SUP Sprint Racing

I beat Dave Kalama at the inaugural Big Winds SUP race in the Columbia River Gorge at Hood River. Finished about five minutes ahead of him–long enough to get off my board, walk up to the deck above the river and take pictures of Dave, Robby Naish, and Michi Schweiger crossing the finsih line. So I’m going to share my simple recipe for how to beat these guys:

1. Good board
2. Lots of practice
3. Short race
4. and most importantly, a ten minute lead.

Here’s a blow-by blow of this very fun event.

I heard about the Hood Sup Series on the last possible day–a press release posted on the Standup Zone (http://www.standupzone.com) said it was June 18th, and that Dave Kalama, Robby Naish, and Michi Schweiger would be there. The prospect of a race sounded great, and it just happened that I didn’t have anything too pressing to do that thursday night. It’s an eight-race series, which sounded even better. Hood River is 72 miles from my house–about an hour and 20 minute drive if traffic is good, but planning to arrive at 6:00 PM could be problematic, the freeway that heads up the gorge gets jammed with traffic at rush hour. So I left at 2:00 PM for a 6:30 race meeting, and arrived way too early. I got signed up, drove down to the Hook where the race was going to start, and just hung out. I should have brought a sail–any sail, and sailed my 12’2″ starboard, which is great fun.

I had plenty of time to look over all elements of the course, which is pretty short–about 2 miles. The prevailing summer wind in the gorge is against the current–west to east–which punches up nice standing swells for jumping with your windsurfer or kite. And the wind is frequently strong enough to blow a dumpster across the parking lot (which I witnessed years ago at Rooster Rock). The race started with a run along the inside of the hook, carrying a buoy on the port side, sheltered from the gale by the large berm of this artificial peninsula, then turned the corner into the face of what felt like at least a 20 knot wind.

The run to the next buoy was also against the wind though it might be buffered slightly by Wells Island just to the west if you took the proper angle, and from my windsurfing experience I knew there are some funny currents close to Wells that might help or hurt. Once the buoy near Wells was rounded it’s a straight downwind run to the event center slot. This is an odd place. Right off the end of the parking lot called the Event Center is a sandbar that kitesurfers use to launch. The sandbar goes well out into the river. Near shore there is a twenty foot gap in the bar that’s about six feet deep at the center. It’s rocky near the shore and shallow near the bar, so you have to go through this section with some caution and precision. It also angles somewhat to the current.

Once through the gap it’s a short spurt to the next buoy which you take on the starboard side, then a sprint crosswise and slightly against the wind to the bouy at the end of the inlet, around another buoy to starboard and a sprint more against the wind to the finish buoys.

I waited around on the hook for a while, then realized I had more than an hour to the race meeting, got bored and cruised up into Hood River. What a lively place Hood River is during the summer. Stuff going on everywhere. There was a skateboard clinic going on, crowds of great-looking active people wandering around. Like a ski town in winter, only in a lot less clothes. I got an ice cream at Mikes–one of those “gotta do it” places. Like eating breakfast at Bette’s in Hood River.

Didn’t really need an ice cream just before racing, but what the heck.

I wandered back to the hook and people started showing up. Soon there was a surprisingly large crowd. I had jersey number 46, and there were a lot more people that signed up after me.

You can see my Starboard Point to the left hand side of the launch area. Most folks were on standard boards, though the Naish crew had what looked like Glides. Looks like I brought a gun to a knife fight, but really, with my weight on it, the Point is no faster than the 12’2″ Starboard that I also brought. The advantage is that it’s a lot more stable and it has steering which is handy upwind and for rounding buoys, so I decided to use it. I also brought my S.I.C. F18, but elected not to use it, both because it would seem like overkill, and because I suspected it’s thick sides and long length would be hell in the crosswinds.

After a brief meeting the ladies and juniors took to the water and were off quickly in surprisingly good order. The Men’s group was starting five minutes later, so I got onto my board and got a good position in the lineup, on the inside of the group. On the horn I started paddling like heck, but a small group of lightweight younger guys (actually, I think everyone was younger) got a fine start and pulled away smartly. I redoubled my efforts, bounced off another determined paddler rounding the buoy, and headed for the hook in about tenth place. As soon as we rounded the end of the hook the wind blasted right into our faces. I crouched down and stroked hard, and was surprised to see most of the guys drop to their knees and continue paddling. I didn’t do that–two reason: 1. It’s called Stand Up paddling, and 2. I wasn’t sure I could get up again. So I pushed on, managing to pass a few people and using my rudder to get a good line to the buoy. When I finally rounded the buoy the leaders were about 50 yards ahead. They popped to their feet and started really moving. I was paddling hard but the long pull had taken a lot of wind out of me. There were some tiny following swells being created by the wind on the outside line, so I paddled out and tried to catch some even though their angle was wrong–they were angled towards the middle of the river. I recalled what Jeremy Riggs told me once about riding swells at an angle making you faster, so I tried it in these ankle-high swells and it worked! I was able to catch quite a few runners that let me catch my breath and helped me haul in the leaders. I passed four people quickly and had just three in front of me. As it happened, I was on a swell when I passed the guy in third, and he yelled “Holy s&@t, you’re leaving a wake! How are you doing that?”

I figured I’d explain later.

We passed quite a few of the women and juniors, but off in the distance I could see that there were some serious contenders that we were not going to catch in such a short race. When we reached the slot I was ten feet behind second and perhaps thirty feet behind first. We rounded the buoy and I started stroking hard in the crosswind. To my surprise the guys in first and second dropped to their knees again and started stroking hard. I thought they would surely be disqualified, but continued to press hard. I didn’t lose any ground, and when we rounded the buoy onto the final upwind leg I gained a few feet and started thinking I might be able to at least take second. I started to close, but the wind picked up, and my progress slowed a little. By the time we went through the finish line buoys the gap was back to ten and thirty feet respectively. I cooled down, paddling a little in the basin, and then decided I should get some pictures of the other finishers, since I was carrying my iPhone in a waterproof bag.

I got up to the deck above the finish line just as Dave Kalama approached the finish line. “How cool is this”, I thought, “Not only did I beat Dave to the beach, but I can get a photo documenting it.” Believe me, it’s not likely to happen again. At Maliko I’d need about an hour head start.

Dave K catches his breath after the finish line while Robbie Naish strokes to beat Michi Schweiger.

Dave Kalama, Robbie Naish and Michi Schweiger

Some of the ladies make their way to the finish

The after party at the Pourhouse was really fun. Lots of nice folks. I talked for quite a while with Dave and Michi as well as some of the other competitors and a delightful couple from Arizona who have a house in Hood River. They even offered me a bed for the night in case I celebrated a bit too much, but I did more talking and eating than drinking, so I was fine for the ride home.

In all, an excellent first effort for Big Winds. I thought the race was going to be too short to be fun, but actually it was very interesting. The upwind legs made it tough and the short length made all-out effort a practical strategy. I certainly didn’t have anything left in reserve. Their organization was excellent too, and the party was a hoot.

