A few more changes, and then back to it

For those of you that have been following along, the migration to Dreamhost is complete, and I’m working on the new look and feel. I think people will like the new navigation–there will be several feature stories, selectable by tabs according to the topic. Below that will be picture-oriented articles, with lead pictures that you can scroll through or jump right into the article. And finally there will be how-to and tip articles.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of paddling and some surfing. The oregon coast is not as friendly as Maui–even with a drysuit. But I’m having fun. Went to Manzanita for about a week to do some work on my old beach house there, and get in a little surfing. I’m planning to sell the house. It’s a very cool little thing, designed for low upkeep, low costs, and nearly zero maintenance, but I’m not using it, and that’s just a shame. Next time I go I’ll shoot some pictures–you never know, someone reading this might be interested.

My friend Paul Montgomery came down for a couple of days of SUP surfing. He’s an old Seaside surfer, but I turned him to the dark side last year in Maui. We hit Pacific City on Saturday and ran into Randall Barna. Randy has a popular blog on SUP and runs around with a bunch of loonies in Bend that are paddling in the deschutes and the lakes of Central Oregon, as well as doing the 170 mile “commute” to Pacific Beach every so often for some waves. Quite a coincidence bumping into him and his nice family. A real pleasure.

The waves were dinky, the water was 43 degrees, it was windy and choppy–in other words, we had a great time. Surfed until we couldn’t paddle any more, went back to Manzanita and collapsed, then did it again the next morning. No wind, but even smaller waves because the tide was out. Once it came in the wind came up, but we had a fine morning session, then back to Portland.

How To Fall On A Reef

You’re blissfully riding a shoulder, planning your next turn, when suddenly you see coral heads and seaweed just past the nose of your board–ah, that’s why everyone else was cutting out of the wave fifty feet before. As the reef grabs your fin and you sail through the air you contemplate a long session with hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin…

Stand Up Paddlesurfing seems much worse than longboarding for coral cuts. I think it’s because the big floaty boards tempt you deeper into trouble, or just that they don’t turn out the back of a wave very easily. I’ve become an expert at falling on a reef. I do it all the time. I’ve invested in Pfizer to offset my ointment purchases. Most surf spots include a place that can grate a few ounces off your feet knees and elbows. Here’s how to deal with a reef:

1. Stay outta there! Turn out of the wave long before you get to the shallows. Don’t straighten up and run with the foam if the wave closes out, pop out the back if you can. You might not want to get worked by the closeout, but riding the whitewater in can leave you in a much worse condition–paddling over a shallow reef with whitewater bearing down on you. Not fun.

2. Don’t fall! As soon as you see that you are well and truly screwed, step back on the board to raise the nose and brake your speed, and drop down onto your board.

3. Be one with the surface. When you fall, fall flat. Spread your arms and legs, don’t dive, fall onto your back as flat as you can. Think like a sheet of paper. Arch your back as you hit, don’t stick your butt down. Pretend you’re falling onto a bed of pitchforks–because you are. Paddle on your back until you can collect your board, crawl onto it, and beat feet.

4. Don’t stand on the reef. It doesn’t even matter if you think you see a sandy spot, there might be something there waiting to stick you. Sure, you look like a putz flopping around on your back weakly trying to get onto your board, but standing on the reef–even with booties on, it’s a sure recipe for a coral cut. You might get away with it two times out of three, but the third time can be a doozy. Perhaps a nice sea urchin spine between your toes, or a deep slice above your heel when a wave rocks you backwards.

5. Watch how you kick. Most of my cuts are on top of my toes–kicked a rock getting on, ouch! Make your body float up parallel to the surface before you kick, and then kick horizontally. Grab your board by the far edge and pull it under you. The edge of a deck pad helps with this maneuver.

6. Go with the flow. The water is heading off the reef just like you. Unless it’s taking you towards an exposed rock, you are usually best off going with the heaviest flow.

