Measure Twice, Cut Once

For better or worse, we humans adapt to the equipment we use. In Stand Up Paddle Surfing and Racing, our stroke adapts to the paddle we have. If your paddle shaft is too short your blade will be hitting the board when you pull on it during the catch (the first part of the stroke, when the paddle blade is first stabbed into the water and you start to pull). If you do a full reach the blade will have to be off to the side to keep from scraping along the rail, and the board will turn away from the stroke. To compensate you might so something like a draw stroke–which weakens your stroke. Or you might lean way over and shorten up the reach to get the blade under the board–which weakens your stroke and makes it inefficient.

Whatever you do, your body and mind will optimize and tune that compensation until it’s pretty good, which translates into a bad habit that’s hard to fix. I’ve seen that firsthand in learning the Tahitian stroke. All those years of paddling with whatever stroke came to mind have deeply rooted a host of bad habits.

The bottom line of all of this is that the wrong length paddle can fill your paddling repertoire with bad habits that are tough to correct. Getting a paddle that is the right length for your stroke, board, and experience can be very uncomfortable for awhile. This article is about getting the paddle length right.

Carles Carrera recently published an excellent article in his blog about measuring the paddle length that best suits you: http://www.carlescarrera.com/2010/04/definitive-guide-for-choosing-your-sup.html. Carles is a guy after my own heart, Stand Up Paddle Surfing fanatic and a motorcycle nut, with an engineering bent. He went about his analysis in a time honored fashion–he built a table of all the recommended methods of determining paddle length using his height as the standard.

I’m going to add some new information to the methods used to determine paddle length at the end of this article, as well as some tips on what to do when you cut your paddle too short, as many so people do.

Here’s a synopsis of the methods that yield the table:
Starboard: flip the paddle upside down, rest the handle on the ground, and where the paddle blade starts to spread from the paddle shaft it should be about eye level.

With the Starboard method this paddle shaft is already two inches too long. Surf Hull SUP Division T shirt courtesy of Dino Funari–Thanks Dino

Quickblade: add 8 inches to your overall height for surfing, and 9 inches more for racing/paddling.

Kialoa: add 6-8” for surfing and 10-12” for racing.

The blade of the Quickblade Elite pictured above is 16.5 inches long–so this paddle is about 16″ above my head. Much to long by either Kialoa or Quickblade recommendations.

Laird Hamilton: “Your paddle should be as tall as the reach above your head. If it’s too short you will be reaching forward – if it’s too big you will be reaching too far back. Tip: Raise your arms up as if you were doing a pull up and that should be the height of your paddle.”
David Kalama: recommends the same method as Laird Hamilton.

This paddle is exactly the right length according to the Laird Hamilton/Dave Kalama method

Patrice Guenole, of GongSUP: Provides a chart combining board size and SUPer height.
Ke Nalu: Measure the paddle based on having your fist at the same level as your shoulder with the blade under the board and the paddle shaft straight down from your extended arms. You can even go a little shorter than that, with your hand down an inch or so below the level of your shoulder. Have your helper measure the distance from your hand to the bottom of the rail of your board. You want the beginning of the upper curve of the paddle to be right at the rail. Mark the point on the shaft to be cut by measuring the distance your helper got (from the bottom of the rail to your fist) from the upper curve of the paddle blade” … For racing: “…generally add 6 to 10 inches to the length of the paddle over a similar surfing paddle.” Following this method I arrived at a paddle length of 78 inches or 198cm for Surfing and 84-88 inches or 213-224 cm for Racing.

For surfing, with a shoulder-height upper arm, this paddle length is about perfect. The blade is under the board with a comfortable reach. But this board is a Foote Maliko 14 distance board which positions me nearly two inches higher than on my Foote surfboard. With my surfboard the paddle would be too long

Marco, from Standupaddling: Add 5,9 inches or 15 cm for Surfing and 8,3 inches or 21 cm for Cruising.
Eric, from SUP France: Add 7,9 inches or 20cm for Surfing and 11,8 inches or 30 cm for Racing.

For the table calculations Carles used his height: 176cm=69.3”

Here’s a shortened version of Carles analysis:

All the methods that do not take into account the paddle blade length (Quickblade, Kialoa, Laid Hamilton, David Kalama, Patrice Guenole, Marco and Eric) are not precise enough, because the overall paddle length is greatly influenced by blade length which varies from 16” to 20”. Laird Hamilton and David Kalama are wrong? Yes I think so as well. I’m sure their method works well for them, because both Laird and David are very powerful paddlers and use big and long blades, but if you use a normal or short blade (16-17 inches), you’ll end up with a paddle mast 3-4 inches too long. Patrice Guenole method gives me also too short paddle lengths.

So only Starboard’s method and Bill Babcock’s remain on the list.

The Starboard’s method takes into account the blade length, or best said gets the blade out of the equation, but I used it and feel my 81,7 inches, 207 cm paddle too long.

Bill’s method sounds a common sense one, and the measures for Surfing, 78” or 198cm is what I feel should be my next paddle length. And if you consider my blade length is quite long, is aligned with Quickblade, Kialoa and Eric’s method. On the other hand, the 84-88 inches or 213-224 cm length dimensions for Racing, are huuuuge, and doesn’t work for me, specially when trying to apply the Tahitian stroke.

Carles Conclusion:
My method will be Bill’s one for Surfing: “… measure the paddle based on having your fist at the same level as your shoulder with the blade under the board and the paddle shaft straight down from your extended arms. You can even go a little shorter than that, with your hand down an inch or so below the level of your shoulder. Have your helper measure the distance from your hand to the bottom of the rail of your board. You want the beginning of the upper curve of the paddle to be right at the rail. Mark the point on the shaft to be cut by measuring the distance your helper got (from the bottom of the rail to your fist) from the upper curve of the paddle blade.”

For Racing, my method will be … the same. I’m sorry paddle manufacturers, but unless it proves I’m really wrong in the following months, I’ll use the same paddle for Surfing than for Racing.
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Surfing vs. Racing
So while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I don’t support Carles conclusion. The surfing vs Racing/downwinding issue comes down how thick your downwind board is vs. your surf boards, the kind of stroke you do, and how disciplined you are at doing the stroke correctly and reaching for your paddle grab. What you are likely to find is that as your racing stroke improves, you will need a longer paddle. It’s not true in every case, but it’s common. Here’s why.

As your stroke improves you start reaching further forward on the catch. You do so with a variety of techniques–lower arm extension, shoulder rotation, torso rotation, and shoulder stacking. Of these four techniques two of them–shoulder rotation and shoulder stacking–require a longer paddle to accommodate the improvements in the stroke and still get the blade fully inserted at the catch.

The solution is to measure your paddle on your board, stretching for your target reach in as good a form as you can manage. If you haven’t already marked your race/distance board to give you a reach target, you should start with that. You can do all this in the water, but I’ve found it infinitely easier to get my helper (Diane) to cooperate on dry land with my board propped on a cooler (under my feet) and a bucket at the nose. This gives me plenty of room to get the paddle in the proper position.

Reach target. Not very visible in this photo, but the black mark on the board bottom is slightly forward of it and give a good reference.

Stand at your usual balance point on the board. Give as long a reach as you can manage comfortably. Mark that and transfer the mark to the other side with a straightedge. Now mark three and six inches further. The six inch mark is your target. See Dave Kalama’s article on Catch for more information about getting a proper reach.

Moderate shoulder stack, paddle well vertical, good reach. The paddle shaft is six inches too short to get the blade under the board at the catch

Now stand in your paddling position and do the best reach you can manage in the best position for your chosen stroke. If you’re working on a Tahitian stroke that means lower arm fully extended, torso and shoulder rotated, shoulders stacked as much as possible to get the paddle vertical. Have your helper mark where the paddle intersects the edge of the board. It will probably be somewhere on the blade, unfortunately. The distance between the tape mark and the neck of the blade is how much more shaft length you need. It will seem like a ridiculous length.

Stacked shoulders and vertical paddle reaching to the point the paddle blade is under the board–well short of a good reach. Note how cramped up the position is. It’s hard to get power into the catch without doing a full torso and shoulder rotation. It’s not just that the big muscles aren’t engaged, even the arm and shoulder muscles aren’t at their best position.

Serious reach–shoulder and torso rotation, bending at the hips, snapping the paddle forward, stacked shoulders. paddle vertical–the paddle is six inches too short. You can see the difference in power available in this position. There’s added leverage for every muscle involved. Dave Kalama calls this an “opened” position as in “Open your shoulders, open your torso!! Reach!” I never understood why until I saw this picture.

You will probably have to reach a compromise on paddle length. If you are learning a Tahitian stroke, an important element is lifting the paddle out of the water like drawing a sword from a scabbard, without winging the upper hand downwards. If your paddle is too long you may have a problem clearing the blade. The best approach is to cut the paddle the full length you expect to need, and then see how it affects your stroke recovery. If it pushes your upper arm too high, then you may have to shorten the shaft some. Don’t immediately take action though, live with the too-long paddle for a couple of runs to see if you can adapt to it. You may find that relaxing your upper arm more and pushing up with the lower arm can give you the clearance you need.

While you are at it, put your surfboard on the cooler and measure your paddle for it. For surfing you want a comfortable reach with your upper arm straight out–parallel to the board. Again have your helper mark where the paddle intersects the edge of the board. Surfboards are generally an inch or two thinner than racing boards. That, combined with a more relaxed reach usually yields a shorter paddle.

One other reason for a separate surf and race paddle is the construction of the paddle. Your surf paddle has to withstand abuse. The first time you stretch your paddle behind you, lean hard on the shaft, swing your feet in a hard top turn or cutback and then fall on the shaft it better be stout or it will be a two piece. I’ve sat on my paddle in this situation more than once, and I have the broken bits to prove it. If it were a super light prepreg $400 racing paddle it wouldn’t survive the first attempt. I’ve watched Chris Padillo and Junya McGurn turn stout paddles into a two piece just going hard for a wave. Too much motor. Not a problem I have to worry about. But the point remains, your surf paddle needs to be a lot stronger and therefore likely heavier than your race paddle.

Stretching Your Paddle
So you already cut your fine racing tool a bit too short. No worries. Fortunately the top of the paddle shaft is lightly loaded and the weight isn’t as important as the blade end. You can stretch the paddle with either a handle that has an extended shaft or a ferrule. Hopefully you saved the bits you cut off–who throws pieces of carbon fiber tubing away? But if you didn’t the store you bought it from probably had a box of bits behind the counter. Maybe they even have a ferrule or two kicking around.

A ferrule is just a piece of thick wall fiberglass (or rarely, carbon fiber) shaft that has been machined to fit inside your paddle shaft.

First, get your handle off. A heat gun should do this easily, even if you used epoxy. The melting point for epoxy is usually lower than your handle unless your handle is ABS. A hairdryer will work as a heat gun, especially if you block off part of the air inlet. Play the heat onto the shaft, not the handle, get it warm and try pulling off the handle. Keep heating until you can feel movement, then twist and pull and off it comes. Let everything cool down, dress the handle with a bit of fine sandpaper to get off any epoxy ridges, and test pushing it into the scrap of shaft material. Test fit your ferrule into the shaft, then slide the shaft material onto the other end of the ferrule. Sand anything that hangs up and get it all fitting nicely. Once you have everything pre-fit, glue the ferrule into the shaft and the handle scrap onto the ferrule. Let everything set up. Now measure the length you want to add, and wrap a couple of turns of masking tape right at the line. This will give you a very straight and concentric line to cut on. Use a fine tooth hacksaw to cut the shaft, watching both sides of the blade to ensure the cut is square. Dress up the cut and remve sharp edges with a bit of sandpaper. Test fit your handle, mark a line to show you when the handle is straight and glue it on. Get everything aligned and give it a wrap of tape to hold everything still while it sets up. Done.

Downwinding: Catch That Swell

The little swells you’ve been catching effortlessly in the strong wind have now grown to good size as the run progressed and the fetch increased. Now the fun begins. You feel the tail of your board rise and you stroke hard for the catch, the swell passes under you and you stall on the back side, losing speed and momentum. Ok, you’ll get the next one. This time you start paddling earlier, and you really push hard. You almost catch the swell, but your board hangs on the lip and won’t drop. Arrghh, frustrating. What’s wrong? This time you paddle frantically from the start, pull hard and long as the tail lifts, lean forward and the nose drops in, skewing sharply to the side and digging the rail. Your board spins out of the swell and you fall to the inside.

What on earth is going wrong!

As fun as downwinders are, they can sometimes be maddening. A tiny shift of the wind, a little change of swell angle, a bigger face, and suddenly you’re struggling. This article covers how to get into swells, how to manage momentum, and how to get your mojo back when the conditions have you foxed.

As always this article is a composite of swell-catching advice from numerous people, including Jeremey Riggs, Randy Strome, Chantelle Strome, Dave Kalama, Larry Risely, Jack Dyson, and other Maui downwind addicts. Of course none of them knew they were providing advice for publication, it’s just talk from countless post-run bull sessions, shuttle rides, and other informal occasions where I try to soak up all I can from these far more experienced swellriders.

First of all, understand that the best way to paddle for a swell never really changes. Other than balance checks to keep from falling, the best stroke is pretty much the same. The swell catching stroke happens way up at the nose of your board, as far as you and your paddling technique permit you to reach. You plant your paddle, pull hard with your shoulders and torso, and get the blade back out to the nose as quickly as you can. Fast, sharp strokes that never reach your feet. Doesn’t matter whether you do a Tahitian stroke, a Hawaiian, or your own private brand, the important part is to reach out and paddle short.

There are two simple reasons for that:

• First and foremost, one long stroke takes as long to make as two short ones. Catching a swell is ALL about getting power to accelerate in a very short and critical period of time. If the power comes a half second too late, it’s worthless. Seventy percent of the power in a stroke happens in the first foot of paddle travel. So two short strokes delivers 140% of the power in a long one. If you get three strokes in it’s 210%. It may feel like you’re just dabbing the water, but suddenly you’ll be catching swells you were missing.
• Second, long strokes upset your board. They pull down on the rail you are stroking along, and they also shift your weight backwards as you pull the paddle out of the water. That means the tail is being pushed down at the VERY moment you want it to lift. In the event that you do catch a swell with a long stroke, the board will begin it’s drop with a rail dug in that you weren’t really trying to sink. The board is going to take off in whatever direction that sunk rail dictates.

When you’re first starting downwinding your board seems like the nose is wobbling all over the place no matter what you do. All those currents, swells, chop and wind are just shoving the thing all over the place. But as you get your stroke under control you start seeing that most of that movement was you.

