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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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