Sunday, February 13, 2005

Session 5031: Precision and Power Take Off Practice

This morning when I arrived, the tide was kind of low, and the sets were basically all closed out this morning across the board, but there was a little patch of surfable stuff on the "South End" of the beach, so I decided to head out there. There were some sets that broke bigger, but in between sets, there were some smaller sets that broke much further inside. I took my 7'0 out and stayed in this inside section most of the time and just caught one break after another.

What's significant about this morning's session is that it turned out to be a good rapid take-off practice, and rapid-angled-take-off practice. Unlike the usual inside reforms they were all first breaks with well shaped lips and shoulders but only about chest high max. This is when short boarding becomes really fun, because even in these small waves, there is just a lot of wall for the size of the board, so if I'd manage to take off into those, I still have quite a bit of ride on them. Plus once I am up on a board, it demands a very careful execution of turns, as if you over power them initially you'd stall, but still need to make relatively fast and tight turns to stay on the face. So, all in all, it was really great take off and precision turning practice. Plus it was a good way to practice hard paddled take-offs. In some ways, it is more tiring in these kind of smaller waves than some powerful waves that pushes you to take off!


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