Catching the swell is a matter of feel, wave reading, and timing. Larger swells require higher speed to catch–that’s because they are moving faster. The speed of a wave in open water is directly proportional to it’s wavelength. In open water larger swells have longer wavelengths, so they are traveling faster. When you look at the confused mess in front of you it might seem that all the waves have the same wavelength, and it’s very short. But wind swells are a mix of many wavelengths, and that’s what you’re seeing. If you spend some time looking at big wind swells from a distance you’ll see the larger swells overtake the smaller ones. . You have to have everything working in your favor to get into them.

This video from the backyard at Ponohouse shows North Shore Maui windswell about four miles before Maliko gultch. I should have just held the camera still, but you can see the big swells catching and overtaking the small ones, which was my intention. These wind swells are 15 to 20 feet at maximum–the rocks on the island you see being swamped in the left side are about 30 feet above sea level. I know it looks pretty close to the water but it’s really over a mile. Those are big guys. You can also get a pretty good idea why we have so much fun on Maliko runs–and why it’s not for the faint hearted.

Beginners often try to look behind to see when to paddle. That’s just too clumsy. You need to develop a feel for when to paddle in each kind of wave. What you see in front of you is a good indication of what’s behind you. The general swell catching sequence is something like this:

• A swell slides under your board and lifts the nose. As the nose begins to settle reach far out and take a short, medium force stroke to get a little forward movement and overcome the stall of having the nose lifted.
• As soon as your short pull is over get the paddle well forward again and give another quick, sharp, medium power stroke to gain some speed.
• Get the paddle back to the nose of the board as fast as you can and reach as far as possible with a full trunk and shoulder pivot as well as a very straight lower arm. When you feel the tail start to lift give a full force sharp paddle stroke, as much pull as you can pack into a short pull. The board will start to gain power from the wave.
• Get the paddle back in front to give one more stroke whether you need it or not. Lots of waves are lost after they feel like you are in them because you had a tiny bit too little speed.

Where you are on the board has a lot to do with the wave you are trying to catch. Most times you’ll be forward of center at first, so you can get the power well out to the nose, and use your weight to trim the board down. In higher winds you will probably be a bit back of center, perhaps in a surf stance, because you’ll be into the waves easily anyway, and the surf stance will give you more stability when your speed increases. It will also help keep the nose up out of the bumps.

In either case, as you start sliding down the wave you need to turn some to stay in the power zone of the wave and to find a way over the wave ahead. You also might need to move back and get the nose up so you don’t spear into the wave in front of you. If you’re moving back you should give a hard stroke as you do, because you can easily lose some speed from either upsetting the board as you move or from the trim change.

The Little Leads to the Big
If you are in big swells you generally need to gain a lot more boardspeed to catch them. There are such things as tall swells that are moving slowly. In shallow water the friction with the bottom slows the leading edge of the wave and the water piles up. That’s why you’ll sometimes have an easier time catching swells on the inside even though the windline is stronger outside. You’ll often see some very experienced OC-1 and surfski guys playing chicken with the shorebreak in a race. They’re catching slowed swells.

Where you can’t do this, the key to boardspeed is the little guys mixed in with the big guys. Catching a short ride from a little bump will let you build speed to get into the bigger swells. The trick is to find the right ones. It takes practice, but you’ll see little ridges and low spots close to a swell you want to catch. Get the nose into the low spot, give a couple of long-reach, short, hard pulls to get into the little swell, then maintain your momentum both by steering across the small swell and stroking hard for the big guy.

The most common failure to catch a big swell is one too few strokes, delivered a little too slowly. It’s very easy to shorten up your reach as you press to get into the swell, but it almost guarantees you’ll miss your taxi. Keep the paddle way out there, stroke short and hard, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get into the swell.

Slow Down, Buckwheat
As Dave Kalama said in his recent blog article, Slow Down to Speed Up if you find yourself missing bumps and paddling at the wrong time, the best way to get back into the rhythm is to back off, calm down, get your stroke back into disciplined shape, make yourself reach, get your timing mojo under control, and start going again. When we get frantic all the subtle stuff gets lost and we go into reaction mode. You simply can’t get your rhythm back if you’re flailing.

Most of all, have fun. Riding swells is such a fantastic feeling it’s tough to describe it to people. The closest anyone comes is by drawing parallels to surfing, but it’s really not like that.

Kalama Kamp: Stand Up Paddle Surf Training

Dave Kalama is taking his Kalama Kamp watersports teaching and training concept to Florida for a special 4-day, 3-night waterman immersion experience. I hope he does one on Maui soon. I’ve talked with him about doing one here, but I can see it’s tough for him to organize something like this with his wave-driven life. Still, having had paddle coaching from Dave I have seen what a fine teacher he is. I’d love to get his perspective on training, on surfing, toss in a little canoe paddling–it all sounds good. And I’d much rather do that as part of a group than just one-on-one. I think I’d learn more and it’s simply more fun with other like-minded folks. Especially if I’m not the only struggling geezer.

Dave obviously knows how to combine Stand Up Paddle Surfing, fitness training, and fun

Here’s what Dave said about it in his blog:

A few years ago I had the notion of doing Kalama Kamps. I believed that a lot of the things I was doing would be great fun for any active person to learn about, and that I had learned enough about how to keep myself fit for the many watersports I love that I could help people find a path to better performance. I worked at it some, and we had successful kamps, but it’s hard to schedule a life that’s at least partly driven by when and where the big waves decide to show up.

I liked doing the teaching and fitness training. I felt the curriculum could use improvement, so I’ve been paying more attention to what people need to learn in order to make progress. I’ve trained with some of the best coaches and fitness experts in the world, including Carmichael Training Group. The same people that coach Lance Armstrong. Naturally I’ve incorporated their experience and wisdom into my own regimens and teaching approach. This website is part of that effort. Recently my friend Brody Welte approached me about doing a Kalama Kamp in Florida. I loved the idea and it fit right in with the training I’ve been doing with individuals.

The Kamp is not just for elite athletes, though I think they’ll come away with plenty of good information and better techniques. I tell people “I have just enough discipline to do what I need to do”. I’ve been able to show people who are just a little past the beginner stage how to dramatically improve their performance. I really hate hanging out in gyms, so I concentrate on beach workouts and getting appropriate exercise by doing things that are fun. Stand up paddling is the core of that.

So we’re doing it. The first mainland “Adventure Camp” for Stand Up Paddlers! Kalama Kamp Florida will be held May 17-20 along the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area beaches. Hope to see you there, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Here’s Brody’s press release:

Dave Kalama, a Hawaiian “big wave” surfer and celebrity waterman, is credited as one of the primary forces in reintroducing the ancient Hawaiian activity known today as Stand Up Paddling. The concept for the waterman adventure camp started in 2005 with Kalama and fellow celebrity waterman Laird Hamilton.

“I’m really looking forward to this event,” said Kalama. “Florida has such an incredible diversity of waterways and conditions that this camp will certainly be full of new experiences for me as well.”

The 4-day, 3-night camp will feature full immersion in Kalama’s waterman training regimen and lifestyle. From morning beach workouts to afternoon paddles, Kalama will share his perspective on health, exercise and balanced living. Activities include: paddling outrigger canoes, stand up paddle boarding, fitness classes and spa treatments.

“Stand Up Paddling has just exploded in the Tampa Bay Area,” said Brody Welte, proprietor of Stand Up Fitness. “We’re thrilled to have someone of Dave’s stature recognize that and help bring an incredible event like this to our area – I worked the original camp with Dave and Laird, and can tell you that you wouldn’t normally see anything like this outside of Hawaii.”

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the water next to one of the greatest waterman of all time includes all local transportation, meals prepared by a private chef, equipment and accommodations during the camp. The exclusive Kalama Kamp Florida is limited to 15 spots.

For information or reservations contact Brody Welte, at 727-902-4294 or via e-mail at brody@standupfitnessinc.com .

Doing Downwinders, Part 2

In the last installment of Doing Downwinders on a Stand Up Paddle Board we covered selecting a place, some of the safety aspects and what to look for in swells and wind. In this installment we’ll cover catching and riding swells.

Many downwinders start with small swells, then progress to larger ones that are easy to catch, then move to even larger swells that are surprisingly difficult to catch, and finally to large swells that are easy and fun. You’ve got to wonder why this is? The answer is mostly about fetch and about how humans adapt their athletic skills to suit conditions.

A lot of downwinders start at the beginning of the fetch for a given run–a beach or point where the wind starts blowing along the shore or across a bay to the opposite shore, one side of a lake, a bend in the river. This naturally is the beginning of the fetch, and even if the wind is ripping, the swells are small–basically ripples, spaced closely together. They need time and distance to grow.

As the wind blows across the water some ripples are randomly a little taller. These get a little more push from the wind, like a taller sail would, and so they pick up a little more energy and get taller and wider. The energy is really a wave pulse in the water, and that’s what travels–the water really moves mostly up and down. This taller wave shadows the waves in front of it, and blocks them from gathering as much energy, but it also overwhelms and adsorbs the small ripples close to it, because the base of the wave extends as the wave grows taller. If you looked at a picture of the waves in cross-section they would look like a child’s drawing. The waves are hooked to a small degree in the direction of travel. The wind side the wave is more ramp-like, the face away from the wind is pushed into a more vertical face.

You may wonder what all this theory has to do with riding a swell. All will be revealed. For now understand that the swells you are trying to catch have small faces and the side you are riding over is ramped–they won’t stop your board like bigger swells do. You can get a free ride by getting the board moving fast enough to skim over the ramps while getting a little boost from the steeper downwind faces. All you need is speed, trim, and the right angle.

To catch these you trim your board very flat, which usually means you move forward so the nose of your board is brushing the back of the micro-swells. Reach far forward with your paddle and take very short strokes–virtually just dabs. Long strokes will pull down the tail of the board and make it stall. Use a rapid cadence, and stop stroking when you first catch the swell so you can feel the balance. You may need strokes to stay in the wave but do these well up front, short dabs. Long strokes will just pull you out of your ride. With these little swells you don’t need to worry about hitting the swells in front of you, you just run right over them. Wahoo.

As the fetch length increases, the swells get bigger and further apart. The bigger swells have sucked up most of the little ones and consolidated. They also naturally have a wider base and they start to increase in period. The hook and ramp character is a lot less pronounced, but they still tend to have steeper faces than backs. The bigger size makes them easier to catch, but they are still close to the swell in front, so you may have problems with the nose of your board spearing into the swell in front. You may be able to catch the swell with the board trimmed slightly nose up. If you have a hard time moving around your board, or you like to stay glued to your rudder, then this is a decent compromise in this size swell. You can shift a fair amount of weight just my leaning forward or back. Your head is a big weight.

If you are comfortable moving around, trim to fit conditions–forward to catch the swell, rearward a bit to pop the nose up. Turn in the swell to fit the board. You need a pretty hefty swell to run more than 30 or so degrees to the direction of travel, but anything is possible when you’re good enough. Dave Kalama and Jeremy Riggs look like ballet dancers on their board, hardly paddling.

Moving along, now we get to where the swells are even bigger, but the steep faces are gone, replaced with rolling mounds. The swells can be quite large and yet you’ll find yourself stalling to a dead stop on the backside of a swell, and struggling to overcome momentum and catch the one behind it. When this happens you may find yourself taking long, deep hard strokes. Hard to believe that isn’t the answer, but sinking the tail when the nose is pointed uphill is never a great idea. It’s even MORE important to reach out, get a good catch, pull hard with your shoulders and torso, and get the blade out of the water. Momentum is the key, and a lot of short, quick strokes will give it to you. Long pulls just torque the board.

Once you catch a wave in these conditions you’ll often find yourself right at the balance point with the nose hanging out over the abyss but not quite dropping in. The reason is that the swell has round shoulders so the board won’t immediately drop. Shift forward a little bit and give a couple of hard, sharp, short strokes and most times you drop right in. Don’t freeze like a statue when you do, because the nose will punch into the swell in front of you. Look at the swell, try to find a low point, shift your weight back and aim for the lowest spot. Sometimes you can find a little bump in front of the next swell to guide your nose upwards.

If your board does punch into the next swell don’t panic, shift your weight back, or even step back, bend your knees, stay stable and wait. Most times the nose will pop back up, even if it has dug really deep. The push of the swell isn’t like a breaking wave jamming a pearled surfboard–it won’t necessarily just keep going down until it flips. Most times it will recover if you just keep your cool.

The easiest way to keep from lawn-darting into the swell in front of you is to turn on the swell. Look ahead for downhill spots and turn towards them. The board will accelerate and you’ll have time to figure out where to go. Look for low spots in the wave in front of you and steer through those. Reversing direction as you come over the top of the swell in front of you tends to speed up the ride at the same time that it extends the distance and gives you time to think. Most of the time I fall it’s because I’ve rammed over three or four swells in a row, my board is a little out of control and my lizard brain is screaming “you’re gonna crash!!!”. Think your way through it, stay loose, and you’ll do much better.

If you find yourself falling off the back a lot, it’s because you’re not dropping low enough when you get into the swell. The board will accelerate pretty hard, drop into a low surfing stance and start turning. Wot fun!

A little further on and you should find the big guys. The swell get steep again and there’s usually a lot of chop mixed in from reflected waves off the shore or just wind changes. When the wind direction shifts a little the main swell continues in the direction it was headed, and some new swells start getting generated. These swells are easier to catch generally, but the side chop might knock you off. Again, it’s wise to do some turning, but it’s even more important to read the water and go where you want to. It’s also easy to link up swells, running over the top of those in front of you. Weaving through the swells and visualizing them like moguls helps a lot. Wind swells are rarely in a straight line, they rise and fall along their line of travel and have peaks and valleys. Use the valleys to get through and the peaks for the ride.

One of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve had is to look for the downhill bits. You aren’t so much looking for a swell to climb as a hollow to drop into. When you have a lot of whitecaps around you it’s very useful to watch the swell right behind a whitecap. For some reason these tend to be steep-faced and smooth. I find pulling in behind a whitecap almost always leads to a rocking good ride.

As you progress in swell riding you’ll find it easier to read the water and swell. You start looking for more subtle things, and you have a lot more time to look for them. When you first start everything seems to come at you too fast to make any judgments. After a few rides it starts to get more settled and you have time to observe. When Jeremy Riggs first told me I should be turning on the waves to ride them faster, I thought there was no way I’d ever be doing that. Now it seems like it happens automatically.

