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.