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