On fixed fin boards the ability to turn on swells and ride them at an angle is important–it’s how you get back in. Consider that when you’re paddling you’re going about 4mph, and when you’re riding a swell you might be going 15MPH. If you can turn on a swell and ride it towards shore you make up a lot of ground fast. Conversely, if you can’t turn on swells and ride them and you are paddling toward somewhat towards shore and catch a swell headed offshore, you’ll lose a lot of ground fast. So your only choice is to just slug it out paddling towards shore. It’s so much nicer to be able to let the waves do the work.

I’m certain there are a lot of other people with more experience than mine who could add to this article. I welcome your comments and additions. Either add them as comments to this part, or email them to me (bill at kenalu dot com) and I’ll put them into Doing downwinders Part three. Next time we’ll add some video clips of paddling into swells, and show some great downwind runs.

Until then, have fun, enjoy, Aloha.

Doing Downwinders

It’s always the blind leading the blind here at Ke Nalu. I continue my long practice at teaching anything–struggle to be one step ahead of the students and grab expertise anywhere I can get it. I’ve been doing downwind runs about two years, on an accelerated program fed by my insatiable, over the top addiction to the downwind glide. What a rush. So here I’m going to tell you a bit of what I’ve learned, and a lot of what I’ve observed even if I can’t necessarily DO all of it yet, and I’m going to steal shamelessly from any useful source.

As I said, downwinders and swellriding is very addictive. You can do them anywhere there is wind and water. What you want to look for is a place that is safe and fun.

Wind Direction: You don’t want to go hard offshore in a place where the next stop is 3000 miles away, you don’t want to be pushed onshore in places you can’t land safely. It pays to scout your run carefully. Understand the wind and swell direction, know where you can put in and take out safely, and where you can go if you need to ditch the run. It’s a little safer to run along a coastline than point-to-point across an open bay. But in places where there are offshore reefs or seabed topology that can build big waves from groundswell you may have to run miles out at sea to avoid the mackers.

A little offshore wind direction is not such a big deal once you have experience and can drive your board well, especially if you have a foot rudder. Generally a run with some offshore direction is shaped like a triangle–you ride the swells and wind out a ways, and then start aiming every ride towards the shore, working your way inwards at an angle against the wind. Onshore winds tend to be a bigger challenge since they are pushing you where you don’t want to go and you have to work against them right from the start.

You want swells to ride. Getting pushed by the wind in flatwater is fine and all that, but riding swells are the addictive part of downwinding. To get good swells you need wind and fetch, fetch being the amount of distance the wind gets to push on the water. Swells take time to build and gain shape. A really strong wind blowing along water for a short distance can toss up a pretty high swell, but the peaks will be close together, choppy, and uneven. When the swell has time to form it will spread out (gain a longer period) get more even, and gain more energy (get thicker). So in a river you want to look for a place where the river direction and the wind direction run parallel for a distance. A small bend won’t undo all the good fetch since some energy will make it through, but a couple of right angle turns and the fetch is starting all over.

The southside runs in Maui start at the inside curve of the island, and the wind blows across the island, which means almost no fetch if you are starting at Sugar Beach or the Canoe Hale. That makes the run an almost ideal example of what happens as the fetch length grows. When the wind is brisk (say, 20 kts) you start with little ripples and a lot of push from the wind at your back. After half a mile the ripples have grown to ankle high swells that are enough to push your board if you paddle hard to catch them. Fun practice in reading the water. A mile further and the swells are knee high, and close together. Fun to catch, but your board smacks the backside of the swell in front frequently. Good practice for turning in a swell or railroading over the top of the next one. A few more miles and some bottom features will toss up waist-high stuff while the majority of swells are still knee high but wider apart and more rounded. Both of those characteristics mean there’s more energy in the swell, it’s thicker on top because it’s period is longer and there’s more energy. It tosses higher when the water gets shallow because the friction with the bottom slows the leading edge of the wave, piling up the water.

A Maliko run on the North side of Maui displays what a long fetch ride is about. Here the wind has been on the water for hundreds of miles, the wind swells are thick, long period, and very big–sometimes the bottom topology kicks them up to 20 feet from peak to base. When you’re in a trough you often can’t see your friends, or even the shore. Riding these swells is more like snowboarding down a mountain than surfing–the swells aren’t breaking.

Gear
Any board will work for doing downwinders, but they are more fun on specialized downwind or touring boards. If all you have is surfboards choose your longest one and go as narrow as you can comfortably balance for a long while. If you have thrusters, take them off and go with a single fin–you’ll gain a lot of glide. Old long windsurfers work. Pretty much anything works. Don’t let yourself be denied the fun because your equipment isn’t optimal.

If you decide to buy a downwind board, try to demo first. Weight, height, and skill level have a lot to do with the kind of board you’d like. A few days ago I took a friend for his first run and let him try both my SIC F18 and my Foote Maliko 14. He vastly preferred the F18. Easy to see why–the F18 is very stable, catches swells well and gives a great cruising ride. The Foote Maliko 14 is like a little sportscar. It zips into a swell and lets you play with the wave. But its not as stable and comfortable. For me, jumping off the F18 onto the Foote was like getting out of a Corvette and into a Ferrari. Both fast, but the Maliko 14 has a wonderful nimble, pared-down feel.

If the board you use for downwinding is substantially thicker than your surfboard, you’ll probably like a longer paddle.

Some very experienced folks jump on a board with no leash, no water, nothing but a paddle and their boardies. I think they are insane. You can get away with that until you don’t, and then you’ll have a very long afternoon. These boards have thick rails and can blow away from you in a second, and quickly reach speeds you can never match, no matter how well you swim. I always wear a leash. I have a light one made from a boogie board leash for southside and a big, thick one for Maliko. Anywhere you have the potential to be caught in a big, breaking wave you want a stout leash. I got caught inside at Upper Kanaha and turned my coiled boogie board leash into a straight leash the diameter of a shoelace–so lucky it didn’t break. That would be at least a one mile swim in heavy surf and current.

A PFD is a good option, especially since some jurisdictions require it and issue citations. The inflatable PFDs can be worn without discomfort or interference. There are both belt type and suspender types. If you get separated from your board and don’t have a PFD your camelback can be a lifesaver. Just drink part of the water and then inflate the bladder by blowing in the tube, then reverse the position so you are wearing it on your chest. Don’t dump the water unless you need all the floatation–it comes in handy on a long swim in.

If you’re going more than a mile or two you should have water. I like a camelback. Dave Kalama sticks water bottles in his pocket–doesn’t like sucking on the tube and getting winded. I know exactly what he means, but I don’t have his balance to be pulling a bottle out for a drink and hardly missing a beat.

I also carry my iPhone in a waterproof bag, tucked in my camelback. I can operate the phone through the bag and even talk through it. Better yet I can turn on music with the internal speakers and it’s loud enough to her pretty well when it’s on my bak. No earphones, no wires–a human jukebox. I also use my iPhone to record my trip using it’s GPS, and of course it’s there as a safety feature in case I encounter serious trouble.

I’m careful not to let myself consume safety margins provided by gear. That is, I don’t do things that are more dangerous just because I have some safety equipment. I stay away from offshore reefs when there’s groundswell even though I have a leash. I don’t ditch the leash because I have a PFD. I don’t go out in excessively offshore conditions just because I carry a phone.

Next installment: Catching and Riding Swells

Advanced SUP Techniques

Written by Tom English
www.AlohaWealth.com

When people ask me why I surf with a paddle, my response is usually, “because it’s fun”. But when I think about it, it is really about the speed and power that a high performance board and paddle make possible. The paddle allows you to lean into turns harder and gives you more control. I think of the Rolling Stones classic, Let it Bleed, “We all need someone to lean on, and baby you can lean on me”, when I’m leaning into a turn that wouldn’t be possible with out the paddle.

You will find some advanced Stand Up Paddle surfers doing certain turns without the paddle, but in Stand Up Paddle Surfing, the spectacular, ripping, slashing stuff is all about the paddle, and rightly so. Not only is the paddle the key to extreme lean angles, it’s also a tool for tuning your turns, recovery, and either slowing or speeding your board–abilities that traditional surfers largely do without. The richness and radical capabilities that a paddle adds to standard longboard repertoire is already making the best SUP surfers stand out. And it’s really just early days–there’s so much more to come.

Here are a few techniques that I have learned by talking to and watching some of the best surfers in the world. Some were discovered the hard way, by trial and error. I will attempt to tell you the dynamics of these techniques, but you should understand that the key to these maneuvers is time in the waves, working to perfect them. I can give you some idea of where to put your feet, where the paddle goes, and when to turn, but muscle memory, coordination and experience is the only way that you will really own advanced maneuvers.

Don’t neglect the “working to perfect” part of that statement. Getting into waves and surfing for fun will improve your abilities but it takes a very long period of time. You have to have some idea of what you are trying to accomplish, and at least SOME of the time work towards perfecting particular moves in order to make rapid progress. The pioneers of surfing invented all this stuff without knowing what was possible, or perhaps more importantly, what was impossible. But that took decades. We can learn from them quickly if we pay attention to what and how they are doing their dance.

Take off Fade

A fade is a turn that starts off softer and higher in the wave than a true bottom turn. Paddle with your feet in your surfing stance, not parallel stance. Set your board up to glide towards the peak of the wave. As the curl approaches, pressure the inside rail hard, swing your shoulders into the wave, and change directions leaning on your paddle. Notice the flex of the paddle in this picture. Note also that the turn is well underway before the board reaches the bottom of the drop.

When you fall in a fade it will almost always be on the inside of the turn. There are three likely flaws:

• You didn’t maintain pressure on the rail, and the board straightened out while your body was still extended into the turn
• You leaned too far for the sharpness of your turn
• You didn’t swing your shoulders and press on the paddle hard enough.

When you do this turn right, the board will come up under your feet as the turn finishes. Keep your ankles and knees soft at the end of the turn to allow the board to come back under you.

Bottom Turn

The paddle can be used as a pivot point so you can compound the speed generated from the drop into more speed. This allows you to make sections that would be impossible without the paddle. You can also use the speed to propel yourself straight up to the lip. Drop into the wave with your knees bent, hips and shoulders level, looking down the face. At the bottom of the wave set your inside edge, place the paddle into the wave and lean on it. The harder you lean on the paddle, the sharper you will turn, leading to more speed. Trial and error will help you develop a great bottom turn combining power and style.

Notice that the turn is being initiated at the bottom of the wave, the board is trimmed somewhat flat to maintain speed but the inside rail is carving. the paddle is digging at the face, providing a pivot point that slings the board around. You enter the turn with your body centered, and as you set the rail to turn and plant your paddle you bend your knees and ankles to power into the turn. as the board reaches the tightest part of the turn, your shoulders should be facing the wave and the rail should be evenly weighted between your front and back foot. As the board starts to climb the face the wave will add power and increase board speed quickly. It’s the tightness of the turn around the pivot that adds speed. The more gentle bottom turn done without a paddle lets the board track further from the base of the wave, which means the board slows before the wave catches up and the face starts adding power.

Typical flaws for bottom turns are:

• Placing too much weight on the back of the board, which pushes water and slows the board.
• Keeping the upper body pointed down the line at the apex of the turn, which ends the turn too soon and compromises balance.
• Not leaning hard into the paddle, which opens the turn, allowing the board to get too far from the wave face, causing the board to lose speed.

Note in the picture above that the rider is nearly at the apex of the turn. His shoulders are turning to face the wave. when he reaches the apex they will be squared to the wave. His paddle is firmly planted, digging hard in the wave face. His speed is maintained because he is very close to the base of the wave, the board hasn’t swooped away from the wave before the turn was initiated.

Cutbacks

The cutback is where you redirect the speed generated by a proper bottom turn. Proper use of paddle allows you to carve cutbacks with grace and power. My favorite cutbacks are the “Butter the Muffin”, “Layback Carve”, and the “The Snap”. All turns rely heavily on the paddle. The techniques are similar, but use different amounts of speed and torque.

All cutbacks tend to lose speed, both because of the direction reversal and because the bottom of the turn is executed past the base of the wave. The more aggressive the cutback, the less speed is lost.

Butter the Muffin – A hot muffin that melts butter as you effortlessly glide the knife over it is the inspiration of our first cutback. Think about that while performing this turn. You will need a fast, down the line wave and a proper bottom turn to set up this turn. Place the paddle into the water behind you and gently lean on it as you place your board on its rail. This turn is the most gradual of cutbacks and looks and feels great when performed properly. Keep the image of the knife (your paddle) gliding across the muffin in your mind as you lean into this cutback. This turn takes up a lot of real estate, sometimes 20 yards onto the shoulder of the wave and another 20 yards back to the curl.

Notice the back foot planted firmly on the inner rail, and lots of heel pressure making the rail carve. The paddle is steadying the turn, and providing a dragging pivot. Pressing outward with the rear foot will tighten the turn, but can drop you into the inside.

Butter the Muffin doesn’t require the commitment of the next two cutbacks, and so it’s the first backside paddle move you’ll be likely to learn.

Layback Carve – Leleo Kinimaka demonstrates this classic turn which allows you to carve hard on a fast moving wave using the paddle and your body as leverage to redirect your speed back into the curl. This turn uses much less real estate than the “Butter the Muffin”. Place the paddle sharply into the wave behind you set your board on its edge. Bend your knees and place your body over the edge of the board and lean on your paddle. A low center of gravity is critical here. Increase the pressure on your paddle and get your body as low as possible to create a pivot point at the top of the wave. Your butt, back and paddle can actually be partially submerged in the breaking wave. Turn your head back to admire the spray. Trial and error is really required here to teach you the proper amount of speed and torque that is possible.

You will generally fall to the inside on this turn, mostly from simply not committing fully to the turn. You need a lot of rail pressure, and you need to maintain it until the board comes back under your body. Bending your knees deeply is also critical. The momentum of this turn will not return your body to vertical, the board has to come around. If it doesn’t swing sharply enough you’ll be left hanging out over the wave–briefly. Note how Leleo bends his knees to gather the board back underneath him.

The Snap – A snap is a 180 turn executed on the wave face. Here Kevin Coffman executes this tighter version of the Layback Carve. Approach the steep part of the wave and lean hard on your paddle with your body over the edge of your board. Put as much weight over the fins as possible. This can also lead to a fin drift if you crank the turn hard enough.

This turn is executed mostly in the tail. The forward section of the inner rail is free of the wave, waving in the air, as in this photo.

Your back foot drives the board through the turn, spinning it around your front foot. The rail angle needs to be extreme. This is not a great turn for single fin boards, though they can certainly execute it in the right hands. Thrusters or a quad setup will help you by keeping a fin buried in the water at even an extreme lean angle.