Learning From The Masters–In Photos

Laird Hamilton at Peahi

What could you possibly learn from Laird Hamilton? The guy is way beyond the understanding of we mere mortals. That’s not just goofy hero worship. Not only is he an ultimate waterman, but he’s a visionary. He’s helped to birth multiple water sports including tow-in surfing and the renaissance of stand up paddle surfing. He was the first person I ever heard say that nearly anyone could do Stand Up at some level. His first production board was aimed not at the absurd level of expertise that he and his friends are capable of, but at the absolute beginner. He charts his own course, and we all wait to see what he’s going to do next.

But the answer to the first question is: Plenty. As a very simple example, look where his rear foot is in the picture above, and look where his weight is applied. His foot is slightly towards the inside rail, all he needs to do is shift his weight to his toes to press the rail down and turn the board, but his weight is still centered, keeping the board trimmed flat and letting it accelerate.

Now look where his weight is–his foot hasn’t moved, but the board is carving hard. This technique of anticipating a turn with foot placement but not initiating the turn until you are ready seems critical in controlling our big boards at any level. Stepping forward or back on the board, shifting a foot to one rail or the other, all without shifting your weight, is the way to maintain precise control. If you step and shift weight at the same time you’ll probably over control the board which generally means you’ll fall.

Fully committed to the Turn

Observe where his weight is applied, he’s cranking the rails hard and has his weight fully in the center of the turn. Look at where his hand is on the paddle–slid way up the shaft, with the blade skimming the face of the wave, not dragging to slow him, but cutting to act as a stabilizer. Of course he’s done this a thousand times, and it’s as automatic as sneezing, but his actions show us what we need to learn.

Cutting back on the face

Now his weight is back over the center. The board is trimmed flat. You can tell from the slash above his head and the blade angle that he’s been using the paddle to brake a little to hold in the pocket. The paddle is extremely versatile. You can speed up, slow down, stabilize, lift the tail of the board, steer from the nose, any number of things that a prone surfer has to do differently or do without.

Dropping in

Wide stance, centered on the board, staying low.

Bottom turn

Pay no attention to the tons of seawater over your head… Where was I, oh yeah, notice he’s moved his foot to the inner rail to push this turn hard.

Pushing Hard

Look how much force he’s applying to the board, he’s blowing water off the bottom, and his paddle is planted as a pivot point stabilizing him so he can press even harder on the rails. look at the bend in the paddle.

Finishing the turn
Note the foot position, on the inner rail, weight centered over the turning rail, paddle skimming for stability.

A boy and his playground

Here’s an interesting paddle-handling sequence at Ho’okipa:

Skimming the paddle to steer from a forward position

Dragging and skimming

Dragging to stay in the barrel

but sometimes ya just surf

Here’s a move I copied from watching Laird and others and have since perfected to a degree for myself. For me it’s not anything this elegant, and so I call it the “whitewater flail”.

A prone surfer facing a closeout this size would be wise to dive into the face of the wave. If they try to run down the face their speed will slacken just as the lip falls on them. Not a good thing. Generally a ticket for a free ride over the falls.

But Laird uses the power of his paddle to stay ahead, and then presses the paddle back in the whitewater to lighten the tail and simultaneously keep the nose from being pushed under in a power pearl.

Your success in staying on the board in the turbulence may not be as high as Laird’s, but you won’t be going over the falls–that’s already done, finis, pau, over.

Guy must have feet like a gecko

We’ve got a lot more of this coming, courtesy of Darrell Wong, a tremendously talented photographer. You can see more of his work at www.darrellwong.com. In the next installment we’ll look at some astonishing power turns by Robby Naish (yes, he’s a hell of a good surfer, that should come as no surprise) and flatwater strokes perfected by looking at some of the best racing paddlers in the world, including ocean canoe paddlers.

In the meantime, have fun, paddle hard.

Comments Welcome

Ke Nalu is a big experiment, and one test was making people jump a small threshold to leave comments (register and respond to a Captcha spambot test). The result is not many comments. I consider comments to be the lifeblood of online publishing, so I’ve turned all that off for the time being. I’m still going to work to minimize the spam, but I need to hear from all of you readers about what you like and don’t, what experiences you have, and where you’d like this publication to go.

The venerable Ponohouse blog had several postings with more than 100 comments. i don’t expect to see that level–there are a lot of places for SUP folks to spend time online these days. But I do value your input. Please comment.

Surf Guest–That Soap Is Not For You

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.