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 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