The snap is executed with full commitment. You don’t lean into the turn and carve the rails, you dig back and pull the nose around.

All Together

All these turns get linked together into a sequence on the wave. Here’s a full sequence of turns on a nice wave. No shortboard surfers were injured in the filming of this sequence. The first turn looks a bit reckless due to foreshortening by the telephoto lens.

Take Off Fade

Setting up–notice the surfer stance, knees bent, shoulders and hips level, board trimmed flat to accelerate down the face

Changing trim–the board is still trimmed mostly flat and weight is even front to back feet, but he’s starting to bring some weght to the inside rail

Down the line–shoulders squared to the wave, look down the line, bringing the paddle forward

Toe pressure–flex the knees and ankles, applying more pressure to the rail, continue bringing the paddle forward

Picking up speed–rail pressure continues, weight balanced front to back, Shoulders facing forward in preparation to swing

Oops–He’s flattened out the board in preparation to swing. A natural reaction, like swinging your car a little right to turn left. Perhaps not necesary, but no big deal. On the plus side he has brought the board squarely under his hips, and he poised to put power into the turn

Leaning in–Preparing to plan the paddle, toes pressing the rail, knees soft

Plant and push–the paddle is starting to dig, providing focus for the turn. shoulder are swinging into the turn, knees and ankles pressing the rail down, the board is trimmed to carve with weight still largely equal on front and back feet

Dig and push–this body angle would be unlikely for such a relatively soft turn on a longboard. The paddle is enabling the weight to be hard on the rails, head and shoulders extended well over the rail

Recovering–Paddle is still planted hard with lots of pressure, knees and ankles soft but keeping the rail planted and carving. Weight is still fairly evenly distributed, making the board turn on the rails rather than swing on the tail

Recovered–the board is back under his hips, paddle still planted to stabilize. Shoulders pointed into the wave, the board is almost completely under his hips.

Butter the Muffin

Preparing to buttah–board trimmed mostly flat, running up the face

Drag and shift–plant the paddle, rotate weight to the heels. For a tighter turn, step the rear foot to the backside rail

Backside paddle–allow the paddle to track behind the board to the back side, dig hard. Lean back against the rail and the paddle. the knike starts to butter the muffin. Weight is fairly even front to back–this turn is also on the rail.

Recovering–soft knees and ankles combined with paddle pressure allow the board to slide under the hips and recover balance. Board trimmed flat and gaining speed

Bottom Turn

Gain speed–the board is trimmed mostly flat, accelerating down the face. Hips and shoulders flat, Weight centered on front and back feet

Still accelerating–board trimmed flat, even weight, swinging paddle forward to plant it.

At the bottom–board is at maximum speed for this angle, paddle ready to plant, weight even front and back

Stuff and go–paddle planted hard, press hard on the inner rail with toes, knees forward, ankles forcing the inner rail down. Shoulders and head starting to swing into the face

Digging the pit–Max pressure on the paddle to pivot around it, The board is clear of the face of the wave, running on momentum. Shoulders have swung towards the face, maintaining pressure on the rail. Weight slightly favors back foot

Recovering–starts relaxing rail pressure, the board is coming under the hips

Recovered–board is trimmed flat, gaining power from the wave face. You’ve gotta wonder–does he have enough speed to clear that section

Running–faded turn to gain some speed in front of the foam

Swing and drive–another soft turn to chase the shoulder

Almost there

Traversing whitewater–pressing the paddle back into the whitewater adds stability and keeps the tail of the board light to maintain speed. Whitewater pushing the tail down is what usually dumps surfers in the soup

Reaching to plant–with the shoulder near, he starts to pull up into the face in preparation for a snap.

Paddle Snap

Boiingg–The snap is done on the steepest section of the face of the wave, shoving the nose around with the back foot. Here the paddle is planted, he has stepped back in preparation to get weight on the tail, and is ready to shift weight back. At this point the board is still mostly flat because his weight is still distributed front and back.

Whang–leaning back hard into the paddle and shoving hard with the rear foot, weight heavily on the rear foot, allowing the board to pivot on the front foot.

Recovering–paddle still bracing, the board is starting to come under the hip. at this point the knees and ankles must go soft to let the board slide under your hips

Almost there–residual rail pressure start the board carving and lets the rails dig, where before they were sliding. Still bracing on the paddle because the board is not fully under the hips.

Recovered–the board is trimmed almost flat and is accelerating in the steep face of the wave

Turning Out
Turning out is just a bottom turn that doesn’t end. You simply keep the rail planted until you are facing out of the wave and drive over the lip.

Bounce to reverse–as the board comes fully under the hips he starts to pull the paddle forward and shift weight towards the toes to start another bottom turn. The board is trimmed flat and accelerating down the face

Leaning and digging–the paddle has swung forward, pressure hard on the rails from the ankles, shoulders squared to the hips and pointed down the line

Accelerating down the face–weight slightly back, pivoting around the planted paddle

Maintain the turn–instead of flattening the board at the base of the turn, you simply keep the rail carving until the board is facing out of the wave

Over da lip–as the board comes over, the board will unweight and try to shed you. Planting your paddle to the inside is a good plan

Adios

Have fun with this stuff, but practice moves too. The rapid improvement in your surfing will make it all much more fun and enable you to take on tougher condition

Summary

All advanced moves require time and effort to perfect, and they all are just starting points. As you perfect your own style you’ll add personal characteristics to each manuver that will not only make your results more consistent, they will lead to new ideas to try. SUP surfing is a new sport, as good as the top level SUP surfers are today, understand that there is a very long way to go.

The Perfect Paddle

So you are ready to buy a high-zoot carbon fiber paddle and tweak it to make it all yours. Please don’t tell me you already bought one and it’s precut. If you did, skip way down to the taping section. This part will just make you uneasy. If you’re considering a wood paddle you’ll have to order it precut. In that case you need to borrow a paddle to make the measurements and the decisions we’re going to go through.

What’s the likelihood that you’re going to get a paddle that just right for you? A lot better than it used to be, when you had mostly brand choices and everyone said to cut the paddle shaft so the tip of the handle was one shaka over your head. Now you can get a lot more variation on paddle blade width, angle, length, shape and material as well as choices in shaft flex, shape, diameter, material and handle style. But with all those choices you need more than just a guess as to what’s going to work for you.

Let’s get you into the ballpark. Feel free to ask questions in the forum discussion on the this article as well, if I don’t have the answers I’ll go to the same industry sources that I drew the information for this article from. What? You thought I know all this stuff?

Paddle length is critical to a number of factors, and getting it right isn’t easy. Most people I know who have been doing SUP more than a year or two have been through several paddles, mostly experimenting with length, though blade size and shape, and shaft flexibility are actually just as important. We’ll focus on those four factors and toss in the other parameters when necessary. Then we’ll tell you how to get, cut, and modify a paddle to fit your intended use and your personal characteristics.

You’ll need a helper to make the shaft measurements. the easiest and most accurate way is to prop your board (the board you plan to use the paddle with the most frequently) up on some milk crates or some other stand that will hold it higher off the ground than your paddle blade. You can also do it in the water, but it’s likely to be a bit tippy and difficult.

First issue has to do with your intended use. That falls into three broad categories: Surf, cruise and race.

Surfing demands several kinds of paddling–explosive power to get you into a wave, precise paddle placement and angle to help you execute turns, and pulling power to help you punch out through whitewater and peaking waves. The shaft has to be particularly strong to withstand the demands of surfing and the occasional fall across the paddle. Experienced SUP surfers tend to not pay too much attention to paddle choices, but they generally have a “favorite” paddle that they’ve gravitated to, in other words they chose a paddle by using a lot of them, and now there’s probably $900 worth of carbon fiber sitting unused in the garage. Big, powerful surfers tend to have somewhat larger blades. The most powerful sometimes like the huge blades like the Quickblade Peahi. But you’ll also see some powerful surfers with very small blades. It comes down to their preference for pulling into a wave. Some like to make a few powerful strokes. Some prefer a higher cadence. A higher cadence makes it easier to catch more marginal waves, while those that wait for the big, perfect faces can enter the wave with one or two hugely powerful strokes.

If you are a beginning SUP surfer, even if you’re experienced at surfing, you will probably prefer a smaller blade, something in the range of 8.5″ wide by 17-18″ long–100 to 105 square inches). You may even prefer one of the super-small blades like the Kialoa Methane (8″X16.5″ — 97 square inches).

The length of surf paddle shafts tends to be shorter than cruising or racing paddles. You always want to get power into the blade, and that means you want your arm no higher than your shoulder to get early power. You’re not looking to extend the stroke, in fact all strokes should be short, from the shoulder of the board to your feet. Most surfers do not use a punching stroke common to racers (explained below) so a longer shaft is not required.

So measure the paddle based on having your fist at the same level as your shoulder with the blade under the board and the paddle shaft straight down from your extended arms. You can even go a little shorter than that, with your hand down an inch or so below the level of your shoulder. Have your helper measure the distance from your hand to the bottom of the rail of your board. You want the beginning of the upper curve of the paddle to be right at the rail. Mark the point on the shaft to be cut by measuring the distance your helper got (from the bottom of the rail to your fist) from the upper curve of the paddle blade. You might want to check your work by doing a test cut a few inches higher than your actual measurement.

Racing is a completely different animal. Most racers use one of two strokes: Either a stiff-armed press down for the blade from a point a little forward of the shoulder of the nose, or a punching stroke, where the upper hand is initially close to your chin. The paddle is pushed in the water close to the nose, and then the upper fist is pushed out and down, rotating the body to put shoulders and trunk into play. Both of these strokes require a somewhat longer paddle to fully engage the blade in a further forward position. To measure length you should be on your race board, which is often a thicker board than a surf SUP, and you make the measurement to the rail with the paddle in the forward position of your typical stroke. This will generally add 6 to 10 inches to the length of the paddle over a similar surfing paddle. It is a wise precaution to tape the handle onto the shaft with several wraps of helicopter tape (aluminum tape) to ensure that this added length is comfortable and you are not raising your arm substantially above the level of your shoulder to use it.

Racing blades tend to be small to enable a fast cadence. The stroke is from the nose to the toes. extending your stroke back past the legs doesn’t do very much to help your times. Many racing paddlers use a “chicken wing” paddle raise where you rotate your upper arm down to your waist to raise the blade out of the water. Blade control is important in a racing paddle, for that reason they tend to be T handles which give a more positive sense of blade angle than the ergonomic grips.

Shaft flex for a racing paddle can be stiff to medium. If you are doing longer races you’ll want some flex to save your shoulders. If you mostly do four- to five-mile sprints you might want a stiffer shaft. You get more power into the beginning of the paddle stroke with a stiffer shaft. A softer shaft spreads the power out more. If you are trying to lift the nose a bit to get maximum acceleration then you need instant power at the grab.

Cruising paddles are roughly between these two extremes, with the determining factor being the kind of paddling you prefer. You never want to be bending at the waist to stroke your cruising paddle–your body should be comfortably erect. You also shouldn’t extend your upper arm above your shoulder. The stroke for cruising tends to be shorter than a racing stroke, from slightly behind the shoulder to the feet. The retrieve is often done by letting the paddle drift back and up, since the “chicken wing” retrieve takes more concentration. Shaft flex is good, and ergonomic handles work very well.

We’ll add some pictures to this article ASAP, just got to get it done. but for now it should give you a good idea of how to cut your paddle for the kind of SUP you do. a well-fitted paddle isn’t a requirement, it’s just a pleasure.

Sam’s Magic Handle

Sam Pa’e is a SUP surfer, board builder, all-around waterman and extremely creative guy who lives on Oahu. I’ve yet to have the pleasure of meeting him, but he’s a frequent poster on the Standup Zone. Some time ago he started a thread on the Zone about placing a handle on the tail of a SUP board to manage the board better in whitewater. At that time I was experimenting with a strap on the back of the board that I could grab for the same purpose. I posted a response talking about the strap, which irritated Sam a little–he asked me to start my own thread if I wanted to talk about straps–he wanted to talk about handles.

I complied but I didn’t really understand his irritation. Strap, handle–what’s the difference. I SHOULD have asked, I should have realized Sam is far more experienced than I and he probably had a good reason. Then recently I grabbed my strap during a fairly heavy thrashing and did this to my fingers. I’m lucky I didn’t rip one off like that poor bugger in southern California did. But it’s been at least three weeks , my fingers still look like gecko pads (shot the photo today–you should have seen them a couple of weeks ago), and I can’t close my hand.

Gecko pads

No, I don’t just have fat fingers, here’s the other hand.

Hmm, I need to cut my nails. Anyway, when I finished whining about my fingers I decided to try Sam’s approach.

Revelation! Now I know why he was so intent on the handle thing.

So okay, I don’t want to oversell this, but I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done to my boards.

Your Mileage May Vary
Here’s all the caveats. If you don’t belong in medium large surf you can, and probably will, get hurt or drown. There’s no such thing as a foolproof safety device. Good, and even great surfers get hurt or killed in big surf, and the very thing you are depending on to help you can wind up hurting you and worsening the condition. Your mileage may vary. If you get killed doing this don’t come whining to me. Here, sign this waiver before you continue reading. Sorry, I’ve been watching Boston Legal on DVD and I have visions of someone showing up in court with William Shatner in tow.

All that said, I’ve never felt so safe in big (to me) surf. Sam’s handle is magic, or pretty damned close to it. Between that and the breatholding exercises I’ve been doing, being hammered by double overhead whitewater is slightly disconcerting, instead of the terrifying, lung popping experience it previously was.

When you get caught inside or are looking at a wall of whitewater after a fall you turn the board away from you toward shore, grab the handle by curling your fingers over from the front, put the other hand under the rail and flip the board upside down. Take a couple of deep rolling breaths from your diaphragm (see BREATHING below) and pull down on the handle as the wave creams you. In most cases, unless the wave is extremely powerful, the board will gently lift you like an elevator to the top of the whitewater, and that’s it. The first few times I used it I laughed out loud.

I have since fallen in front of an overhead wave, made a wild stab at the handle with no setup, and had the exact same thing happen. The wave flipped the board, the handle pulled on me gently while the lip pounded on my head, then I popped up in the back of the wave, more or less unscathed.

I have had the handle get ripped out from my fingers when the wave is really big, but even then the wave was mostly past, the board didn’t drag me, and I just relaxed and floated to the surface with plenty of breath to spare. I’m grabbing the handle with my injured fingers, and it hasn’t harmed them a bit.

