Fear of close out

[saltydog]

Nearly all the breaks there are left hander. There is some right hander but it is short and closes out very quickly.

I'm regular foot so surfing left hander is much harder for me.

I hear you. I'm a goofy footer surfing a right hander point so not many chances of front side rides if any. Same with one of my kids. And a local surf instructor who's been surfing the same spot primarily growing up until now, for 30+ years. That guy says at this point he can make a 12ft wave backside no problem but not as confident on the front side. So, just get used to riding backside like what oldmansurfer says. It's been taking me a good deal of time to make a clean bottom turn and I'm not quite there yet but I can make a more decent frontside bottom turn only after a half dozen tries. So in a sense that we are sort of forced to work on stuff that many see as not so easy, which I think is a good thing for learning! And I also agree with pmcaero on backside turn being actually easier... at least on my carver skateboard where I can actually make decent small radius turns.

[surf patrol]

I'm posting two videos of the second day where I rented a 8" board and surfed on a left hand break. This breaks much nicer and doesn't close out as quickly. This was after the surf session as the wave got smaller and sets took longer to arrive.

I was fine with a longer board and wasn't too scared of it closing out. But some of the bigger sets were generating small barrel for a few seconds. Who knew NY got such good waves! I had trouble paddling out after an hour, lack of stamina even though the paddle was like 25m lol.
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