For those of you that might be put off by the knee paddling, it won’t be a problem in the future. I sent Big Winds an email suggesting that they either not permit knee paddling beyond five strokes (as most races do to let racers get back up after a fall) or let everyone know that it’s OK. I got an email back immediately from Steve Gates saying: “This was the first SUP race we’ve put on or been in and we never even thought about knee paddling. But we did have a discussion about it earlier today and agreed it will not be allowed in the men’s divisions in future races.” That’s a good approach. While there were plenty of capable women and junior paddlers that didn’t knee paddle, some of them would have had a very tough time in the strong winds.

I’ll be making as many of the remaining seven races as I can manage. If you’re anywhere in the area you should too.

For more info click HERE

Holy Buckets!…Maliko 6

So maybe you’re getting tired of hearing about Maliko runs, I think this is the last one I’ll write up for awhile. But this one was kind of special, and perhaps a little stupid. I called the usual suspects and no one seemed to want to go. Just about as i was about to give up, I got an email from Scott, saying he had managed to buy an F14 without waiting months for it, and he wanted to go for a run. This one would be his third.

So here we are, two newbies–Run 6 and Run 3. Off on our own, and the wind was howling. I don’t mean that figuratively, it was blowing so hard that the rack on my jeep was making a mournful howling sound as i pulled into the harbor parking lot, the traditional shuttle meeting spot. There was no one there. Usually there’s a selection of trucks with canoe racks on them–return shuttles for canoe downwinders, and perhaps a few obvious SUP shuttles. This time the parking lot was empty. Bad sign.

We decided to exit at Kite Beach instead of the Harbor, partly because we were getting kind of a late start (we met at 2:30), partly because the wind was swinging somewhat offshore in the harbor and it would be a slog for the last half mile, and partly because neither of us had tried a kite beach landing before. So we dropped off Scott’s truck at Kite beach and continued to Maliko.

No one was at Maliko either. the surf crashing on the rocks at the gulch exit looked hideous–it was filling the exit with foam and spray. We paddled out a good distance, turned left and committed to the run. ZOOM–I immediately caught a runner that took me what felt like a mile. As I angled in the swell to run outwards from the beach i saw why my ride was so powerful–the swell I was in was substantially over my head. I felt like I was down in a valley. Kinda cool, kinda NOT.

When that swell finally passed i realized I was huffing and puffing–i must not have been breathing. I looked ahead and inwards and saw Scott in pretty close to Ho’okipa. “Hmmm, pretty aggressive” I thought and continued to work my way out. I don’t really need to see the outer reefs of Baldwin Beach and Spartan’s reef again anytime soon. One bowel slacking incident per month is good enough for me. About that time Scott disappeared from view up ahead. After some time he reappeared, still ahead of me but closer to me and further out. I thought “either he saw Jesus or Spartan Reef, because something made him get the hell out of there”. Turns out he did more than just see it, he got inside of a couple of breaking waves. Got knocked around a little bit, and had to knee paddle out around them, but no harm, no foul except for a semi-permanent wide-eyed stare that should go away sometime next weekend. If he stays out of the water. Or drinks a lot.

The run was going really well, the wind was certainly hitting 35 mph, and the swells were easy to catch and hook up. Then we got close to Spreklesville and the ocean turned into some kind of crazed undulating waffle pattern with a bongo board under it. Big groundswell from the left, wind swell from behind, and the occasional huge thumping swell coming from the Northeast. I started having a little vertigo, probably from the light bouncing off the heavy waves, or maybe just from looking at he undulating surface under the nose of my board. I tried watching the horizon–no good, it was moving too much too. I tried taking off my sunglasses, but it just made it worse. I started falling a lot in the big swells.

Just before we got to Kanaha I decided to go closer to shore. the wind was shifting offshore a bit, and I didn’t want to have a long struggle once I turned the corner at Upper Kanaha. Bad idea. I moved a little too far inside, and suddenly I had overhead-and-a-half breaking waves outside of me. I was astonished at how fast I got into trouble. I tried to turn and paddle out past them but a monster rose up and started to break fifty feet outside. Just as the whitewater reached me I dove into the face, and then was snatched backwards violently by my leash. “Please hold, please hold” I thought. And then when the dragging continued far, far beyond the fifteen seconds I expected I thought “okay, got to do something or I’m NEVER going to get air.” So I doubled over against the rushing water and got my hand onto the leash and tried to pull the board towards me. It didn’t budge, but my less streamlined, doubled over body must have pulled my big, floaty board out of the whitewater, because i popped up and got a few breaths.

These are local windswells, so the period is really short. A few seconds behind the first wave was the next, even bigger. I flipped my board over and grabbed the edge saver on the leash and held on. I got worked awhile, but it wasn’t quite so bad. Got a couple more breaths and SLAM again. This time my feet brushed reef. I was well and truly screwed, Caught inside BIGTIME with no where to go, and being pushed onto the reef, with huge waves crashing on top of me every few seconds. And now that i was on the reef even the mid-sized waves were starting to break on me.

I pulled the board under my stomach, shoved my paddle between me and the board, and started paddling like hell to catch the wave bearing down on me. If my weight had been centered i would have pearled instantly in the steep, critical face, but in my boogie board position the nose was up high enough to clear the backside of the wave I was being hurled into, and the board surfed along. I pulled the board under me and got up to my knees, wobbling around and trying to get the paddle engaged–the board was trying to curve up and out of the wave. I got the board more or less under control, and rocketed over the reef on my knees. When the wave started to peter out I staggered to my feet and started paddling like mad for the lagoon.

As I approached the edge of the reef one last big wave nailed me and knocked me off my board. I went through the whole get-dragged-twice-as-long-as-usual routine again, and came up spluttering and completely out of breath. Fortunately i was inside the lagoon in relative calm. I really didn’t have much left.

I got up on the board and started catching swells and wind, running down on the inside of Lower Kanaha, past the lifeguard tower. Comfortable, familiar territory. Way ahead i could see Scott heading in. He took the turn in the right spot and stayed outside long enough to eliminate all the drama.

We both arrived at the beach within a few minutes of each other. We both had hair-raising stories to tell. We both shared long moments of silence as we drove back to my jeep in the gulch. When we arrived, the wind had dropped, the ocean looked inviting. I had this momentary, irrational, totally scary thought that we should do another run. This stuff is like Heroin. life threatening, dangerous and very addictive.

This GPS track tells the clearest story of any track I’ve recorded. Oh my God he got caught inside and went over the reef. Plain as day.

The speed track (the green squiggles) also tells a story. That’s a 19.5 MPH peak you see there where the Heads Up display box is. My, my, my. And then right where I went over the reef and managed to catch a wave to get my chubby ass out of there, you see a high speed blip that goes on for a long time. That’s me catching that long ride off the reef. Or maybe it’s me being dragged underwater.

Maliko Quattro

Maliko run number four is in my official record book. Last guy to the beach again, but I improved my time over the last run (the Maui Canoe and Kayak club race) by 15 minutes. If I keep improving at this rate by the time I have Maliko 10 under my belt I’ll be whipping Dave Kalama’s butt and be first in line for the beer. Nothing like an active fantasy life to keep up the old motivation.