I have no idea if this works in monster waves, though I know Sam plays in that kind of territory. I’m slowly working my way up. I’m not relying on this handle to keep me safe. I’m taking my time and learning as I go, but it gives me a lot of confidence, and serves the very important purpose of not letting my board run loose and endanger someone else. Here’s my installation on the Bill Foote gecko board.

The handle is a DaKine heelstrap made for kiteboards. It has elastic in the handle to give it some give, which is very welcome. It also is canted, which makes it easy to grab the right way (fingers curling over the front of the strap) and harder to grab the wrong way.

If you grab the the board with your fingers passing through the strap your hand could be trapped as the board pulls upward.

Breathing For A Hold Down
I’ll cover this in more detail in a future article, but let’s talk a bit about holding your breath. The usual reacion to seeing a big wave bearing down in you is to take rapid breaths. These do little more than move air up and down your throat–you get very little fresh oxygen into your lungs. Instead you should breathe deeply, pushing your diaphragm by pushing your stomach outwards BEFORE you expand your chest. Breathing like this will fill your lungs more effectively and enable you to increase your breath holding time by at least 50%. Practice this sitting on a couch with someone keeping an eye on you, not face down in a pool by yourself. You’ll be surprised at how much difference this simple change in breathing can make.

SUP Surf 101 Basic Track Chapter 4–Up and Surfing

This ebook is being written in four parallel paths: Basics; Surfing; Theory, and Conditioning.  It will also eventually have a lot of pictures and video added. I have an outline, a shot list, and plans for the videos, but they have to wait until I can get to them. Chapter 4 of the Basic track covers catching waves. Source material include:

Learn to Surf: Intermediate Level

The Art of Surfing: A Training Manual for the Developing and Competitive Surfer

Let’s go surf.

Chapter 4: Up and Surfing

You’re in the lineup, away from other surfers, looking outwards at the waves with your board pointed more or less in the direction down the wave you want to go. If you’re standard foot your board is pointed to surfer’s right, goofy foot you’re pointed surfer’s left. (Surfer’s right means to the right as you face the beach, which is where you will be looking once you catch the wave. Since you are currently facing the wave your board will be pointed to your left).At this point in your surfing career, you are not ready to go to the backside on a wave, which means ride the wave with you back to it, you’re going to surf frontside, with your body facing the wave.

You are centered on your board, feet in a parallel stance, and you’re comfortably riding swells and chop. When a wave comes that you don’t want to take, you turn your board to point straight at it, paddle a little to power over the wave, then turn back sideways to your ready position. You see a wave you want to take. The peak is coming straight at you and no one else is getting ready to try for the wave. You move your rear foot back towards the tail to raise the nose a little, give some short, wide sweeps with your paddle to turn the board towards the beach. You pick a target on the beach to paddle towards, and start paddling to gain some momentum. As you feel the tail of the board start to lift, you shift your weight rearward a little and start paddling hard. The board accelerates well but is hanging on the lip of the wave a little.  You lean forward and stroke hard and fast, the paddle strokes ending before they reach your feet. The board drops into the wave and starts to shoot for the bottom, so you lean your weight backwards to pull the nose up so it won’t pearl at the base of the wave. You’re zooming straight down the wave. You look over your shoulder to the left to make sure no one is coming towards you, then to the right in the direction you want to turn. With a small weight shift towards the right rail–really not much more than just thinking about turning–the board swings gently in that direction and you’re trimmed in, riding the wave fast across it’s face.

The waves starts to crumble in front of you, with a big whitewater section forming that blocks your path. You straighten out and point the nose towards the beach, leaning back on the board to keep the whitewater from lifting the tail, and pressing back with your paddle to stabilize yourself in the turbulent ride. As the wave starts to peter out, your board drops out of the wave, you turn the board around and paddle back out to the break.

This little scenario describes a very simple ride on a wave. No big bottom or top turns, no cutbacks, just catching the wave,  gentle changes of direction and a smooth, trimmed ride. Let’s take it apart and make sure you understand how to do each part of it, and outline both some practice moves and some corrective actions to take when you have problems.

Find the Peak

In a moderate-sized wave it’s very useful to find the peak. This is that place where the wave will break first and it is the steepest section of the wave–the steepness makes it much easier to catch and ride the wave. When you are looking out a a wave you can easily recognize a peak–it’s taller and more defined than the rest of the wave. But as the wave moves towards you the peak may move around or almost disappear. This is caused by varying bottom contours. In general you need to watch waves at any particular break for awhile to figure out where the peak is going to form to produce a rideable wave. The peak will not form in the same place every time. How the energy is distributed in the wave has almost as much influence over the position of the peak as the bottom contour does. You may be able to tell though that a wave that has an outside peak 50 yards to your left is going to have a peak at the break that’s ten yards to your right.  So you paddle to where you believe the peak will be and take the wave.

If the break has other surfers in it, even those that are fairly far away, they can be right next to you in a few seconds if they catch a wave and ride the face well. If they are closest to the shoulder (to your left if the shoulder is breaking to the right) then they have the right of way–it’s their wave. You need to stay out of their way. If you see someone coming at you, either turn out of the wave, or drop down onto your board and sit on the back end. DO NOT bail out and let your board run to the end of it’s leash, DO NOT fall and let your board get away. If you do your board will probably hit them, and they will either be injured or righteously angry at you.

Paddling To Catch The Wave

Once you have an idea where the peak will be, paddle to that point, turn towards the beach, and start to paddle. You may find that you have a hard time turning the first few times. In your excitement (and maybe a litle fear) you are forgetting how to turn, probably standing in the middle of the board, taking ineffectual little dabs with the paddle. Calm down, take a big step back with your rear foot, lean back a little, put the paddle in in the water up near the nose and sweep outwards to 90 degrees. Don’t sweep further, you’ll just be pushing against the fin. Several smooth strokes from the nose to 90 degrees will turn the board quickly.

If you turned properly your foot is already back. All you need to do to complete the surfer’s stance is bend your knees and keep you back straight. Surfing is largely balance, and balance is largely posture. Shoulders squared, knees bent, looking at the shore, start paddling. DO NOT take long strokes. Short strokes from the nose to your feet, or even shorter, will aid your balance and keep the nose light which helps acceleration. Long, sweeping strokes pull the the tail down at the end of the stroke and pull your weight forward as you lift the paddle.

As you start to feel the tail lift from the wave,  paddle harder, keeping your strokes short but increasing the pull and the cadence. As you feel the wave take the board, be prepared to shift your weight back to pick the nose up to keep from pearling. Depending on your board’s design, you may have to shift a lot of weight back, and even move your feet back further.

If the wave starts getting away from you, pushing the board but starting to get ahead, you can paddle harder and pull against the face, you can shift more weight forward to try to tip the board over the face, or even thrust the board forward with your feet and hips. Or you can just let it go–there’s plenty of waves. Though that raises the specter of the next wave and the possibility of being caught inside, which we’ll cover in detail later.

Turning and Running

There’s nothing wrong with running straight in front of the wave if you are by yourself–in a popular lineup you’ll be detested, but in your own wave, off by yourself it’s OK, but it’s a bumpy ride. The wave will break and you’ll be in the turbulent whitewater. You really want to be on the shoulder in the smooth and powerful water as long as possible. Most of the maneuvers people make in waves are aimed at staying in the sweet spot. But you don’t have to rip up a wave like Dave Kalama to turn, trim in and get a nice ride from a wave.

Technically speaking, any turn you make at the bottom of a wave is a bottom turn, but we’ll tell you later how to do the powered-up driving turn that most people think of when someone says “Bottom turn”.  For now we’re going to proceed more gently because you are probably not going fast enough to slash a turn.

The first determinant of how a turn is made is the speed you are holding. If the board is moving slowly, leaning back and pushing hard on a rail will pivot the board sharply, digging the rail and bringing the board to a halt. You won’t know all that happened because you’ll be under water.  If your board is gliding along you need to make gentle adjustments to initiate a turn, and gentle trimming to exit the turn.

It’s easiest for a beginner to turn in the directions your toes are pointing–so if you’re a regular foot your first turns should be towards the right, goofy foot will turn left. All turns engage your lower and upper body, your shoulders, arms, hips, knees and your ankles. But when you’re first learning how to manage these pivot points it’s best to concentrate on just a few and let the rest take care of themselves.

First, try to keep your upper body quiet. That doesn’t mean stiff: Stay loose, stay athletic and poised, but don’t wave your arms around and don’t pivot forward at the waist. Look in the direction you want to turn. Use your knees and ankles to press on the balls of your feet and your toes, lifting your heels gently. Your board will start to turn, probably a little sharper than you had in mind. Surfboards are subtle instruments, it doesn’t take much to make them respond. As the board turns and starts to climb the face of the wave, flatten the board by centering your weight on your heels and the balls of your feet. Bend your knees, keep your back straight, and your board will fly along the face of the wave. Going straight is just riding a wave. Now you’re surfing.

A Clean Exit

Once you’re up and running along a face the temptation is enormous to go as far as the wave will take you. Unfortunately that could be into water that’s too shallow. You want to exit the wave at a point of your choosing, not by having your fin smack a coral head. The easiest way is to simply sit down. Bend at the knees, then at the waist, grab the board by the rails and sit down with your legs in the water. Your board will stop quickly and you’ll look like a pro.

Don’t get in the habit of simply falling off the board, and never hop off feet first. In the tropics you’ll be asking for coral and rock cuts, or much worse. A Sea Urchin could be waiting there for you like an underwater porcupine. A dozen or so inch-long barbed spines broken off flush in your foot will ruin your whole day. But anywhere you surf it will pay to learn to be “one with the surface”. You want to fall flat with a huge splash. Spread out like a starfish. And once you are in the water treat the bottom like it was poison. Don’t put your feet down, slide onto your board and paddle out. Coral may cut you up, but you’re actually harder on the coral than the coral is on you. Stepping on coral kills it. Keep your feet up.

You can also turn out of the wave. To do this just press the rail down with your toes and hold the turn until the board curves out of the wave. This doesn’t work if the board is in whitewater or the wave is sectioning in front of you and the whitewater in the section hits your board. The turbulence will turn your board back toward the beach, usually without you on it.

And finally you can turn out of the wave by stepping back onto the tail of the board. shuffle back a bit until the nose comes up and the board will lose way in the wave and slip back out of it. You can help this by dragging your paddle in the water.

Once you are out of the wave, you need to look out at the next waves and see where you stand. If you caught the first wave of a set you might have some big stuff bearing down on you. Stay alert and prepare yourself to get back to the lineup.

SUP Surf 101 Basic Track Chapter3

This ebook is being written in four parallel paths: Basics; Surfing; Theory, and Conditioning. It will also eventually have a lot of pictures and video added. I have an outline, a shot list, and plans for the videos, but they have to wait until I can get to them.

Chapter 3 of the Basic track covers entering the water, paddling out through whitewater, finding the right place to be, and reading incoming waves. I used a lot of source material for this section including the following books that you might find very useful if you’re a beginner or intermediate surfer:
Learn to Surf for Beginners

This is a good basic primer for surfing of all types. If you already know the basics you might skip the title above and get this book:

Learn to Surf: Intermediate Level

Another source book I referred to a lot is “The Art Of Surfing” It’s a general training manual that has both surfing and conditioning information. It’s aimed more at surfers than SUP surfers, but I found it very valuable.

The Art of Surfing: A Training Manual for the Developing and Competitive Surfer

Let’s get in the water

Chapter 3: Entering the Water

This sounds a little stupid, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched people carry their board into the water, put it down in the wrong place and the wrong way, fiddle with their leash or paddle, and have their board swept into their ankles by a wave, taking their legs out from under them, running them over, tangling them up in ten inches of water. Furthermore, entering the water is probably when most board damage gets done.

You want to read this.

A lot of SUP boards have handles these days. You can often carry your board right into the water by the handle, but sometimes a steep or constrained entry prevents this. A common and relatively safe way to carry your board into the water is on one shoulder. You can also balance it on your head, but in this position it’s harder to handle wind, and a sudden gust can put a substantial compression on your neck that you might regret for a long while. The shoulder carry is a little safer.

There are also carrying straps and handles like the “Surf Schlepper” strap or the Big Hook that can get you to the water’s edge with ease, but then you have to deal with storing them. If you have a long way to go, or need to carry a lot of other stuff, the Surf Mule is an excellent device that turns your board into a trailer that can be pulled behind a bicycle. The entire trailer collapses into a package about as big as two hardbound books.

As a beginner you should choose a sandy, sheltered, safe entry. If you don’t have that option we’ll cover the tougher entries in a few paragraphs. Carry your board in one hand or on one shoulder with the fin behind you, the leash end and paddle in the other hand. Walk straight into the water until you are about knee deep. Wait for a lull in the waves and set your board down with the nose pointed straight out. Never let the board get across your body, especially with the board on the outside, facing the waves. You might think you can control your board sideways in small waves, but you’re wrong. A board 12′ by 30″ has more than 20 square feet of surface area. Water in a tiny wave can exert more than 30 pounds of force per square foot. That’s 600 pounds of force against your board in a SMALL wave. Good luck holding that with your ankles.

If you are carrying your board on your shoulder and there are no people and no rocks nearby you can let the board pivot off your shoulder to plop top down in the water next to you. In either case, get the board pointed out, lay your paddle on top and hold it by the tail. Wait for a lull and attach your leash, keeping an eye on the board and the waves, being prepared to abort the leash attachment and keep the board under control if things go wrong. Once you have hour leash on, pick up the paddle, hop onto the board and paddle out.

You might like to try a beach start just to keep your boardshorts dry on a chilly morning. To do that you get in water deep enough to clear your fin, put one foot dead center on the board and push off with the other, hopping into a parallel stance. Takes a little practice, but it’s handy when you haven’t warmed up enough and you’re not quite ready to take the plunge.

In a rocky or challenging entry, it’s even more important to keep your board pointed the right way. In rocky areas, choose your footing carefully, and don’t lift your anchored foot until you have tested the stability of your next step. Surf booties are a good idea. You can tuck them into the back of your boardies once you get away if you just hate wearing them. Be careful stepping into sand between rocks, if you lose your balance you can get your ankle caught. Sometimes it’s helpful to put the nose of the board in the water ahead of you and hold on by either a fin or the edge-saver web of the leash. Once you are in water deep enough to clear the fin you can rest a hand on the board to stabilize yourself. Keep the nose pointed at the waves and the board in control–this is no place to get your feet swept from under you. Slide yourself onto the board and off you go. his is one place where it makes sense to wait until you get away from the shore to attach your leash (unless there’s a possibility of immediately losing your board).

