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.