It was a pretty good run for me. I fell thirty times–literally, you can count them on the GPS trace. But that’s down substantially from the 200+ of the last run. I got some great swell runs, and even linked up a couple, a phenomenon that I previously considered some kind of inept description by my fellow downwindpeople. It just didn’t make sense to me that you could shoot down one swell with such vigor that you could catch and ride over the swell in front of you and catch it. Seemed like some kind of perpetual motion nonsense. But it turns out that you can indeed do that, and it feels GREAT! I actually managed a triple, which i celebrated by falling in gripped in some kind of wild surfing frenzy while trying to get over the top of number four. You can see the event clearly at mile four on the trace.

Trust me, it was a lot more exciting on the waves than on the trace. The run was pretty wild. The wind was gusting well over thirty knots, blowing the tops off the swells, and some of the doubled-up swells were over ten feet. You DON’T want to look behind you in these kind of conditions, it’s pretty damned intimidating to see an well-overhead swell running up behind you.

About halfway to the harbor, right off Spreklesville, the swells got a lot steeper, and I started having some problems with Gumby pearling. It didn’t pitch me off, but the nose of the board was well underwater, and that made the tail feel very loose and weird. I tried stepping back, but that made it to hard to catch swells, so I tried taking off at more of an angle, and that seemed to help. It worked best on lefts rather than rights, so my track headed gently towards the beach, as you can see on the map. Right until I started seeing the breakers at upper Kanaha, at which point I went RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT. I need to get over my nervousness about getting caught inside on these reefs. This run is supposed to be 9.5 miles and even though I though I took what i thought was a more aggressive line this time, I actually did 10.1 miles. With a five MPH pace that extra .6 miles cost me at least six minutes. Hey, I could have been under two hours!

It’s really fun going on these runs with the Maui crew. This Sunday that was Randy and Chan Strome, Larry Risley, and Jack Dyson. a great bunch of people and fun paddle with, even if they do all leave me in the dust.

Go! Gumby Go!

I turned the corner onto South Kihei Rd and saw whitecaps. Big, fluffy spraying-off-the-top whitecaps, and chunky swells even with the short fetch from Maalaea Bay. Perfect for a fast downwinder to the Four Seasons beach. Diane was dubious as usual, she considers anything beyond a gentle zephyr to be life-threatening, but I couldn’t wait to get the board off the car and into the water. Diane doesn’t mind being my shuttle driver, gives her and Sam some time for some nice south side walks.

I hopped on the board and paddled out a few hundred yards, and instantly regretted not starting at Haycraft Park on the other side of the bay. It makes for such a ripping run when the wind is slightly onshore, and this was, decidedly. I was going to have to work a bit to clear the reefs and that would slow me down. If I had started at Haycraft I’d be riding swells the whole way. It was Nukin’. You can pretty much see from the GPS speed trace that I wasn’t getting any good swell rides for about the first mile–I had to cut too tight an angle against them to get long rides, but once I turned the corner on the Shangri-La reef it was pure rock ‘n roll.

I was paddling Gumby, my Foote Maliko 12, since the Penetrator is back at the Ding King’s, drying out. I punched a small ding in it paddling on the North side the other day–no idea how, I didn’t feel a thing–and it was enough to cause a leak. So it’s getting pumped out to be ready for the next race. Gotta say, the Penetrator FLIES in flatwater. Now that I’ve learned how to get some muscle into my paddling, and i’m not doing balance checks all the time, it just rips.

Back to Gumby and the swells. What a friken rocket this thing is in a hefty swell. Glide after glide after glide. I was looking at my GPS and seeing seven to eight MPH most times. Never less than 5.5. what a hoot. Plus I’m learning to carve the swells to get more speed and better direction control. I’m also learning to get my paddle out further and pull hard in the beginning of the stroke. This pulls the nose up and gets the board into the swells quickly.

Once I’m in a swell I put my weight forward until the nose is just skimming the water, slide my back foot towards the rail I want to set, and give it steady pressure. As long as i keep the nose down the board just keeps accelerating and turns along the face of the swell. As you can see from the trace I got some pretty long rides this way, some of them in the 10MPH range, and one at the five mile point that hit about 11. Pretty fast for a goofy looking 12 foot board.

I don’t know how this software computes average speed, must be some kind of instantaneous value averaging. But I did 7.0 miles in 1:20:34 , that’s 5.83 mph average, not 5.2. What fun! And I’m sure I can go a lot faster in similar conditions next time. We’ll see.

2009 Stand Up Paddle Race/Distance/Downwinder Showcase Part 1

We chose an odd day for our showcase–a Tuesday–but we were running out of time and Maui Canoe and Kayak Club had a race scheduled for the weekend that included Stand Up Paddle boards. We assumed most paddlers and some of the boards we wanted to test would be committed for the weekend. Alan (shapeshifter) Sidlo was here from Chicago to participate, and my brother Bob (stoneaxe) Babcock was here from Boston. So we went with Tuesday.

The plan was to do some Battle Of The Paddle-style loops around the flags at the canoe beach in Kihei. Have lunch on the beach and then do a downwinder with a lot of board swapping. On the beach we had some of the most interesting race and downwinder boards available. the weather wasn’t cooperating, and some of our testers had conflicts arise. Ah, well, we wanted to make this small, it looked like we were getting our wish. But we’re getting ahead of the story…

Monday: Weight and Measures and Freezing in the Pool

But first, the weighing and measuring. We decided we wanted to see how these boards measured in the water. The Penetrator was the impetus for this craziness, since as soon as you look at it you can see that it’s critical measurements vary with the amount of weight it has on it. We decided to put a standard weight on each board and measure it in the swimming pool at Ponohouse. I have to say that it was a bit of torture–the pool is only heated by the sun, and it’s been cloudy and cold lately. Bob assiduously avoided getting wet, Alan and I did all the in-the-water work.

This video shows our highly technical process. weighing boards by weighing ourselves on a highly accurate genuine Weight Watcher ™ scale from Costco, then picking up the board and doing it again. Note to Mark Raaphorst, the banging of your lovely F14 on walls and such sounds a lot worse than it is–it hit the hose of the outdoor shower handle. Bob also shows his true colors and admits he has no intention of getting in the pool. This from a guy who paddles with icebergs on the east coast. Gets to Maui and turns wuss.

Here’s more fooling around and some underwater shots of the molded F14 race board from Sandwich Island Composites (SIC). Notice how the planing hull has a flat entry across the nose of the board. Notice also that the full width of the board provides stability. Compare this to the Penetrator 572 pictures later.

Penetrator in the pool. the board has a completely different profile when it’s unweighted vs. weighted. This board was made specifically for my weight (250) and even the 185 pounds we placed on it (Bob’s wife Sue plus a bag full of dive weights) left quite a bit of the nose standing clear of the water.

Measuring the Penetrators waterline. It looks in the video as if we didn’t pull the tape tight, but we actually did, the video shows the tape after the measurement was made.

Measuring wetted width. the Penetrator has deck width of 26.5″, an unladen wetted width of 22″, at 185 pounds it’s 24″ and with 250 pounds it’s 24.5″.

