Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Session 5079: Local. High Stoke!

Oh, man, oh man! This was absolutely one of the most awesome surfing mornings today. The surface of the ocean was just clear flat glass like and then the swells come in starting to build up and then create some nice ridable faces, just fast enough to scare me a bit. But if I make it there was a reward of nice "touch the wall" type ride. Also it was not sizing up too much, and at max it was overhead, so the situation was totally within the category of "I can control it." Plus sometimes it was throwing tubelettes.

No wind plus totally bright sunny out. It is the equivalent of the spring skiing at Breckenridge.

I am continuing to make a little by little progress on better take off on thicker situations and today was a good day because there were choices of thick and thin sections to try.

As a wave starts to build up far out, a moment of anticipation whether it is going to be big, and whether I ought to paddle outside or sit and wait. When a shoulder starts to form right in my area, I am in a real luck. I start to paddle in already starting to set up for the direction of the break.

While I paddle, I look back left and right many times to make sure that the waves are still going to happen in the way I want. This is the time when some amount of fear would build up, as I anticipate the outcome. It can jack up too fast and then I need to safely abort the take off, or I could already be too far into it that I might be thrown forward, but I try to put that though on a hold, look forward in the direction where I want to go, while I try to feel out how the back of the board is doing.

As the tail starts to jack up, if I see the nice view of the slope opening up in front of me, I get extremely happy and give a few more strokes, and then as I quickly get up, I get an extra kick from the wave to let me go up even easier. It is really nice when that works out, because if I got an assisted launch like that even if the wave steeps up at that point, I know I am up on the board and I can actually control it. If it is still jacking up fast, or if I am going to fall down straight, if I am up on the board, I have much easier time shifting the weight further back. Opposite of this is that I don't get up on the board, and the same pulse would just throw me forward and that's basically the end. If I am not lucky then I will get a mini hold down.

But if I got going, the amount of the power I get is so much more that I can hold longer rides as more options will open up as to which way I can go to without stalling the ride in the middle.

So, I am feeling now that getting up fast and hence getting the control of the board sooner is one of the keys in catching faster breaks, and that's how I am going to modify my surfing style.

Still, there is a whole lot more to go compared to what my local expert buddies do? but at least some more progress made, and I am so happy about it.

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