sunk in the
water, it’s like putting on the brakes. When
the wave comes up under you, it can’t push
you forward, it just rolls on under you.
You must be in the
middle of your board, so that when a wave comes
up from behind, it’ll threaten to tip the nose
down under the water. (You won’t let it do
that, I’ll tell you how.) But when the wave
tips the tail of the board up, you can use your
board a bit like a sail to catch the passing energy
of the wave. It’s at that point that you paddle
hard, hitting with both arms, to keep the nose out
of the water. If you keep the nose out, the board
will catch the wave energy and slide forward, and
then you’re in for a ride.
You’ll have
to experiment a bit to find the middle of your board.
Note where your chin is when you lay down. If the
nose was too far up when a wave went under you,
move forward a bit. If the nose sank under the water
when you tried to catch the wave, back up a bit,
an inch or two. Find the spot where you’re
in the middle of your board and can control the
tilt when a wave picks you up. You always lie down
in that same spot. Big wave or small.
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Paddling
With Heavy Arms
Your sole means of
locomotion rests in the muscles from your elbows
to your chest. As a beginner, you can expect your
arms to weary quickly. Which is another good reason
for starting out by wading hip to chest deep and
catching white water: You don’t have to paddle.
Your paddling strength will grow with practice.
It just may feel very odd the first time you paddle
a surfboard. After several outings it’ll feel
more normal. Push ups and paddling exercises help.
And yes, experienced surfers will be able to tell
you’re a beginner just by the way you paddle.
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Paddling
to Catch a Wave
Now, when you paddle
to catch a wave, you don’t have to paddle fast.
You’re not trying to get up speed so that you
can match the wave’s velocity. You’re
just getting some momentum going so it doesn’t
take so much energy for the wave to launch you forward.
To catch a wave,
you want to paddle a few strokes hard to get the
board cruising, then take it easy as you look back
at the wave to see what it’s doing behind you.
When the wave picks up the back of your board, threatening
to tip the nose under, then you paddle hard, with
both arms, two or three times, to keep the nose
out. If you feel the nose might still go under,
arch your neck and back to aim the nose up as you
blast with your arms. It’s really a matter
of timing and wave position, not speed or arm strength.
If the nose stays out of the water, and you feel
the board begin to slide on its own, then you’ve
got the wave.
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Getting
Up
To get up, put your
hands on the rails (edges) of the board under your
chest and do a mighty push up. You can cheat and
bend your back and knees. As you do your pushup
swing one leg up under you. Then stand up as quickly
as possible. The sooner you’re up, the sooner
you have control of the board. If you go slow, getting
to one knee, then the other, things may get tippy
and you fall.
Ideally, you get
up quickly at the top of a wave, as you and the
board drop down the face, when the semi-weightlessness
makes it easy to flip up and draw your feet under
you. Experienced surfers get up to their feet in
one quick snap. It comes with practice. The first
time you’re on the beach, you may want to practice
pushing up and jumping to your feet while still
on the sand. It’s easier practicing on sand
than on a tippy surfboard in water.
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Standing
Let’s say you
made it up on both feet. You ride a board facing
sideways, not facing the nose of your board. One
hip should be toward the nose, the other toward
the tail. Your feet should be apart centered in
the board. You’re in a slight crouch for balance.
Down the center of your board is usually a thin
piece of wood, called a stringer, built in
to strengthen the board. Your feet should be on
the stringer. Knees slightly bent. Arms out for
balance. Grinning with joy or fear, your choice.
Now, your job as
rider is to lean forward or backward, even stepping
forward or backward, to make the board plane evenly
along the water. If you lean just a little bit to
the side of the board, the board turns. Because
you’re facing sideways, you can control the
turning of the board with your ankles and by leaning.
Your job now is to lean and move on the board to
aim it along the wave.
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Ten Steps
to Surfing A Wave
So now, let’s
put this all together into the drill you perform
each time you catch a wave:
1) You are waiting
outside, slightly beyond where the waves break.
2) You see a wave
you want to ride.
3) You turn the board
calmly toward shore and lie down in the middle of
the board, putting your chin on the mark that tells
you you’re in the middle.
4) Stroke hard four
or five times to get the board moving.
5) Relax, paddle
easy, and look back over your shoulder to see the
wave.
Is it too small,
is it getting too big, is it just right? If it’s
too small, you may need to paddle a little harder
to get in farther to catch it, or wait for another
wave. If it’s too big, getting too steep too
fast, stop. Sit up. The wave may just move under
you. If you’re too far in and the wave is going
to dump on you, get off your board and dive. If
it looks just right, continue paddling easy until
the wave reaches you and picks up the tail.
6) Stroke hard two
or three times to keep the nose out and get on the
wave. Arch your neck and back to aim the nose if
need be.
7) If you feel the
board start to move on its own power, wait a second
or stroke once more before you get up. Beginners,
because they’re uneasy, often get up too early,
before they’ve caught the wave, and thus miss
it.
8) If you’re
sure you caught the wave, push up and stand in your
infamous surfer sideways crouch.
9) Ride the wave
in joy.
(Step 10 has to do
with death and taxes.)
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Practice
Practice, practice,
practice.
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Three
Things You Don’t Know
As you gain experience,
you’re going to learn some phenomenal things
about how your surfboard performs. Things you can’t
know yet.
One is that your
surfboard is faster than the wave. Most times you
can get up, slide to the bottom, and surf away before
the wave has time to break. (And sometimes not.)
Your board also has
a tail that you don’t know about. As a wave
gets very steep, and it looks like you’re going
to just fall down the face, you can lean back on
that tail and it will gouge down the wave face,
gently landing you and shooting your forward with
great velocity. You have a tail you can swing from,
Surf Monkey.
Also, as you’re
riding along a wave face, and it walls up (steepens
toward vertical), your surfboard will keep planing
along just fine, even though you seem to be standing
on a speeding bookshelf. Surfboards are made for
near vertical water. Discoveries like these make
for enlightenment on your way to surfing Nirvana.
Hari Hari.
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How You
Treat Your Fellow Surfers
Share the stoke,
dude.
Bill Morris--is the
author of Stoked!,
a surfing novel published by New Sun Publications,
available from WaterTrader. Morris is a resident
of Half Moon Bay, California, ardent surfer and
mentor to WaterTrader.
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