Bob, figuring out the scale–a slow process. Michi, I swear, all those bumps and bangs sound MUCH worse than they were.

Next time, we hit the beach and discover some startling things about racing boards.

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.

Surf Guest–That Soap Is Not For You

This is an oldie but a goodie, an article published back in 2008 but as relevant today as it was way back then, a whole year ago.  I’m about to have two of my best friends come visit. they are both perfect guests, but they ARE guys, and that reminded to go searching for this. Enjoy

Once again this column is aimed mostly at guys. It’s not that I’m some kind of pig (though I am) it’s just that I’m male. The notion that I might understand a woman’s viewpoint about guest etiquette is laughable. I’m simply describing reactions and taboos from the position of dispassionate observer. Napoleon Chagnon observing the Yanomami in the dark heart of the amazon. Besides, the topic of this article is no help to women–they understand this stuff from birth. Though it may be useful to women to print a few copies, laminate them, and molly bolt them onto walls anywhere male guests might wander in search of a resting place, food, or relief of basic bodily imperatives.

So you’ve been invited to stay at someone’s beach house. It’s close to good breaks and therefore it’s a great place even if the floors tilt fifteen degrees. You’d like to come back someday. You’d like these people to still be speaking to you after three days of exposure to your habits. But you’re an untamed, natural creature, child of the ocean, at one with your true soul.

Well that ain’t gonna work. If you expose that dog to anyone with sensibilities, much less a woman, they will do anything short of burning the house to make sure you never cross the threshold again. This is a step-by-step plan for utterly fooling people into thinking you are remarkably civilized for a guy whose wardrobe consists of board shorts, rash guards, freebie T-shirts and a crusty hoodie.

You need to memorize this, so I’m going to keep it simple. No explanations–just rules. Besides, I don’t know why these are rules, they puzzle me too.

1. Case the bedroom: If the bed has a decorative cover, a sham (the ruffly thing that hides the wheels and dust bunnies) decorative pillows and/or stuffed animals you will not be sleeping there. DO NOT pull back the covers or disturb the pillows unless you take a photograph that enables you to put things back EXACTLY as they were. Either sleep on the floor beside the bed or try the front lawn.

2. Examine the bathroom: If it is a shared bathroom DO NOT undertake elimination after eating five Spam Musabe or even a single Chile Verde burrito. There is no spray, “aromatherapy experience” or amount of fresh air that will eliminate the lingering evidence of your gastronomic excesses. Lift the seat to pee, put it back down when you’re done. Seems like women could figure out if a toilet seat is up or not before they sit down, but apparently they can’t, and if you give them a surprise dip they will hate you until the sun is a black cinder.

3. The guest towels are not for you. They are easy to identify–they match, and they are brightly colored. You need to look for something in a drawer or cabinet that looks like a ratty beach towel, or perhaps something lifted from a holiday inn. Try not to get it too wet–it can double as a blanket when you’re sleeping on the floor.

4. The guest soap is also not for you. These are even easier to identify–they have probably never been wet and they are in some distinct shape–like fish or hearts. Again, search the cabinets and find a soap scrap with deep fissures, or perhaps an assortment of them that you can bind together with a little hot water.

5. If your buddy farts in front of his wife it’s not an invitation to a contest. Your best bet is a slightly pained and embarrassed look, like you’re not really sure what just transpired. Of course if she’s not around feel free to unleash your rendition of the 1812 overture.

6. Don’t offer to cook–a no win proposition. If it’s good you’re competing with the wife and upstaging your friend. If it’s bad you’re subjecting them to an unpleasant meal, if you make a mess you’re a pain, if you clean the whole kitchen you’re a neat freak who finds their housekeeping not up to your standards. When Suzy Homemaker makes you anything, including some strange casserole with green things and mushroom soup in it, act like you’ve just enjoyed the best thing since that crazy two weeks in Paris. Good idea to go for a walk afterwards (refer to rule five above).

7. Do the dishes. Takes twenty minutes, any fool can do it, and you’ll permanently be one of the good guys. You can screw up any of the rules above (except some parts of #2) and a bit of dish washing will put you back on an even standing–probationally.

8. Get lost. If you’re hanging out more than a single night you’ll be in the way. Unless your friends are a bit kinky they probably ain’t having sex if you’re hanging in the living room. A couple of days of that and even the kindest soul will wish you gone. Provide some space and make sure they know you’ll be gone for at least a couple of hours. Don’t come back early.

That’s about it. You can make life a lot simpler by staying with your bachelor buddies, but they usually don’t have much room, and their towels have hash marks.

SUP Expeditioning on the Costalegre

Dave Collins is at it again, another interesting (and heavily packed) SUP expedition. Last August we covered his last SUP adventure, a SUP expedition around Cape Scott, the tip of Vancouver Island (http://www.kenalu.com/2008/08/) . This time he’s in tropical waters, the coast of Mexico, but the amount of gear he’s crammed onto his ULI looks about the same. SUP cruising and expeditions are a growing part of the SUP adventure. Let us know about yours. Here’s Dave’s story.

Expedition Report
As I finally scramble out of the surf zone I´m reminded of how impractical it is to paddle a loaded SUP.  I´ve had to go back to shore once already to repack my load—shifted by the hammering surf.  I wave to Elysia to paddle toward me.  At first petrified by the waves, she dug deep and made it out of the surf zone before me.  She´s still a bit wide-eyed, but maintains balance and equanimity in the mild noon chop.  This is her first SUP expedition, and my second.  Our shuttle driver is nowhere to be seen now.  We are alone on the open ocean of the “Costalegre”, the southern coast of the state of Jalisco from Barra de Navidad north to the southern tip of Banderas Bay where Puerto Vallarta is located.  I sense that this realization is still sinking in for Elysia, as I sense that my loaded board is sinking deeper into the water unless I paddle—which is what we begin to do in earnest.

Where are we going to put all this?

Packing up

A rational load

There’s a SUP board down there somewhere

I packed it, I’m gonna use it

Pelicans and a Costalegre Sunset

Only five minutes into establishing a rhythm we sight humpback whales about 100 meters offshore.  In a magical instant two of them breach simultaneously about 60 feet out of the water, exposing some two-thirds of their cetacean mass.  Awestruck and humbled, I wonder if the expedition might all be anticlimactic from here…?  In any case, I take it as  a most convincing sign of an outstanding trip to come.  As Elysia and I look at each other there is a sense that the scene is a metaphor for our union on this long-awaited journey.  “Wow,” is about the only word we can conjure.  The whales cruise south with us for a while longer and then disappear.

Arriving at Punta Soledad

Heavy going

A headwind picks up and the paddling becomes even slower, especially for me as I am carrying at least three times the weight of Elysia and weigh twice as much as she.  My mind is drifting and I´m beginning to fall under the awkward load and increased chop, while she is flying ahead featherlike and laughing.  At me perhaps, but her laugh and lightness are inspiring nonetheless.  With renewed concentration I try to drive thoughts of the outer-world from my mind and drive my board forward.  There is no better moving meditation than this sport and the need to focus is magnified by the load.  With every new stroke thoughts of the economic recession are replaced with concentration on balance, strokes, foot placement and then flashes of the Snickers bar in my camelback.  After two hours of hard paddling we sit on the boards to eat lunch, until I realize that we are drifting north, away from our destination, at a disheartening rate.  There will be no opportunity for lunch on the boards today, and landing on the open ocean is not a viable option either considering the size of the surf and our already slow progress.  We throttle down our Snickers and get paddling once more, but from here on out, due to our, and the ocean´s, conditions, we switch between sitting or kneeling on the boards and paddling standing up.

