Surfing Waves

For the longest time I've been trying to perform a decent off-the-lip. Well, it finally happened today. Not only did I pull it off, but I got three of them off on the same five foot wave. I'm stoked. Ain't never done that before. I decided to get away from the SUP riders and the noobs clogging up my regular spot and went out to my now beloved beach break. She rewarded me today. Right around Super Bowl kick off time the place emptied out (it was already pretty empty though) and I had some nice sets roll through. The wave I got was beautiful, but it also felt like it was breaking in slow motion compared to the waves I get in town; they always break really fast. Anyway, the pocket of the wave I took off on seemed to kind of meander along so I actually had time to think about what I wanted to do. I looked for a barrel, but I could see it wasn't there so plan B went into effect (off-the-lip attempt) and I did my bottom turn went up the face of the wave and turned my 9'6" board back down the face, throwing off some vicious mist up there, and was back in the trough. I looked at the pocket again and it was still meandering there so I did it again. And, well, then I did it again. If I could have I would've went for another one, but my wave was turning into shore pound so I kicked out and watched the wave pound the sand from above it. It was fun .

The funny thing is that I had kept thinking that my inability to do a decent top turn was because of my 9'6" longboard. I was wrong. The board performed perfectly. The weird thing about my board is that the rails are pretty thin, but the board is fairly wide at 23" and is shaped for nose riding. I wasn't really sure if the board was intended to be maneuverable, but I was on rail today and it felt like a shortboard so I figured out that it was me and not the board. I do think that my new fin helped, however. The board really feels more maneuverable with it.

Nice!! I imagine it's probably much harder to do off-the-lip/snaps with a longboard, really cool you pulled it off, and many in a row

IanCaio wrote:Nice!! I imagine it's probably much harder to do off-the-lip/snaps with a longboard, really cool you pulled it off, and many in a row

I didn't think I'd be able to do it either on that board. Usually when I go to the top of the wave on that board I kind of just surf along the lip parallel to it. Today though, I really turned hard on my bottom turn and went up the face more vertically than I have in the past. The wave I was riding also had some power to it so that really helped as well.

Was the super bowl yesterday? Who was playing?

I think the Superbowl is still playing but I do know that Joshua Moniz won the Volcom Pipe Pro. If you don't think you can do something then you won't do it. But in part the wave determines what you can do or not do. That your own limitations that you have or believe you have.

Imagine scoring a 10 at Pipe...and losing the final!

The surf simply coaches (on their podcast) often says the biggest issue with older/ less frequent surfers is that they refuse to try new things for fear of ‘wasting’ a wave - whereas kids might go and surf for 2 hrs just practicing one move. So, as old man says, if you don’t believe and then don’t try - well, you miss 100% of the turns you don’t try.

dtc wrote:Imagine scoring a 10 at Pipe...and losing the final!

I cheered so loudly when JOB got the 10 my neighbors probably thought it was some delayed reaction from the Superbowl

When I restarted surfing I surfed a 9'6" longboard but I am not a longboarder so I surfed it the way I wanted to including off the lips. Some of the limitations of surfing is how you define yourself. (old, longboarder etc.)

Nothing quite like see a longboard arc through a big top turn with all but the tail swing over the lip. Smackos

When I first took my longboard out in overhead lefts at Horners I did accidental off the lips. It was perhaps because I didn't have enough control over the board and I was scared by the waves and wanted to go faster. This translated into me overturning and going straight back up the face where the lip smacked my board and I came back down. It seemed like a fun kind of automatic maneuver so I kept doing it and somewhere around every third time I would get hit so hard by the lip that I would be catapulted off the board. I bet if someone was watching waves where I completed a few in a row without getting tossed they would have thought my skill level was much higher than it was. Reality was that was my only option, well that or just cruise along. When I finally started to do off the lips frontside (maybe a year or two later) I found it was much more dangerous as a late hit off the lip frontside shot the board right back at my face instead of catapulting me so just a word of caution.

Just to be clear, I called my maneuver an off-the-lip, but that's probably inaccurate. The fins of my board weren't anywhere near the lip of the wave. At best about a foot of my board went above the lip and that's when I used my left foot to swing the board back down the face. The turns I made had the arc of about a 90 degree angle. In other words, I was shifting the nose of my board from slightly above the lip to back to going across the wave parallel to the lip. I wish I could say that I was snapping the nose of my board a whole 180 degrees in the opposite direction, but it was more like heading up the face and then swinging the board back onto the middle of the wave and then dropping into the trough again. Rinse and repeat. Anyway, my point is that I finally got away from just flying down the line of a wave to surfing top to bottom. The thing about surfing is that it's really difficult to describe what you're doing on a surfboard because at the time you're doing it it's hard to know what it would look like to someone on the beach.

But it is still effective progress, repeat as necessary and be flexible about the amplitude!

jaffa1949 wrote:But it is still effective progress, repeat as necessary and be flexible about the amplitude!

It's just like they say, "It's not the size or the prize, but the way of the amplitude." Huh? Anyway, you're right . . . I feel more intermediate-ish with each new surf session. My fitness is really the main obstacle preventing me from progressing further. I'm enjoying the journey though. In fact, I was thinking the other day that I'm glad I found surfing in middle age because I appreciate it so much more. The surfing I did in my youth has helped me a lot, however. I went out in some insane surf back in college and those experiences have gone a long way toward helping me control my anxiety in the ocean.