Surfing Waves

Hi folks,

Hope you are all well. I've just got back from three days of surfing down on the Cornish coast here in the UK. The first two days were awesome and I scored plenty of waves on my new 9'6. However, the third day was frustrating. I was surfing just after high tide on a far corner of a pretty popular beach break. For the life of me I couldn't catch any waves for over an hour. I was joined in my far corner by a young female surfer, also on a 9'6 by the looks of it, who proceeded to score wave after wave. I reckon she caught 10 waves for every one I caught. I tried to analyse why I was making a complete hash of things. It wasn't my position, I made sure I paddled out to the same position on the peak as the other wave catching machine surfer. It made no difference. I would paddle hard on the set waves but they just passed me by. I noticed the other surfer appeared not to paddler hard but she nailed it and caught the set wave every single time. She made it look so effortless. Maybe it's an age and weight thing? I'm 52 and weigh 84kg. She was probably early 20s and petite. She could also have been a competitive longboarder for all I know. However, I did find it very frustrating and a bit soul destroying, especially after the previous days of catching loads of waves. Do these kind of frustrating sessions happen to anyone else? Maybe it was a lack of knowledge in surfing high tide conditions at this particular beach (the previous two good days of surfing happened at another break)? How can I improve things in these situations? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks for reading.

It's combination of experience, skills and stamina. No matter how fit you are, going 3 consecutive days is going to wear you out. Plus the frustration will get to your head too, the harder you try the more you mess up. That gets me sometimes and I eventually end up injuring myself.

9'6 is really big for a petite woman though, it's like you going on a 10'0 surf board. The weight and buoyancy is going to be in their favor.

Depending on the break, high tide is generally very mellow around here and would require you to sit closer to the shore and paddle harder.

cornish1970 wrote:I was surfing just after high tide on a far corner of a pretty popular beach break. For the life of me I couldn't catch any waves for over an hour.

I usually sit out during high tide at my beach break. There's so much water over the sandbars that the 3-4 foot waves don't rise enough for me to catch even with a 9'2" board. It makes perfect sense that a light surfer on a big board would have more success than you in these conditions. After an hour or so the water flows out and the fun begins! Keep in mind that in the outgoing tide the sweet takeoff spot moves a little outside and the waves are more pitchy.

Just because others are catching the waves in a particular lineup doesn't mean that is the best place for you but guessing at your statement this is how you judge waves (by where others lineup for them). I guess that is the starting place but you can try some different positions. Another may be that because you are surfing consecutive days your arms may be tired and weaker. Many other possible reasons for your failure to catch waves

cornish1970 wrote: I was joined in my far corner by a young female surfer, also on a 9'6 by the looks of it, who proceeded to score wave after wave. I reckon she caught 10 waves for every one I caught. I tried to analyse why I was making a complete hash of things. It wasn't my position, I made sure I paddled out to the same position on the peak as the other wave catching machine surfer. It made no difference. I would paddle hard on the set waves but they just passed me by. I noticed the other surfer appeared not to paddler hard but she nailed it and caught the set wave every single time. She made it look so effortless. Maybe it's an age and weight thing? I'm 52 and weigh 84kg. She was probably early 20s and petite.

A couple of reasons:
1) Your board is too small to get on the wave for your height / weight ( or maybe it's too big and the board can't "sit" down into the water surface )
2) Your board has more rocker than hers, so it pushes water ( or maybe your board has less rocker than hers, so it catches the nose )
3) Your board has more nose concave for noseriding, which slows down the board ( or maybe her board doesn't have nose concave )
4) You should have set up further in ( or maybe you should have set up further out depending on how many strokes it takes to get up to spee )
5) You paddled too slow to get on the wave ( or you maybe paddled too hard )

Questions:
1) You were both in the same take off spot but was she "fading" her take off ?
2) Why were you on the shoulder in the first place ? Why didn't you take off from the peak ?
3) How many paddle strokes were you taking compared to her ?

Thanks so much for all of the replies. I think all of you nailed the problems to a certain degree. It was a mixture of my weight/choice of board/energy levels plus conditions. A local legend in Newquay told me years ago to concentrate on getting 10 good waves and then consider leaving the water. My problem is that I am nearly 4 hours away from the Atlantic, so I try to get as much water time as possible during my surf trips. 3 solid days of surfing certainly takes a toll on my body. In future I think I should just sit out at high tide on this particular beach.

@waikikikichan - I was on my Bing import, so yes the board has some nose concave. I didn't get to examine the other surfers board up close. To answer your questions:

1) She wasn't fading take offs
2) I realised I was too far out on the shoulder and tried to position myself close to the shifting peaks.
3) I was taking more paddle strokes.

I will from time to time have trouble catching a particular peak. Most often there will be no one else trying to catch that peak and while these are not waves that people would think of as longboard waves I did the same thing on a longboard. What I do is try to catch the wave from the shoulder where I feel completely comfortable and then try a little further toward the peak and keep trying till I reach the peak and if I still haven't caught a wave then I will try from the opposite side of the peak and further and further. If the wave is breaking further out and that strategy didn't work I may try the next peak out and see if I can get up some speed to get into that section as generally when I am having a problem it's a steep hollow section on a wave. Another strategy to go a little further out and paddle a little sooner for the wave so that I have more speed before the wave gets there. This probably won't help if your arms are tired.

You wouldn't be talking Widemouth Bay would you?

There's a very narrow window of opportunity there to catch waves coming up to high tide, the swell hits the bank and just flattens off.
Last week one day the surf was pumping one minute and everyone was catching waves then as the tide got high no one was catching waves apart from the odd 5 stone kid on very late take offs.
If that girl was petite and you're 84kgs on similar boards she's probably gonna snaffle a few more than you. Maybe she lives here and reads the take off well?
If you're travelling 4 hours to get here, I guess you don't see the break very often, it's not a bad idea to have a really good look at what the swell is doing before you go in.
I don't think there's a single surfer on the planet who hasn't eaten the humble pie now and again of being outsurfed, but isn't that what drives us to be better?
2 days ago, I paddled out...then paddled back in, caught no waves - that's surfing!

It was Watergate.

I ate my humble pie on that day but I will be back....just maybe not at high tide!

Sometimes you can get in your head a bit if you are next to a really good surfer who is catching loads, this can make me misread waves sometimes. Also she might have been going for the best waves of the set. Also you probably need to position yourself further towards the beach than a lighter surfer on same size board, as you will need a steeper wave than they do all other things being equal.