Look out below

Punta Soledad

Moving the load back made it balance better

Shoot quick while we’re still standing

Stroking for the beach

Some two to three hours later we come upon the aptly named Punta Soledad (Soltitude Point).  A reddish volcanic sea stack capped by agave and Prickly Pear cactus, framed by scrub forest and unrelenting surf, juts out like an exclamation mark ending the phrase, “You are alone now!”  Initially we decide to paddle around it and look for camp, but this strikes me, in a fleeting moment of clarity, as not a very wise idea.  The sun is going down and we are completely exhausted.  Not only should one plan on going about half as fast as a sea kayak on a loaded SUP, one should also count on getting twice as tired.  I suggest we backtrack a bit and grab a protected cove for the night and Elysia agrees.  The first thing we do upon beaching our boards is rip open the dry bag that with yesterday´s leftover pizza in it.  Between mouthfuls we smile, laugh and comment on the bounty and beauty of this beach, which I later discover is named Las Cuatas, or “female companions.”  I´m not female, but I soon switch into my pareo, or beach skirt, the ideal after paddling wear in a tropical climate, and the name seems fitting.

Welcome to our camp

Cocktail hour, thank God

Dusk is upon us as we hike up to get a view of the surroundings, the sunset, and the moonrise—the brightest full moon of the year due to the phenomenon of perigree.  Along the way we spot a fleeting Orange-breasted Bunting, one of the 22 endemic birds found in the Jaliscan Dry Forest, and a group of snorting, scurrying White-nosed Coati, a carnivorous raccoon-like mammal common to the region.  At the top we are so enveloped in the sunset that we don´t notice the moonrise until we turn around to walk back down.  Once again, as with the rising humpbacks, we are stunned beyond words—this time though, my imagination, far from thoughts of anticlimactic occurrences, now explodes with thoughts of infinite possibilities.

Rise and shine

Threading though a basaltic maze

Coves and inlets

Pelican Crossing

The door opens to these on day three, our final day, when we find some secret surf.  This is when the slower and more exhausting travel of SUP-expeditioning gets paid off in waves.  The payoff is abundant this particular day: overhead faces smile in consistent sets, greeted by an offshore breeze.  Elysia bows out gracefully and sets up the camera gear.  I am unduly impressed with her performance on her first SUP expedition and grateful for her company.  I know it won´t be too long before she´ll be joining me not only to enter and exit the surf zone, but to play madly in it…

A little Costalegro shoulder

El Tubo

The invisible man carves a tasty face

A little sunset samba

The SUP Expedition Set-Up
I am testing different gear than that from my first SUP expedition around Cape Scott last July (http://www.kenalu.com/2008/08/) and wearing a lot less gear thanks to the climate. I am using two of Werner´s (www.wernerpaddles.com) new paddles, the Advantage and the Carve.  The Advantage is Werner´s new touring/racing SUP blade, and the Carve is their new specialized surfing paddle.  Compared to all other SUP paddles I´ve tried, Werner is dominating the industry hands down.  All those years of R&D in the paddle industry have transferred directly into their SUP line, offering superior quality, diversity and durability.

To start, the ABS Palm-style grip on both the paddles just feels right.  And ergonomically it makes all the difference for stroke control while also lending to less strain on the wrist and hand joints at the end of the day.  The attention to detail—just the right width, thickness, and angle of the grip—make all the difference, especially after taking some 10,000 strokes.  Also, although I´m still quite fond of my Werner Spanker, I find the tear drop blade design on the Advantage and Carve more sophisticated and fluid.  First of all, the surface area of the blade is now more elongated throughout and not as wide at the bottom of the blade.  This reduces torque and makes for faster cadence, especially faster on the smaller Carve blade, which is ideal for making short, rapid strokes where they count—up front—when you need to build hull speed instantly to drop into a wave.  The dihedral of both blades is also more pronounced, allowing water to spill off the back of the blade more quickly, further decreasing torque.  And there is more scoop in both power faces of the blades which means more water catchment, and ultimately more efficiency.  The versatility of the adjustable shaft makes it possible for me to fit Elysia with a properly-sized paddle as well.  Finally, the durability of these paddles under the extra stress of paddling a loaded board is unmatched, an especially crucial detail on an expedition.

ULI and Werner Carve

Regarding boards, I am now paddling an 11-foot ULI inflatable board (www.uliboards.com), and Elysia is paddling a 10-foot Infinity (www.surftech.com).  I´ve mentioned that one should plan on going half as fast on an SUP expedition versus a sea kayak one, but that is a very rough equation and has much to with conditions—e.g., headwinds versus tailwinds.  An experienced SUP paddler has potential advantage in a tailwind, but any SUP paddler has an extreme disadvantage in a headwind.  Speed is also relative to what length and width of board one is paddling.  ULI has now come out with a 15-foot board, which I imagine would cruise along much faster than the 11-footer.  However, what one gains in speed by using a longer board, one will lose in performance in the surf zone, so it all depends on one´s preferences.  On this particular trip my preference is catching waves at otherwise inaccessible spots, not on making faster time or longer distance.

The ULI board is proving quite worthy, though, once I figure out how to better balance and secure the load.  The first day I had the load packed too far toward the front of the board, and I have now moved it a bit further back which cures the problem.  Also, my previous method of gluing E-Z plugs to the board and using nylon cord to strap down the load is not working as well either because the plugs do not adhere to the inflatable board material as well as they do to an epoxy board (at least with the glue I am using, which is a marine epoxy).  The method I´ve switched to is simply using two cam straps and wrapping them completely around the load and the board.  There may be a little drag on the hull, but I consider it miniscule, and far outweighed by the newly achieved security of the load to the board.  I flip in the surf again on my take-off, but no going back to shore to re-pack this time—the load holds steadfast to the board.  There is also the issue of increased board flex using an inflatable board versus an epoxy one, which tends to make paddling a loaded SUP slightly more unstable and slower.  But again I find that the positives of the ULI board far outweigh the negatives for SUP expeditioning.  I can travel anywhere in the world with this set-up without paying outrageous airline fares and worrying about the board getting damaged along the way.  And finally, I don´t have to sweat dinging or breaking a board on an expedition, where the consequences matter more.