Coming out is a lot like going in. Take your leash off when you are close to the shore. Paddle until you are in knee-deep water. Watch the waves coming from behind you. If one is about to hit at a bad time you can hop back a bit on the board and sink the tail, which will let the wave pass without sending you forward as much. Drop to your knees, put a foot down, and keep a hand on your board, pointing the nose straight to the beach. Find your footing, get stable, pick the board up by the handle and walk in. If you don’t have a handle and the beach is sandy you might find it easier to pick the board up by the tail, run the nose up into the sand and stand the board straight up, making it easy to get it onto your shoulder. Otherwise reach across the board and hold both rails, swing the board over your head and put it on your shoulder. Head in.

Such a simple thing that it almost seems superfluous to write about it, until you see someone struggling even after they’ve been SUP surfing a few weeks.

Paddling Out
We covered choosing your way out in the chapter on Channels and Rips. But here’s a quick review–you want to wind up behind the break you’re aiming for, outside the impact zone for any wave you’ve observed. You aim for the rip or channel and watch the waves coming through. You’ll want to exit the rip at a little angle towards the break–this is most likely to release you without drama. As you paddle out, look for the spots where the waves are breaking and where the shoulders last the longest. You can punch through whitewater, but a smooth, unbroken wave or shoulder is much easier. You’ll also see places where a broken wave reforms, usually with a little whitewater still on top. These are nearly as easy to get through as as an unbroken wave. Try to pick the line of least resistance. When a sharply peaked wave rolls under you it will often give you a little kick upwards. Fun when you’re ready for it, but unsettling if you’re not. You can go into a surf stance, or at least step back with your natural back foot, before every wave hits, but many people prefer to stay in a parallel stance for much of the paddle out.

When a breaking wave approaches, don’t panic, you can go over a pretty big wave easily. Move your back foot further back, stroke hard for the wave. Try to time your paddling so the paddle will be behind you as the wave hits. When your board starts to hit the ramp of the wave lift your front foot to let the board come up and lean forward a bit with your weight braced against your back foot. The board will hop over the wave. As the board starts to come flat push down with your front foot to get the board flat, and let your weight come back to center. You can lean on your paddle to brace yourself. You will generally fall AFTER you’ve gone over the wave. Pay attention to which way you are falling. If you are falling forward, start pressing against your front foot sooner and shift your weight a little further back. In the rare case that you are falling backwards, keep weight on your back foot a little longer.

When you get outside it’s a good idea to keep your board pointed out, even if you decide to sit down. Waves can double up, or the sets can stair-step up suddenly and you’ll find yourself caught inside of a wave you’re not ready to handle. If you see a wave on the outside that looks bigger than what you’ve seen, don’t wait for others to sprint for the horizon. Just go–don’t be embarrassed, it’s a lot better than being pounded. If you’re sitting down, don’t get to your feet, just kneel up and paddle.

Next Time: Take a WAve

SUP Surfing 101 Theory Track Chapter 15

No, you didn’t miss anything, This ebook is being written in four parallel paths: Basics; Surfing; Theory, and Conditioning.  It will also eventually have a lot of pictures and video added. I have an outline, a shot list, and plans for the videos, but they have to wait until I can get to them. I’ll add them later and then integrate the whole into a complete book. So that’s the plan, and with Chapter 15 we begin the wave theory track. This track will help you learn to predict waves at your local and distant breaks. It starts with general wave theory–how waves are formed, how they travel, how they become surf-able (or not) and as much science as I can stuff in without equations. Subsequent chapters cover swell angle and refraction into breaks, tidal effects, wave buoys and maps, using different wave forecasting sites effectively and how to build a wave forecast.

I think you’ll find this useful, perhaps the most useful section in the book for surfers. I used a lot of source material for this section, some of it really impenetrable. The most useful theory book for surfers, hands down, is Surf Science: An Introduction to Waves For Surfing by Tony Butt and Paul Russell. If you are a serious surfer, then surf immediately over to Amazon and grab a copy. Simply excellent: Surf Science: An Introduction To Waves For Surfing

A little less technical, but more oriented towards forecasting is the Wet Sand Wavecast Guide To Surf Forecasting by Nathan Todd Cool. If all you want to do is learn to use forecasting tools then this is your book: The WetSand WaveCast® Guide to Surf Forecasting: A Simple Approach to Planning the Perfect Sessions.

Let’s dive in:

What We Surf On

Waves are oxygen to a surfer–not something you can go without for long. When we don’t have them we want to know when they will be back. Even the most unquestioning grommet has sat in the lineup and wondered why the good waves come in threes, of fives, or whatever. And then there’s that guy with no neck, huge deltoids and the hundred yard stare that says things like “the tide is going out and the swell’s at 14 seconds out of the north northeast, so we should be seeing some good faces in less than an hour”.

What? How does he know that, and what does it mean. And wouldn’t that be a good thing to know? Perhaps we could distill all the theory down to just the very basic stuff you need to know to be somewhat predictive. But you will never really understand waves unless you understand the fundamental mechanics of what they are, how they are formed, how they travel, why they peak up and break, and why wave forecasting is so hard. So we’re going to tell you about that.

In the beginning…

Waves are solar energy, converted to another form. Of course all energy on earth comes from our sun, except nuclear energy which comes from the heart of a star that exploded as a supernova a few billion years ago–but that’s a different story. The sun’s energy reaches the earth in the form of light, is adsorbed in the atmosphere, water and land and converted to heat. It’s not an even heating process–the poles don’t get as much heat as the equator, and one pole is warmer than the other depending on the tilt of the earth as it travels around the sun (winter and summer), and water and air convert less light to heat than dirt, trees, grass or rocks do.

This differential heating is the source of waves. Well, that and the Coriolis effect–the gentle force associated with the earths rotation that makes cyclones spin in the opposite direction from hurricanes. And local highs and lows, and refraction from the sea bottom, sediment shifting, currents, storms a few thousand miles away and a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Malaysia. In other words, it’s a bit chaotic and complicated. But the basic source is uneven heating of the air making wind.

On a local basis, especially in the islands, the effect of warm air over the land and cold air over the water is pretty clear. In the mornings, the ground warms up and heats the air above it, the warm air rises, and the cooler, heavier air over the ocean rushes in to fill the void. The result is convection winds. Get up early enough in the morning and you’ll find less wind, since the machine takes a while to get going. You can even see it sometimes on a micro basis–a hawk in a circling climb over a black parking lot, taking a free ride on the thermal.

On a global basis, the poles have colder air than the equator, so there is a continual exchange of cold polar air pushing down into the tropics. Air rises at the equator and sinks over the poles, so there’s a continuous circular exchange.

Now we add in the Coriolis effect, generated by the earth’s spin. The Coriolis effect is the reason why every large scale motion in the Northern Hemisphere turns to the right and everything in the Southern Hemisphere swerves left.  It’s generated by the relative speed of the earth at different latitudes. On the pole, you have no ground speed at all–you just spin. At the equator you’re zooming along at 994 MPH. If you send a powered blimp from the pole to the equator in the Northern Hemisphere it would steadily lag behind relative to the earth’s surface unless it stops long enough for the air to accelerate it to something close to groundspeed. While it’s moving south, it’s swerving right each bit of ground is traveling a little faster. Turn it around and send it north and it’s still swerving right as each bit of ground it travels over is moving a little slower. If you push your blimp east your push will give it a higher speed than the rotational speed, which increases the moment of inertia (we can call it the Centrifugal force, even though there really is no such thing). This results in a swerve to the right towards the band of earth with the same grounspeed. You mighthave an easier time visualizing this as a particle stuck lightly to a spinning ball. Drag a little bit on the particle to slow it and it will move towards the pole where the rotational speed is slower. Push on it to make it faser and it will spin outwards towards the equator of the ball to match it’s new speed.

The net result for a north south north voyage is a circle. Weird, eh, but you can look at the effect anytime by watching a weather forcast and seeing those big circling lows that are visible because they condense warm wet air into clouds and fog.

Even something as relatively compact as a tornado is commanded by the Coriolis effect to spin right in the North, and left in the Southern Hemisphere. Not so sure about the toilet bowls and sink drains.

With the Coriolis effect added, the transfer of air between the warm equator and the colder pole is now a lot more complicated. You might think at first that it would change into a spiral, but remember the net motion tends to be always towards the right in the north, left in the south. So instead of a south-north spiral we get cells of air moving in big circles. In fact the way things work out there are six rotating bands from North to South Pole, spiraling steadily in opposite directions north and south of the equator, creating a complex series of high alow pressure areas. Add to this the fact that the forces are more intense when a pole is in winter (a bigger temperature difference between equator and pole) and the huge effects that continental masses have, and we have a very complex system of wind and pressures.

We’ll talk about how that generates waves and makes them propagate in the next chapter.

SUP Surfing 101 Surfing Track Chapter 10

No, you didn’t miss anything, we’ll go back and cover the rest of the fundamentals later. I just know how irritating it can be to trudge through basics you already know, waiting for the stuff that might help you now. So I’m going to do this ebook in four parallel paths: Basics; Surfing; Theory, and Conditioning. I expect the conditioning part to be particularly useful to me.

This e-book will also eventually have a lot of pictures and video added. I have an outline, a shot list, and plans for the videos, but they have to wait until I can get to them. I’ll add them later and then integrate the whole into a complete book. So that’s the plan, and with Chapter 10 we start into surfing, assuming you already know how to get out to the lineup, how not to get killed or piss people off, and what a rideable wave looks like. Grab your paddle, let’s go.

Surfing your SUP
Since you are beginning SUP surfer, you’ll either be in a small, unused break, or well off to the side in a bigger one. Moving off to the side is no guarantee that you won’t get in the way of other surfers. Good surfers will be coming along the face of a wave very fast in any popular break, and will reach you in seconds. If you wobble into their way they will not be amused. If you are using the edge of a break that has other surfers in it, watch down the line carefully to see that no one is in the wave. If they are, then immediately turn out of the wave or sit down on your board. Don’t do anything (like falling uncontrolled or ditching) that might release your board into another surfer’s path.

Starting Position

Your starting position should be facing outwards towards the waves. You don’t need to be completely perpendicular. You’re looking outwards for two reasons. First, you want to spot a rideable wave. Second, sometimes wave double up very quickly, or a huge set wave appears out of nowhere. You want to be able to paddle out over these waves before they break. You DON’T want to be caught inside. If you think a particularly big wave past your skill level to ride is coming, don’t wait to see what others do–paddle for the horizon as fast as you can. We’ll discuss strategies for minimizing the damage when you are caught inside in the chapter “Caught Inside”, but for now, be like a nervous rabbit and sprint out to safety when you see something overwhelming.

A particularly good time to take waves is when everyone else is already gone from the lineup after a good set comes through. There are often some slightly less desirable waves following right behind. Everyone else has gone, it’s your turn.

Turning To Catch the Wave

So now you’ve spotted a wave that looks tasty to you. Look for the peak of the wave and turn in that direction, parallel to the face. You can usually spot the peak in a wave when it’s fairly far out by looking for steeper sections, or look for a section that is feathering. The ocean bottom can fool you and change the peak as the wave travels. Experience is the only help for that.

Start paddling towards the peak, still parallel to the wave. You should have an idea of how long it will take you to turn 90 degrees. Paddle until you think you are at that limit and start turning the board to be perpendicular to the wave. Usually this means heading right towards the shore. You want to paddle hard enough through the turn to gather some speed. Don’t get excited and start taking long strokes. Not only will this slow your turn, but it will also pull you off balance on the board. Keep your strokes short, from the front of the board to your feet.

When you feel the tail of the board start to lift in the wave, stroke hard, continuing to make short strokes. If you don’t feel the board start to slide down the face immediately, you might try putting your front foot forward if you are still in a parallel stance, or shuffling forward if you’re in a surfing stance. Pull hard on the face of the wave as it forms. Push down with your front foot and the board may tip over the edge and start surfing. If not, hey, there’s another wave coming.

Two possibilities: You caught the wave. Yahoo, read the next paragraph. You didn’t catch the wave. Bummer, but don’t stand there feeling bad. Look behind you and start to turn sideways with the nose pointed up the line (the direction other surfers will be coming from). Assess your situation. First, is a monster wave bearing down on you. If so, scoot for the horizon if at all possible. If not, you’re going to need the “Caught Inside” chapter. Too bad I haven’t written it yet. Here’s a link to the old version, hope it helps: http://www.kenalu.com/2008/08/25/caught-inside/ . IF the wave coming towards you looks like something you can handle, it’s time to look up the line and see if a “Mulligan” (a do-over) is an option. If there’s no one going for the next wave, you should be in pretty good spot to catch it.

Bottom Turn

So you caught the wave, or at least you’re starting down the face. If you are still in a parallel stance, now is the time to take a big step back with your rear foot and get into a surfing stance. Knees bent back straight, weight centered. Don’t weight that back foot right away or you might pull out of the wave. As the board reaches the bottom of the wave transfer some weight to the rear foot to keep your board’s nose from digging in (pearling) and turning into a submarine. On a steep wave with a long board you’ll need a LOT of weight on the back. At the same time you need to decide which way you are going to turn. If the wave is breaking to one side of you, then you want to turn away from the whitewater so you can ride in the pocket, on the shoulder. If you’re a regular foot surfer (left foot forward) then turning left puts your back to the wave (called backside) and might be a little more difficult for you.  Turning right is a little more natural. We’ll talk about both.

Your paddle still comes into play, if the wave is mushy and hasn’t formed a shoulder you might still be paddling to keep up your speed. Even if the wave face gave you a good push and you accelerated well, if you went straight down the face you might now be out of the wave’s power. Your board will slow, the wave will catch up, and probably knock you off the board. You can angle down the face to avoid that, or you can paddle as you turn, or do both.

Frontside Bottom Turn

To turn in the frontside direction (right if you’re standard foot), swing your upper body weight a little towards the wave face. Look in the direction you want to go. You can plant your paddle in the wave face or drag it’s face a little to help the turn and stabilize you a little, but that’s optional for a simple turn. Lean your body weight forward. Press the toes of your rear foot forward, and you’ll turn. In the early going it’s all more subtle than you’d think. If you really push your weight into the turn you’ll probably either turn out of the wave or fall. You can almost just think about turning and you’ll turn. Later on you’ll want to get some Oomph into your turns, but for now lets get on the face and get some power.

