Back in California! I worked a bit in the morning and then decided to hit the water again. I was going to hit the Jetty. While it was sunny out and there were a lot of cars parked on the highway, there was no wave that I would catch. Then when I saw Montara, it was a bit disorganized. At this point of time I was running out of time, but I did one last check at Linda Mar and the waves were good for my preference, the kind not too tall and not too fast. Only one hour left before the 3 PM conference call, I promised to attend. So I had about 1 hour to surf and a bit of time to get changed in and out of the Excel suit.
Well, I was really glad I went because the wind was not too bad (while Montara was already blowing) and I caught several nice lefts that are my favorites. And the breaks were just all spread out all across the beach so picking my own break was not a problem.
If you have been following my logs, you know that earlier on this season I was working hard on the tail weighting during the take off. That's now somewhat under my belt and I think I am the stage that I can start to polish that. Then you've seen the video how timid I was in paddling in to the wave. In fact there was a guy next to me in the lineup, he had a lot of problem catching waves, and he was exactly lacking what I saw in my video. He was paddling so slow and not hard.
So I was actually working on that stuff, and basically I have decided that no matter how big the wave is going to get, I will give my best shot at padding into the wave and I will continue to do so until the wave gets flat and I know for sure that I cannot catch the wave. I will even kick my legs to help (I really don't think that will help, but mentally by doing so I think I can feel that I am giving the full effort.)
I caught several nice lefts, most were short rides but there were a couple that I would say is satisfactory as I did inject myself into a nice trim and kept going for a longer ride. No matter how the waves are, it is always very satisfying when I can successfully negotiate the turn #1 and get right into the correct direction to keep the ride. Once I get that going, I can usually gain enough speed and power that opens up a bit more options. On the other hands, if I go straight then I do ride but it is short and fizzle out quickly.
Well, that's about all for today. It was really nice to get back in the water?. For sure.
2 comments:
Hey,
The kicking doesn't help propel you, that's right. But what it does is, if you're on a short enough board that your feet and lower legs (and of course the tail of the board) are submerged when you lie on the board, it gets your whole body out of the water. Don't think of a swimmer kicking underwater for speed, but a fish flopping on the surface to avoid a bigger fish under water. You can slide down the wave much more easily if you are not dragging your feet through the water.
Body surfing is a great way to learn this, as it's the most dramatic case --SO much easier to catch waves bodysurfing when you kick to get your lower body up to the surface.
Thank you for the help. I do understand the purpose of the kicking. Admittedly, and to me when I first saw some short boarders doing this, it did look "stupid." But then I thought originally surfing was "stupid" sport. The whole thing came 180 degrees around. There always are reasons for everything. This has been one of the key revelations this year. So thank you and thank you for looking our for me!
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