An Extremely Diverse Ecosystem Under Pressure
Globally there is little good news for the state of our environment.  The Jalisco dry forest eco-region is no exception.  Tropical dry forest is the most threatened tropical ecosystem on earth.  And among this type of ecosystem the Jalisco dry forest, encompassing 16,218 square miles, is the most biodiverse in the world.  It hosts 1,100 species of mammals, 270 of birds, and 1,700 of reptiles and amphibians, and contains the highest rate of endemic species—84 animals and 110 plants found only in Mexico.  This forest is largely coastal, containing the section referred to as the “Costalegre”.  The area has been identified by Conservation International as falling into the Mesoamerican “Biodiversity Hotspot”, one of 34 in the world, and by World Wildlife Fund as one of the 200 global areas in most critical need of conservation.  These areas are selected for being the richest, rarest, and most endangered freshwater, marine, and terrestrial reservoirs of biota left on earth.

The Costalegre is undergoing an unprecedented environmental crisis due to unsustainable and unregulated development, tourism, agriculture, fishing, deforestation, contamination and poaching.  In collaboration with the University of Guadalajara´s Center for the Sustainable Development of Coastal Zones, I formed the nonprofit organization Tierralegre (www.tierralegre.org) two years ago.  Its mission is to protect the biodiversity and natural resources of Mexico´s Costalegre.  As I paddle this coastline I never take for granted that it is one of the least spoiled, most beautiful places on earth—for now.

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 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

Dry Pak Waterproof Phone/iPod Bag

I have a lot of waterproof cases–I love having music along when I do a distance paddle. So I have a H2O Audio case for my Video iPod. Then I wanted something smaller, so I got the H2O Audio iPod Nano integrated headphone/case designed for swimmers. Works great.

But then I decided I wanted to take my iPhone along on long paddles so I could check in with Diane, or coordinate a ride back to the Jeep, or call the Coast guard if I found myself headed for Japan. At first I just stuck it in a waterproof gear bag and carried it in my Camelback. But I decided I wanted something I could stick in boardshort pockets. All the waterproof cases I looked at were bulky and expensive, and most limited access to iPhone features (iPhones have a touch screen). Then I found the Dry Pak.

These are simple, cheap, and work amazingly well. the one I bought was $15 (instead of $80+) and I’ve been using it for months with no problems. The closure clip is a little bulky, so I have to fold it carefully to fit it in my boardshort pocket. But it works. I use a rubber armor case around my iPhone that I slip my license, ATM and credit card into, and I’ve got everything I need in one waterproof packet. I could go around the world with just what’s in that one pocket.

With my phone, credit cards and license I’m good to go anywhere

Simple, cheap and effective, the Dry Pak gives full access to all the iPhone features

You can do all the phone functions right through the soft clear plastic front. And you can talk and listen right through it. Works just fine. I took an important business call a few days ago while sitting on my board half a mile from the shore. Sitting there in the sun, bobbing gently on my board while I talked about stressful business issues made the call a lot less onerous than it would normally have been. When I was done, I stuffed the phone back in my pocket, hopped to my feet and resumed my paddle.

The only thing you can’t do is plug headphones into the iPhone to use it as an iPod. That’s fine for me, I have other ways to listen to music.

Highly recommended

A little Hydrodynamics

I gotta know.

That’s my burden, probably comes from the ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) that so clearly determined my career path (Motorcycle mechanic, nuclear reactor operator, PR flack, software entrepreneur, technology marketer, direct and interactive agency founder, surf bum). When I start looking at something critically, I have to have some kind of authoritative or at least comprehensible answer for the question “why is it like that?”. And I really can’t let the issue rest until I know.  Questions pop back into my head at any time, distracting me from whatever I’m doing. It might take years, I might still be looking for some particular answers when I kick the bucket. But I gotta know.

When I started looking at SUP race/distance boards they looked “wrong” to me. The majority had long, tapering pintails. How could that work? Most of the folks I talked to said the idea was to disturb the water as little as possible, to join the flow back at the tail of the hull. That sounded a bit too zen for me. It looked to me that the flow would start separating from the rails as soon as they started to converge. That you’d have turbulence on both sides, causing not only parasitic drag, but also uneven buffeting force against the rails and the stabilizing fin, which would add more drag.

The Ku Nalu board is known to be a relatively fast standard board with a short nose and squash tail that permit straight rails

Most race boards, even 12′ ones like this Naish Glide, tend to have long pintails

Joe Bark’s racing boards, like this 16 footer, are even more extreme

While the S.I.C. F16′s and F18 tend to have blunter tails

I talked with designers like Mark Raaphorst whose F16′s figure large in the top ten finishers at almost any race, almost any place. Most of Mark’s open class race boards have a somewhat flattened tail. I asked him why his boards didn’t have pintails.  I didn’t take notes, so these aren’t really quotes–just the sense of what I recall  Mark saying:

Some of them do. Depends on what people are using the board for and where they paddle. If people are going to paddle in flatwater then a pintail is great, but in swells, especially following ones or in high wind, the squarer tail separates flow cleaner and the straighter rails let you catch the swells and plane quicker.

I suggested that the pintail might balance buoyancy better and he said: Nah, look how little difference we’re talking about. He grabbed a pintail template off the wall and dropped it onto a F16 tail. I could immediately see that it wasn’t much. This is all about flow and making a board catch a swell, or not.

Mark’s explanation made sense–sort of, but I still didn’t really know why a pinail would work in flat water.  One of the guys on the Stand Up Zone came to my rescue with an email address for a guy named Al Bowers who he said was an aerodynamicist for Nasa and a Surfski paddler. I sent him this email:

A fellow Stand Up Zone member gave me your email address and said you might be able to blow some smoke away from the issue of watercraft tail design.  I’ve seen that most Surf Canoes, OC’s and racing SUP boards have a pintail, and this doesn’t seem particularly logical to me. Most of the designers I talked to say something like “All the successful designs have Pintails” or “The idea is to disturb the water as little as possible” but neither of these are satisfactory answers.

Viewing the issue strictly from a viscous drag and friction side, it seems the pintail would have more drag for a similar waterline length since the flow would (I think) be separating along the length of the converging sides and the unequal turbulence would create side thrusts as it does in race cars. Seems to me that straight rails and a relatively abrupt square or squash tail would offer less drag.

I would appreciate your views on the subject. I’ve done quite a bit of searching on the web, but haven’t found many technical papers that offered enlightenment. I’m not planning to design any craft, I’m just looking to satisfy my curiosity and perhaps stimulate some new thinking on these issues. People tend to design things because they have “always been done that way”. Absent budgets for tank testing and sophisticated analysis I don’t think attempts to make a better hull will be very creative without some discussion to spark experimentation.

Thanks for your time in considering this request.