Backside Bottom Turn

Going to the backside requires a little more effort and finesse. The least challenging way to initiate a backside bottom turn is to move your back foot closer to the inside rail (the rail that’s towards the wave), then shift your body weight towards the inner rail and weight your heels.  On a beginner backside turn you generally won’t swing your shoulders as you do on a frontside turn. Instead just steer with the back foot and rail pressure.

Keep your knees bent when turning in either direction. this gives you more latitude for balance adjustment. If you stand straight and lock your knees the only way you can balance is to sway at the ankles or the waist–neither way gives good control.

More Advanced Sup Bottom Turns

As you graduate to larger waves your speed down the wave will increase, and you’ll want your turns to have more snap than is possible with just body weight shifts. To initiate a harder turn you need to move the board’s pivot point backwards so you can lever the board around. You can move your rear foot backwards, but this might result in too wide a spread in your legs for good control–the infamous “stinkbug” posture used to great effect by Greg Noll but ineffective and very foolish looking for anyone else. You can put more weight on your back foot, but that generally will shift your body backwards into a position you might find unbalanced. Many people find it more effective to unweight the front foot instead. Basically lift it from the board without losing contact. This puts more weight on your back foot without shifting your body backwards.

In a frontside turn, as the nose lifts, lean in the direction you want to turn, plant your paddle on the inside of the turn and drag against it. You can plant a surprising amount of weight on the paddle to help the board pivot. Swing your shoulders into the wave, press on your toes and push with your back foot to pivot the board. As you carve into the turn, press down with your front foot to end the turn and retrim the board.

In the backside version you move your rear foot to the inner rail, unweight the front foot in the same manner, bring your paddle across the board and drag it on the wave face, press your back foot out away from the wave to pivot the board, then press down with your front foot to end the turn and trim.

Improving a faster bottom turn will depend mostly on upper body movements. Once you are getting your weight back and using foot pressure to pivot the board, the tuning elements all come from your shoulders, arms, head and paddle. Your head should always be pointed where you want to go. Where the eyes go the body follows. Your chest and hips swing the board and help your feet push it around. When it all works, it’s pretty, fast, and efficient.

Once you have completed the bottom turn, you can trim into the wave and ride it out, or you can execute other turns.

Carry On

Other than tricks, most surfing turns are aimed at keeping you in the power section of the wave, which is the steepest section of the face, right in the shoulder where the wave is breaking and whitewater is forming. This generally means performing a bottom turn, going across the face of the wave and rising up to do a top turn. At that point, depending on where the shoulder of the wave is you might either extend your top turn into a cutback, or just turn down the wave for another bottom turn

Next time… Top turns, Cutbacks, paddle planting and skimming.

SUP Surf 101 Basic Track Chapter2

Reading Rips and Channels

If you are surfing shorebreak or some reef breaks you’ll want to know where the currents and channels are,  because that’s the easiest way out. Later we’ll tell you how to punch through whitewater on your SUP board. The kind of whitewater that would send a shortboarder duck-diving or a longboarder into a turtle roll can be punched over with a SUP board because if the unique combination of low resistance in whitewater or small breaking waves (it hits is your feet instead of your whole body), the ability to weight and unweight the board as the wave travels under it,  and the power and balance advantages of a paddle. But still, if you can go through a channel or power out in a rip, that’s the way to go.

Spotting a channel is usually easy–waves are breaking and peaking on both sides of it, but only the largest waves in a set break in the channel. You’ll also see other surfers using the channel to get out past the break. Channels can “close out” as the swell either grows or the tide changes. Close out means that the waves break across the channel and make it difficult or impossible for all but the most experienced surfers to get through.

Rips are a little harder to spot and take some practice to interpret. Since a rip is simply water from waves flowing back out you can spot them by discoleration of the water from sediment being carried, or from ripples in the water where the water around it is either calm or moving in a different direction. Sometimes you’ll see waves breaking on both sides of the rip, because the rip and the small channel under it disturbs the waves enough to prevent them from breaking.

While a rip is the surfer’s friend–a free ride to the lineup–it can also be extremely dangerous. If you are caught in one when you are already tired or when your paddling is still weak, it can take you places you don’t want to go. The easiest way out of a rip is to paddle perpendicular to it. Eventually you’ll hit the edge and be out of it. Don’t be surprised if the rip bends and twists–there’s no law that says they need to go straight. SUP surfers have huge advantages over prone surfers–they can see more and they paddle more powerfully. You will generally use a rip to take you out to the edge of the lineup and then paddle at a diagonal to leave the rip and make your way to yur chosen take off spot.

Remember in all cases that you can become separated from your board if your board or leash breaks. You may be swimming in rips, currents and waves. Keep your head, don’t swim against currents, take your time and make your way to shore. If there is assistance available from other surfers or lifeguards, make a smart decision about when to ask for it.  Signal for help before you are struggling or exhausted. If no assistance is available and you get tired, tread water or float to collect yourself. People have survived many hours in the water without floatation. You can do it if you don’t panic and exhaust yourself.

Your assignment

Go to a popular surf break stand on the shore and find the channels and rips. Should be pretty easy since surfers will be using them. Try to find alternative ways to get out.

Go to a place where waves are breaking but no surfers are out. Find the rips and channels. If possible, toss a piece of driftwood into the rip and see where it goes.

Studying rips from shore is just as valuable as studying them in the water.

SUP Surfing 101 Basic Track Chapter 1

This post is the first in a very long series (I hope) on surfing your SUP. A lot of people are buying SUP boards just for flatwater paddling. More power to them, but there may come a day when you decide you’d like to try a bit of surfing. The good news is that all the things you’ve learned in paddling flatwater–balancing on the board, paddling techniques, turning, moving around on the board–will all come into play. The bad news is that it’s not nearly enough.

This series will give you practical knowledge about surfing. It won’t teach you to do it–only time in the water can do that. But it will accelerate your learning by showing how to best spend that time.

I’m not qualified by long experience to teach you to SUP surf. I’m a writer who SUP surfs. The knowledge here comes largely from other, more experienced people and from the lessons I’m learning as I take the same path you will take. I’ve been doing SUP surfing for about two years, but I do it intensively. I live in Portland, Oregon and Haiku, Hawaii, and I SUP surf and paddle in both places. I have the luxury of time–I’m semi-retired. I try to get in the water every day and probably succeed about 300 days per year. When I’m in the water I don’t just play, I’m always trying to learn new things.

Chapter 1 Section 1
Etiquette, safety, and wave knowledge

Step one is to reassess your swimming ability. When you’re SUP surfing, as opposed to flatwater paddling, you’ll be in rougher water, and you’ll have a higher likelihood of losing your board, even if you have a leash. You need to be able to swim to the beach from wherever you are surfing. In some cases, like reef breaks, that could be a mile. You also may be swimming in currents, chop, whitewater and breaking waves. Beef up your swimming before you tackle surfing.

Step two is to practice your breath-holding. It’s easy to get held down by a wave, even in relatively small surf. You might be held down for just a few seconds, or it might be more like fifteen. In very rare cases you might have to hold your breath for thirty seconds. That may not sound like much when you’re sitting on a couch, but it can be difficult. It’s worthwhile to practice holding your breath while you’re doing inactive pursuits, like watching the TV, and especially worthwhile to practice swimming underwater. The key to surviving a long hold-down in a big wave is not to panic. The only way to train yourself not to do that is to experience it many times. Start small–trust me, a hold-down from a chest-high wave can scare the hell out of you.

Etiquette and Safety
Before you venture into the water you should know what the surf community expects of you. There aren’t any true rules other than to respect the people you are going to surf with. But there are some customs and expectations you should know about. The “rules” of the SUP community are contained in a site called SUPright (HTTP://WWW.SUPright.com). these rules will change over time as other people add refinements to them, but here is what this site says today:

First thing to understand is that there really aren’t rules–not yet anyway. Right now there are simply ways that the community of SUP surfers believe we should act. If you don’t follow these ways, someone might yell at you, and people might think you’re a jerk, but that’s it.

And that’s the best reason of all to follow these ways–because we don’t want that to change. Join the community and share the stoke because that is what makes surfing–all surfing–so very special. Don’t put yourself outside of that by being an idiot.

Beginners and experts have a different set of responsibilities. We’re going to take pains to explain everything as clearly as possible, which will make this a little tedious. If you find that too slow just jump to the summary at the end.

Beginners
What’s a beginner? Well obviously if it’s your first week on a SUP and you’re still falling in every few minutes you’re an absolute beginner. Once you get into waves you’d probably count yourself a beginner if you can’t turn easily without falling. But the definition needs to be a little more precise.

Beginner: You can paddle out past the breaking waves without falling when knee high whitewater hits you. You can pick the right place to be in a wave, paddle to the right spot and turn in front of the wave without falling, then catch the wave.

Intermediate: In waist high waves you can do a bottom turn, a cutback, and turn out of the wave without falling. When you do fall you can grab your board. Your leash is rarely needed.

Beginners have no business in a popular break. You’ll get in the way, you can get hurt if a closeout wave or set comes through, if you catch a wave and fall you’ll lose your board to the end of your leash. Almost everything you do will endanger yourself and endanger other surfers. Paddle away from the break, find some small waves and practice.

One very important thing to practice is controlling your board. If you watch experienced surfers you’ll almost never see their boards at the end of their leash. They either turn out of waves at the end of their ride, or in the rare cases that they fall they grab the board as they fall.

The leash DOES NOT prevent your board from hurting other people. When your body is outstretched, being dragged by your runaway board you have four feet of body, perhaps ten feet of leash and eleven feet of board. That’s at least a 25 foot radius you can hurt other people within. Your board will generally be in the wave, sticking out just waiting to nail another surfer.

One disciplined way to practice controlling your board is to surf BY YOURSELF without a leash. By yourself means NO ONE in the water who could be hit by your board–all the way to the beach, because that’s probably how far you’ll have to swim to regain your board. You can certainly simulate this with a leash if you don’t want to do all that swimming, but going leash-less is a useful training aid and a commitment. Just never do it around other people.

If you are a beginner, and you want to paddle out and watch the more advanced surfers, stay in the channel (which should be obvious–it’s the way most surfers will be returning to the lineup) and sit down. Don’t wobble around in the lineup and loom over all the prone surfers. It’s rude and intimidating.

Intermediate: If you can execute basic surf maneuvers without falling and can control your board, you should be welcome in an uncrowded lineup. If the crowd grows you should paddle off to the side or go looking for new spots. Your SUP board can catch waves that longboarders can’t. Don’t be a sheep, you don’t have to be in the pocket of a lineup with twenty other surfers. If you can’t thread your way through a half dozen people in the way, and contend with people dropping in or the need to pull out from the wave at ANY time without EVER losing control of your board, then you shouldn’t be there. Yes there will be be people there that can’t do that. Just because someone else is a kook doesn’t mean you need to be. Ride your own ride

All SUP Surfers

1. Don’t be a wavehog: It’s easy to grab every rideable wave with a SUP. You can always be first into the wave, closest to the shoulder. Everyone else is just dropping in. If you are spinning laps, paddling back out quickly and setting up for the next wave, you’re the worst kind of hog.

2, The second worst wavehog is the guy that maneuvers outside, coming in like a locomotive on every good set wave. Do it once and you’re getting all the wave can offer. Do it five times and hoot others off your wave and you genuinely, truly, absolutely suck.

3, When your turn comes, take your wave, surf it well, paddle back out and sit down. Talk to people. Watch for good waves. Let them pass and make it obvious that you’re sharing. Show some aloha, some kindness, some wisdom.

4. Don’t drop in. Dropping in means another surfer has caught the wave closer to the shoulder. If you find you accidentally have, turn out of the wave immediately. If you can’t do that without falling then sit down on the tail of your board (and if you can’t, what are you doing in a crowded break?). Never undertake a maneuver that might cause you to ditch your board in front of the overtaking surfer.

5. Using your high vantage point to call out waves might be a good thing, but ask your fellow surfers if they’d like you to do that. A lot of people surf to decompress and relax. Having some guy bellow “here’s a good one” five times in a row for mediocre waves may disturb their Wa.

6. Don’t paddle out through the middle of the break. Go off to the channel, or if there is no channel, well to the side out of the surfing zone. Killing someone’s ride by standing like a deer in the headlights will not gain you any points.

7. If you must paddle in the surfing zone, signal which way you are going to try to pass any surfer on a collision course with you. Generally you want to pass behind them so they don’t have to cut back, so if you fall you won’t take them out. Make your intention clear. It might not work but at least you tried.

Any time you think a rule doesn’t apply to you, you’re just BS-ing yourself. “I didn’t really drop in because I was so far down the wave”: BS–you wouldn’t come up with an excuse if you didn’t KNOW you were wrong.
“I tried to grab my board but I missed it” BS–go back and practice control.

Find new places. SUP boards are magic for that. You are missing out if you don’t explore, and you’re just adding to the congestion. Five miles is no big deal for a SUP board.

Don’t let nitwits control your standards. Just because someone doesn’t appreciate your efforts to share and to observe traditional etiquette doesn’t mean you should abandon it. Set your standards and live by them.

Summary

Beginners: Stay out of popular breaks. Find some small waves and practice controlling your board. Learn to turn out of waves and/or grab the board as you fall. Do not rely on your leash–in fact consider learning to surf BY YOURSELF without a leash with NO ONE in the water who could be hit by your board–all the way to the beach. Alternatively simulate this with a leash if you don’t want to do all that swimming, Going leash-less is a useful training aid and a commitment. Just never do it around other people.

Intermediate: If you can execute basic surf maneuvers without falling and can control your board, you should be welcome in an uncrowded lineup. If the crowd grows, paddle off to the side or go looking for new spots. If you can’t thread your way through a half dozen people in the way, and contend with people dropping in or the need to pull out from the wave at ANY time without EVER losing control of your board, then you shouldn’t be in a crowd.

All SUP Surfers

1. Don’t be a wavehog.

2, When your turn comes, take your wave, surf it well, paddle back out and sit down.

3. Don’t drop in. If you accidentally have, turn out of the wave immediately.

4. Don’t paddle out through the middle of the break.

5. If you must paddle in the surfing zone, signal which way you are going to try to pass any surfer on a collision course with you.

Any time you think a rule doesn’t apply to you, you’re lying to yourself.

Waves and breaks
Before long you’ll be sitting in a lineup with other surfers and they’ll start talking about the waves. That they are mushy, or blown out, closeouts, or sectioning or A frames. That there’s too much west in them (pick a direction), that the tide is going out or it’s all short period stuff. There’s a lot to know about waves, but you don’t need to know much to start with. Here’s the basics and we’ll talk a lot more about waves later.

