Session 5203

Session 5203

It is always nice to get a call at 6:30 in the morning from someone near by to go out catch some morning sun and the waves. Quite often, things do not work out with buddies then I am all alone out in the ocean.

This morning was unexpectedly fun! It was fun because we were the only two surfers out there within our vantage point and we caught tons of good mellow waves that I tend to prefer, perhaps up to shoulder level, but still there was enough power in them to mess me up good if I screw up. That's fairly typical of the beach breaks we got around here.

It was a real blast and fun and I felt that I have started to make some progress again and my buddy commented about people having different surfing style and there are some of our friends surf in more bold powerful style, but mine, he said, looked very graceful. What a complement, I really like that.

The reason I thought I caught more waves is because I am not consciously paddling harder and not giving up paddling until I know for sure I did not catch the wave. The video my wife took this weekend was very educational, so I am about to show you what I am talking about. This is the part of the video that I did not show you last time because I was a bit embarrassed about it.

http://www.culturewave.net/Surfing/mov/NotPaddlingHard.wmv

You can see that I am really late in committing to take off and then once the wave comes I am totally missing it by not paddling in hard enough and fast enough. If I saw another surfer doing the same from the shore, I would have advised the surfer to paddle earlier, faster and harder. That's exactly not what I was doing. So now I know. I am going to work on it more in upcoming sessions!