In  remarkably short time I got this reply:

Thanks for the note. I dunno if you’ve received any info on my background. I spent 20 years as an aerodynamicist in the Fluid Mechanics branch here at NASA dryden (located at Edwards Air force Base). I love aircraft, especially low speed and motorless flight (both a hang glider pilot and a sailplane pilot). I did my graduate work on laminar flow and sailplane airfoil computer code validation against wind tunnel and flight research data. I’m also an avid sailor (since I was a kid), paddler, and rower. Used to swim a bit and freedive. The one thing I never did do was surf (long story here, but I didn’t have much time for it, you see I also backpack, hike, do photography at a very serious level, and a bit of climbing). I’m also a bit of a musician (guitar mostly), did some studio work a zillion years ago. After I did my 20 years as a working aerodynamicist, I was promoted to the position of Chief of Aerodynamics, and then did a stint as the Deputy Director of Research at NASA Dryden, and I did an invited residency as a Special Assistant to the Associate Administrator of Aeronautics at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC. I am currently the Director of Aeronautics Projects at NASA Dryden. One other bit, I have sat on the board of Cal Poly University (San Luis Obispo) for 16 years for Mechanical Engineering, and two years ago I paid for four students to do their research project building a custom ICF Sprint K1 based on an optimal genetic algorithm (we were trying to rebalance the wave drag to skin friction drag, the theory said we should see a 3-4% decrease in drag at sprint speeds, we didn’t succeed, but the kayak worked as predicted, it failed due to other problems; I still have the boat and the molds). BTW, my wife and I paid for that project out of our own pockets.

ENOUGH! It turns out your friends are right. A pintail IS the optimum for most of the paddling we do. The flow REALLY does stay attached and flow back along the sides, FOR MOST OF THE PADDLING WE DO. Note the caveat at the end. Below hull speed (that taking the LWL in feet, take the square root of that, then multiply by 1.34, and that is the approximate “hull speed” in displacement mode) we are operating in pure displacement mode. Above this speed, we start to experience some hydrodynamic lift. By the time we get to double the hull speed, there is enough hydrodynamic lift that we start to leave the displacement mode behind. This regime is the transition range. Above this, we make enough hydrodynamic lift that we can consider ourselves planing. To plane is where all shortboard surfers and windsurfers operate. They need enough speed to LIFT the board and rider out of the water. At this point you don’t want a pintail anymore. You NEED straight rails and the hull should resemble a speedboat or a ski boat more than a kayak hull.

Now, back to those speeds, the “hull speed” of a 17 ft paddleboard or kayak is about 5.5 knots. A 21 ft surfski or solo outrigger is about 6.2 knots. So to breakout and plane we need to be going about 11-12 knots. This is well within the range of surfing.

There’s a long complicated theory with all this, but that’s the way it works out for us. BTW, sprint speeds are right in that 10-11 knot range. And people have played with planing type hulls for the 500m and 1000m races sprinter run. But its VERY marginal to plane. There was a French windsurfer that built a special low-speed planing board some years ago. In the 7-10 knot range his board was unbeatable. Below that, the old style long boards crushed him. And above that speed, the shortboards annihilated him. It always works out this way.

I hope this helps. If you’ve got further questions, drop me a line.

Best regards,

Al Bowers

So OK. Now I know. On to the next question

New Race Board

Some time ago there was a somewhat heated challenge on the StandUp Zone (the most active forum in the SUP world: http://www.standupzone.com) regarding the notion that a long hulled racing board with an average paddler on it could beat an elite paddler on a 12 foot board. In the course of the debate (I favored the long hulled board) I wound up buying the board in question.

I know you might have some trouble making that jump. All I can say is that you kind of had to be there. But I’m thrilled with the outcome. There is now an amazingly zooty-looking 18’8″ 572 Penetrator making it’s way to Maui with my name on it.

My “ownership” of this board is kind of a debatable concept. There’s already quite a queue of people ready to use it for a day or three, and it’s being spoken of as sort of community property that I’ll be storing. That’s a fine thing. I’m looking forward to sharing this thing. I just want to pat it at night and perhaps wax it now and then to preserve the shine.

Should be here on my Birthday, or thereabouts. I plan to paddle it 62 miles the first few days (NO, I’m not going to try to do that in a single day) to celebrate.

Jimmy Lewis Paddles–Very Different

Leave it to Jimmy to do it his own way. While everyone else is making very stiff carbon fibre shafts, Jimmy decided to add flex. Jimmy went through a lot of prototypes and a couple of different manufacturers to get a shaft with smooth flex along its length that is also extremely strong. The result is something you’ll have to try. Especially if you have beaten-up shoulders like mine or you’d like a little help catching waves.

The idea is this, to not only add some compliance to reduce the shock of paddling to your shoulders, back and arms, but also to extend the pull time when you’re pushing for a wave. The effect is most noticeable with a big blade, so Jimmy worked with Jimmy Terrell to use his molds for the Peahi and the Kanaha. I’ve tried both Quickblade versions in their carbon fiber standard form. I love the Kanaha Quickblade, the Peahi was too much for my shoulders.

In the Jimmy Lewis version I chose the Peahi so I could best appreciate the idea behind this paddle. To start with it’s a great looking paddle. The blade is clear fiberglass, tinted various colors. Mine is a bright, translucent orange. I cut the paddle to my standard surfing length–with the joint between the paddle and blade at eye level.

I took it out surfing on a pretty big day at Kanaha–overhead sets with the occasional bigger wave. On the paddle out to the reef i started having my doubts. The extreme flex of the shaft made the paddle seem weak, though I eventually realized that my board speed seemed to be the same as always. Once I reached the whitewater i found I was powering through just as I do with my other paddles. I realized that i wasn’t feeling the catch of the blade, just the steady pull, and that made it feel funny.

Shaft and blade in an un-flexed condition

Applying pressure creates a smooth curve, with the paddle still digging

The lineup was pretty crowded, so I moved to the far left to catch some waves backside, towards the channel. In the main lineup at Kanaha most folks prefer to go right. When I started paddling into the waves the paddle felt very odd. I’d plant the blade and give hard pull and the handle would flex a great deal. I made a few waves, and once in the wave the paddle and blade felt perfectly normal, but the launch felt very strange.

After about an hour I started to get it. You plant the blade well forward, pull like hell and don’t yank the blade out of the water to stroke again, just let it do it’s thing. The board accelerates a little slower at first, but the push is longer, so the board seems to get more acceleration at the end of the stroke, when a normal paddle would be not pushing at all. If you need a second stroke it works the same way, near the end of the stoke it feels like you’re being launched by a rubber band.

I thought at first that the idea was to give you sort of a flick forward as the paddle unbends, but that’s not it. The paddle feels like it extends the amount of time that power is being applied.

It’s really easy to catch waves once you get the way the paddle works. It’s particularly good when you’re feeling rushed, the big launch you get from the end of a single stroke will get you to the happy place. And at the end of a very, very long session–no shoulder pain.

Like anything different, this paddle takes some getting used to. It’s a new idea about how stand up paddles should work, and a good one. I’m looking forward to trying the Kanaha version as well. But in this form, the Peahi is winner for me and my dodgy shoulders.

The JL Peahi reminds me of the Superfreak sails I like so well. Yes, the all Mylar sails hold a more precise shape and give greater initial power. The Superfreak sails gather speed like a heavy car with a big motor–smooth and steady. There’s something very reassuring about this kind of power modulation. Not only is it easy to manage, but it also provides an extra bit of oomph when you expect a lull. The big blade also makes it very easy to turn the board with quick sweeping strokes, because you don’t flex the shaft much when you’re making those turning strokes.

All in all I’d say that anyone looking for an extremely effective surfing paddle should give one of these a try.

