Surfing Waves

was out the other day on a pretty challenging reef (for me ie. bit steeper than I'm used to), with a friend from work who's much more experienced than I am (pretty good at pushing me into something i would have been aprehensive about trying otherwise).

anyway, i noticed that some of the time he wasn't really dropping in, more like gliding gracefully onto the face. sort of giving a few paddles then one two armed paddle and throwing his head forward and arms back. when i asked him about this he said that there is a point when paddling for a wave that the wave either has you or it doesn't. at this point you have to get your weight forward and that putting your hands in the water only creates drag slowing you down.

anyway i tried this afterwards, and had immediate success. didn't miss a wave the rest of the session. chalked up about 15 waves compared to my usual 5 or so good ones. more unusual as it was a left break on my backhand.

might seem a kooky way to take off, but what it allowed me to do was glide about halfway down the face and point in the right direction before getting to my feet, or during the process of getting to my feet, away from the lip, sort of like bodyboarding.

this make sense to anyone else, or anyone else take off this way? tried telling a mate who's at about the same level as myself and just got funny looks.

more to the point tho, is this something that is likely to slow down my progression, sort of cheating? should I just keep on charging and taking waves on the head till i start making most of my drops as i have been up till now?

Yup - this does the job on the really steep parts of the wave - almost too ' dainty ' to believe, one maybe two scoops of ocean, weight well forward and off to go.

Once you notice it you'll recognise the technique in loads of surf footage.

BUT you can do similar under the peak too, scoop scoop and away as the lips descends around you - can get some really vertical drops like this too - though the likelihood of going over the falls increases because your positioning will become critical to within a board length or so.

Saves on the paddling though !

Keep it up, edge closer to the peak and see how it feels

Nope, won't slow down your progression, matter of fact it might make you better. You'll be taking off later in the wave, which means steeper take-offs, so in essence you are taking off harder, not easier. It also means you are getting better, bet there was no way you could do that last year

Just be carefull in bigger surf that you don't end up getting sucked up, but you'll get the hang of that too...

thanks for the reassurance... definitely couldn't take off that deep this time last year. that plus learning to duck-dive has given me the confidence to sit deeper. just a pity we're well into summer now and the next decent swell could be a while away.
can't wait to give it another go... maybe even call someone off a wave for a change