Waves for Surfing

Surfers ride waves on the shoulder (or curl), which is the steepest part of the wave, right where the smooth face of the wave and the whitewater of the already broken part of the wave meet. Beginners can have fun playing in the whitewater, and a SUP board can use it’s speed and size to ride a wave almost anywhere on it’s face, but the shoulder is the sweet spot of the wave.

The broken part of the wave is called whitewater, foam, or soup. It’s turbulent and a lot of the power has been spent. You can ride it if you point your board mostly toward the beach, but it’s bumpy and hard to maneuver in.

The lip is the top of the wave, especially when it’s starting to curl over as it gets ready to drop. How the wave drops is an indication of the amount of energy in the wave and how the ocean bottom is shaped to form the wave. When the lip pitches way out and falls into the trough at the base of the wave or even well past it at some fabled breaks it can create a tube (called the shack, a pipe, the green room, breaking top to bottom, etc.). But most waves crumble or form just a partial tube as they pitch over and fall into the face of the wave

Beginner Waves

What you want as a beginner is a wave that has a shoulder that is gently spilling as it travels across the face of the wave. And you want mushy waves, which are waves that crumble down their face, rather than the ones that toss a lip far out and fall with a whump to the base of the wave. You also don’t want waves that are breaking right onto a steep shore or in very shallow water. In other words, you don’t want to paddle out at Pipeline, unless you have grown tired of life.

Waves create rip currents and often have channels in them, that are simply deeper water that doesn’t permit the swell to kick up into a wave at that point. The rip currents and channels are useful for moving back out through a wave, but they also can be a source of danger. A rip current can move a lot faster than you can paddle. If you get separated from your board you may be battling rip currents while you try to get back to the shore or to your board. Simply put, don’t fight rips. Go with the flow and look for a way to get back to shore when the rip dissipates. Generally you can make your way across the backside of the breaking waves and find a place where there either is no current or it’s going more in the direction you want to go. Often you can bodysurf your way closer to shore. In any case, you need to assume that you can be in for a tough swim, in conditions that cause most beach emergencies, injuries and deaths.

The channel might seem like a happy place, non-breaking waves, a favorable current, a fine seat to watch the real surfers from. And it often is, right up until it isn’t. Waves can come up quickly in size, and even if they don’t there is often a sneaker wave that will clean out the lineup as everyone scrambles for the horizon, and not everyone makes it. In those conditions the channel can sometimes be a lousy place to be, because the wave can be at its biggest and most poweful right where they weren’t breaking before. The sneaker waves usually break outside, and sweep up the slow movers in the whitewater. But in the channel they can break right on top of you, and that’s the worst possible situation. The full power of the wave is unleashed on you and your board, You can be pushed to the bottom, grabbed viciously and wrenched back to the top of the wave in a second. Going back over the falls and being pummeled repeatedly. Surfers call this the spin cycle, and that’s exactly what it’s like. You have to be ready for that and constantly vigilant for what’s happening in the outer waters.  We’ll talk about that more later in the sections titled “caught inside” and “big wave safety”.

The best places to get initial experience is beaches that have a sandy bottom or a relatively friendly reef–by that I mean not much coral or rocks sticking up close to the surface at low tide. You don’t want a heavy shorebreak or a steep beach. Not much rip, not much current, and not much wind. Look around for the kind of place that has other beginners, but don’t plan on surfing right in the middle of them, you need to be able to get away from the other beginners.

…to be continued

Prepping a Paddle

Few things in SUP cause more controversy than paddle prep. Some folks like their shaft bare, some like padded shafts, some like wax, some like mastic tape. I’ve played with about every combination and I’ve hit on the perfect preparation for me. I suspect you’ll like it too, even if you’re a bare shaft fan.

I say that because I’m a bare shaft guy. I don’t mind a little wax, but I don’t like the shaft to be too sticky, and I don’t like it being larger, or having a soft grip. Nothing saps my hand strength faster than a soft grip.

But I also don’t like my hands to slip, and the least bit of sunblock or oil on my hands or the shaft and my paddling is compromised. Yes, I clean my hands with sand and give the shaft a scrub, but you can transfer goop from other places easily. This approach solves the problem, giving positive traction without softening or thickening the grip. Once it’s done it lasts for many months–you never have to rewax.

Here’s the recipe:
The Grip: Locate your grip area and mark the shaft with pencil about ten inches above and below the grip point. If you’re not sure of your grip point, hold your paddle on your head, place on hand on the handle, the other on the shaft and bend your elbows at right angles so your forearms point straight up–the hand on the shaft will be in a nearly perfect grip position.

Start at the upper mark and wrap hockey tape around the shaft, starting with one full wrap and then overlapping the successive wraps for half the width of the tape. End with one full wrap.

Now wax the tape with warm water surf wax lightly over the full length and heavily in the grip area. You’ll be able to both see and feel the proper grip point. The wax embeds into the tape and doesn’t come off, even after months of use. The wax also cushions and strengthens the tape, making it last much longer. and finally the wax prevents the tape from being too sticky, as friction tapes sometimes get when the adhesive bleeds through the cloth.

The Blade: There are three good reasons for guarding the blade. First, people have been badly cut with unguarded blades. Second, the blade can chip up your board. And third, the blade can be damaged by hitting it’s edge on hard stuff.

Door edging or commercial blade guard works nicely, but it’s a bit thick for my taste. Mastic tape is good, but it’s fragile, especially if you stretch it thin. What I do is put on a layer of mastic, stretched very tight to make it thin, and then cover it with hockey tape. Finally I add a layer of wax to protect the tape and rub it with a cloth to smooth it. You’d be surprised at the difference in abrasion resistance between waxed and unwaxed fabric tape. The end result is a thin protective edging that won’t mark your board, lasts a very long time, and looks great.

Jim Terrell Paddling Video

Watching this paddling video immediately improved my performance. It’s well worth a few minutes whether you’re a beginner or advanced. Beginners can start off doing it right and advanced paddlers can add a few little tricks to their bag.

Who better than Jim Terrell to teach us to paddle–Olympic paddler, winner of many. many SUP contests, paddle designer and owner of QuickBlade.

Caught Inside

It’s inevitable, some day you’ll paddle into a wave and not make it, and as you start your turn to paddle back out you suddenly realize you can’t see the horizon. Or you’re waiting for a wave and suddenly realize the head-high wave you thought was close is actually far away, and it’s not head high, and it’s already feathering

Uh oh.

Prevention
The best solution is to not get caught inside to begin with. There are a couple of things that can help a lot. First be aware of your situation all the time. If you’re paddling after a wave, is it likely to have a big brother right behind it? If you miss the wave you’re after, which way do you need to turn to have the best chance of making it over big brother. For that matter, if there’s no one going for that second wave, then a Mulligan may be in order. Even riding a wave into a closeout is better than going over the falls.

If the waves are stairstepping, or some of the sets are really big, consider starting farther out, or at least doing your time waiting for your turn out further where you’re less likely to be taken up by the “Clean Up Woman”. Face out to sea so you can see the big mommas coming early, and start paddling for the horizon sooner. Sure, it’s cool to be casual in the big waves, and I know you want to hang out with the guys and talk story, but if they’re sitting in a bad spot you might not want to get worked with them. Maybe they like it. Maybe they’re a lot faster than you.

Caught
So what are you going to do? You can sprint for the top and try to push over, but if you’re certain that you’re not going to make it over, paddling up the wave until it takes you over the falls backwards is a terrible idea. Lots of opportunity to be smacked by your board and a much worse thrashing than is necessary.

On a Sup board you have the advantage of being in position for an effective dive. Aim for the base of the wave and dive deep. Arch your back and time it right and you’ll pop out the back of the wave like an otter, though this otter is tied to a big board that’s turning into a speedboat on the other side of the wave. Catch a breath on the backside if you can, but don’t fight the sleigh ride. At least you’re not under the lip getting worked. It will all be over soon. If you have a chance, look at the next wave to get an idea of what’s coming. You might have as much as ten seconds before the next wave hits. That’s enough for three or four fast hard breaths. Doing this will hyperventilate you a little bit and give you more oxygen in your bloodstream. You can hold your breath longer and with more comfort.

If that didn’t work out, and now you’re bouncing around in ten feet of whitewater there’s really only a few things that can help you. First, stay calm. If you panic and try to swim against the currents, you’re hosed. You can’t do it. Tons of water are swirling you around and you’re trying to overcome them with a few pounds of muscle. Ain’t happening.

Pull yourself tight (arms in and crossed across your chest, knees bent, eyes open) and wait it out. A long hold down is thirty seconds. If you’ve been doing some hypoxic training you can hold your breath that long while you’re doing jumping jacks. If you haven’t done any training then you can still hold your breath that long if you’re sitting on the couch. So relax, be one with the currents, wait for the bubbles to begin floating upwards and follow them up. Pull yourself up your leash if you need to.

Watch for approaching boards as you break the surface. Get a big breath of delicious air right away–there might be another wave about to drop on you. Assess your situation. If you can hug the tail of your board the next wave might push you in a bit, but if it’s macking on your head, go back down to the blue room and try again.

Above all, stay calm. The more often you’ve done this, the calmer you’ll be. Hopefully all your surfing progression has been from small waves to bigger, and you’ve learned a lot along the way. If you’re relatively inexperienced and you’re in big waves, then all I can do is wish you well.

How-to articles

Time to fire up the How-To section again.

SUP Surfing How To Articles:

Over the next couple of weeks I plan a number of surfing how-to articles. I’m lining up interviews with some very experienced SUP surfers, aimed primarily at creating articles that help the intermediate SUP surfer take the next step. But first I’m going to revive some articles that appeared last winter in Ke Nalu that most readers haven’t seen–they were kind of buried in the archives. These aim at beginner SUP surfers and cover basic technique and some survival issues. The first in that series is Caught Inside, some fundamental words of advice on a situation we all face but beginners seem to encounter more than they should. I’ve added some preventative advice to the article.

I’m also working on a long article titled How to SUP surf, which covers everything a beginner should know before paddling out into anything more than ankle-biters.

SUP Distance How To Articles:

Interest in downwinders and distance paddling is growing fast, in fact it looks to be the fastest growing segment of SUP. The basics are obvious–get on a board, point it towards the horizon, and start paddling. But if you’re going to spend all that time paddling, it ought to deliver as much as it can. Choosing the right board, the right paddle, finding the right technique, learning to ride swells, setting up your board, choosing a fin and placing it properly–all can add greatly to the experience. We’re working on articles about the right equipment, proper paddling technique, weight placement, engaging the core and legs, and general preparation for distance paddling.

SUP racing:

It’s a whole different deal from just doing a downwinder. Race pace and paddling requires different training and techniques. I found that out first hand when I started working on my own pace. I thought the training I did for the Cape Cod Bay Challenge would prepare me for racing. NOT. If anything it made my stroke lazier. Cranking out thirty miles is mostly a matter of having the time to do it. If you want to travel ten miles in minimum time, that’s a whole different deal. We’ll cover racing technique, board choice and board prep, and talk to some of the best racers in the world.

It’s all coming, stay tuned.

Beginning Stand Up Paddle Surfing

Before you start paddle surfing you need to assess your swimming skills and your ability to handle yourself and your board in surf. Any watersport is dangerous, and good swimming skills are a necessity, even if you only do standup on flat water and lakes.

Leash: Wear one. Even on a lake. When you fall you often give the board a kick that sends  it zooming away. Then the substantial freeboard gives the wind something to push against and suddenly you’re all alone. In waves it’s even easier to be abandoned by your board. I had to swim in from the outer reef at Kanaha when my leash parted one morning last summer. It was after noon before I hit sand. Long morning.

It’s not just your safety that’s at stake though–you can kill or injure someone with one of these boards. A leash is not a cure all for that problem but it’s a start. More important though is the issue of where you practice. Don’t learn where there are other surfers. These are big boards and it’s easy for them to get out of control. You don’t need the best spot in the lineup, all you need is some sloppy waves to practice on. Don’t forget how long the board and leash are. If you get worked and are bouncing along in the whitewater your board can be 25 feet away from you. There’s no excuse for learning where there are people below you who can be hit by your board. When you do fall in, pretend that you don’t have a leash. Do what you can to control the board. DON’T grab the leash though–if it gets wrapped around your fingers while you’re in the wave they can easily be broken.  It’s happened.  It’s a good idea to have a grab handle on the back of the board. Handy on the front of the board for that matter. If you have a solid handle to hang onto then it’s much easier to keep your board away from people. The other big advantage is that you can get an occasional breath while you’re being bounced around–you’ll always be near the surface if you’re hanging onto the board.

While we’re talking about breathing and drowning, your paddle is actually a big help when you’re getting pushed down by a wave. Put it across your chest with the paddle blade above your head and the dihedral bent down. As you are pushed through the water the paddle will send you upwards. I’m not sure why this works, but every time I try it I’m amazed at how fast I pop up.

Lifejacket: It’s not unreasonable to wear a kayak-style lifejacket. The inflatable kind that are almost as narrow as a pair of suspenders are really handy. Some of the best big wave surfers in the world wear them today. Yes, you’ll look stupid, but you’ll be alive and stupid, not dead and cool.

Be aware of the wind and currents, you can easily be blown to sea by an offshore wind or find yourself fighting a powerful current. Start your learning experiences where there are lifeguards, and it’s highly recommended to have someone on the shore that’s paying attention to where you are and whether you are screaming or not.

Etiquette: Once you get good, remember that you have a huge advantage over other surfers–and DON’T take more advantage of it than you should. You can start into a wave long before standard surfers can, you can get back to the lineup much quicker, and you can catch waves even when you’re out of the slot. Don’t be a wave hog.

There’s a backlash starting of surfers being pissed off about SUP folks coming into their favorite spot and taking too many waves. Of course for some of the territorial knuckleheads that think they own the beach, and any wave you take is too many waves. But there’s two good reasons not to irritate fellow surfers

• First of all, you don’t need their waves. A SUP surfer can surf almost anywhere. Waves that are too small for shortboarders are just fine for SUP. Long frequency, no shoulder waves give long and fulfilling rides. You can SUP surf in a ski boat wake. You can also travel long distances to get to outside breaks or breaks that aren’t easy to get to from shore. It’s fun and good exercise getting there, and you don’t have to dodge the grems.
• Second, they were there first. No matter how stupidly they might assert their territory, you’re the new guy, even if you shortboarded that break for the last twenty years. Give them room

How to Paddle Straight

Kind of an old video, but a lot of people have been talking about paddling techniques lately.

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