SUP Fishing

Fishing from a stand up paddle board is a natural–you can get it into the water easier than even a kayak. You can see down onto reefs better than you can on any other craft I’ve experienced, and you can fish comfortably in places any boat would fear to tread–kelp beds, shallow water with waves, tricky leeward shores. You can cast from a standing position, and fight your fish either standing or sitting.

You don’t need much gear–a plastic “milk crate” from Office Max holds all my stuff–I think it cost about ten bucks. My big Starboard 12’6″ X 30 already had inserts in the front deck, so I made a frame out of PVC pipe and screwed it to the deck. the fishing crate then bungees to the frame. The frame is good for a lot of things–carrying kids or the dog, stowing a pack with water and lunch, tossing any plastic trash I find while I’m doing a downwinder.  I leave it on the 12’6″ all the time, even when I’m surfing on it.

A piece of PVC pipe zip tied to the crate serves as a fine rodholder. I have a Dakine fishing roll that holds my lures, hooks, weights, tools, etc. And I generally drag along a double sided tackle box though I have yet to open it. The Dakine roll really holds all I need. A good saltwater baitcaster rod and rell setup, some extra sunscreen and goofy hat rounds out the gear.

I generally use a floating lure that pulls down a foot or so at paddling speed. I copied what the kayak fishermen were using on the south and west side. So far it’s been very productive, though I’ve been releasing all the fish. I always figure I’ll catch something to keep just before I paddle in–but so far that hasn’t happened. I’ve recently added a net bag to keep fish fresh in, we’ll se how that works out.

Battle of the Paddle–Lots of Pictures

…The beach break behind me looked about head high. I thought “oh great, I’m going to finish the race by getting worked in front of 500 spectators” but I managed to catch it before it crumbled and got out in front of the whitewater. I beached the board at full speed and stumbled up the steep bank. I ran into the chute for the finish line, but my legs started wobbling as soon as I hit the soft sand. So I just walked through the serpentine and crossed the line, losing four places with my geezer plodding. But hey, I made it…

The Rainbow Sandals Gerry Lopez Battle of the Paddle was remarkably well organized for a first year event. Simply put, it was a historic occasion, and the organizers rose to the challenge, and then some. I’ve put on an event or two, and achieving this degree of organization is very hard and very expensive. Everyone involved deserves more than just congratulations. They deserve your support and encouragement. Next year should be amazing. One word to the organizers–get some food vendors for the spectators. A thousand hungry people on a beach is a great opportunity.

On to the pictures, I’ll flesh this article out more later:

Set Up Day: The day before the BOP

New quickblade paddles with beautiful wood blades

Modeled by the lovely Diane

“But I don’t want to be on the Internet”

There were paddles everywhere, here’s some new colored quickblades

New 12′ starboard for the pro race with a centerboard fin. Ekolu Kalama (right side) paddled it and looked fast during practice but retired early as the race conditions made the board impossible.

Everyone was so happy with the flat conditions. They lasted until about two minutes after the race started.

Jimmy Lewis came with three of his Distance boards and others to demo.

New Werner Paddles

I received this news release from Werner Paddles yesterday and asked for pictures. They look pretty interesting, the shapes are unusual, I wish the picture showed the shape from the side and back as well, but here’s what I have:
For Release: Trade: August 25, 2008

Werner Expands Stand Up Paddle Offerings
Werner Paddles has announced the introduction of two new Stand Up Paddles: The Werner Advantage and the Werner Carve. Both paddles will be available to ship beginning September 01, 2008.

As participation explodes in the Stand Up Paddle category, Werner is responding with new paddle designs that focus on the two aspects of the sport, touring and surfing.

The new Werner Advantage
The Advantage is a Premium fiberglass laminate construction blade with a modified tear drop shape designed to optimize straight ahead efficiency for touring.

The new Werner Carve

The Carve consists of the same construction as the Advantage but the shape is smaller, longer and more slender, specifically designed for dynamic surfing and turning.

Both the Advantage and the Carve come with a fiberglass oval indexed shaft and ABS Palm-grip. Werner offers three shaft configurations. The 1-piece is the lightest weight option and is least expensive ($219).

The 2–piece is perfect for paddlers who travel with their paddle ($234). The Adjustable length telescopes with four settings, each 1.5 inches apart; perfect for those individuals who move between touring and surfing ($259).

“Stand Up Paddling is a real growth opportunity for surf and paddle sports dealers. We are excited to expand our Stand Up Paddle offerings to respond to the specific demands of the market,” says Jim Miller, Werner’s Marketing Manger.

Werner Paddles is the leading manufacturer of high quality kayak, canoe, and stand up paddles, operating near the banks of the Skykomish River in Sultan, WA. For more information call 800.275.3311 or visit us at www.wernerpaddles.com

Liam’s Alaskan Adventure

Liam Wilmot of C4 Waterman submitted this interesting story of an Alaskan SUP adventure using a ULI inflatable SUP board.

–ALASKA June 6th. Field Report.

Being a surfer in a surf-orientated family that lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, a trip to Alaska in the middle of summer may seem a strange choice of destination. However, with the onset of stand up paddling and its potential to make any day on any body of water a blast, a trip to the land of 10,000 glaciers with a sun that never set promised to be a real adventure.

Flying up Shelikof Straight and Cook Inlet into our arrival point of Anchorage, it was stirring to see mountains and snow after such a lengthy tropical hiatus. When you see glaciers like this one below, so huge they’re easily visible from 10,000 feet, it’s mind-boggling to think that thousands of years of flow-freeze are now rapidly dissipating – inches every year, sometimes even feet.

With seemingly endless potential for flat water adventures it was hard not to pump up the ULI (ultra light inflatable) and paddle out at every turn.

My first attempt failed. Overcome by the scenery I opted to save time by dissing the wetsuit and confidently headed out in my shorts and vest! My toes nearly froze off. One word of advice on the ULI, be sure to inflate to the recommended level. Anything less and it won’t be anywhere near as rigid as you need it to be. It’s rigid or frigid in Alaska!

On second attempt I would go all out. The wetsuit was lent to me by Garrett McNamarra, who tested and proved it last year towing into calving glacier waves in SE Alaska. You really need a good wetsuit. This one was a 7mm Hotline full suit with a built in hood, plus booties and gloves. Toasty!! Thanks GMac. (Like all wetsuits, they make you look fat

I rode the converging waters of glacial melt from Exit Glacier and the flow of Resurrection River for about 7 miles.
It took me a little over an hour.

Freezing water, snow and glaciers were a totally new experience for me. My friend Charlie McArthur, C4′s team rider up on the Colorado River, probably would have laughed at me. The white water (mini) rapids hardly compare to the walls of white water he scales with ease. Any how, I figured I would wear the bright yellow rash vest for visibility. I had a WalMart issue 2-way radio in a zip lock stuffed down the front of my suit should I need contact my wife in the trailing RV. If I got into trouble and had to bail, a walk through bear country might be less scary if I could hear our kids arguing in the RV! I had a leash. I have read horror stories about surfers getting trapped, overcome by the force of the current and not being able to reach their leash to remove it, but I didn’t want to go with out it, despite that ‘free’ feeling. So… I fastened it to my elbow