Your Best,Wave, Surf, Story do tell us sharing!

[oldmansurfer]

Back 40 years ago I started surfing a break in Hanalei. I just called it Hanalei but others made a distinction between the outer portion called Impossibles which I am not sure why they call it that since it is usually possible and the inside break called the bowl which occasionally combined flawlessly into the same wave but usually there was a long section between them where you had to pump through to get to he bowl section before it broke. My friends who I met there surfing told me about backdooring the bowl. They said you had to go through the bowl after the lip had touched down. I tried and tried and tried and began to think they were playing a joke on me because I was the newbie out there but then I did it. It's all a matter of timing and speed. It became a goal of mine at other breaks to backdoor the peak. Ultimately it is really difficult to do and the ride is generally not as enjoyable because you get so deep it isn't a clean tube ride often (you get caught by the foam ball) and you are going so fast you come out of the tube quickly also..... but to know you did this very difficult thing is rewarding.

I also wanted to get spit out of the tube so I went to a break called Cannons because it is a hollow left that often spits at the end. The first time I went was with a friend and I got tubed a few times but no spitting. So I went back a couple other times then I got spit so hard the force of the spray actually hurt and it nearly blew me off my board. I haven't ever gone back to that break because it is a shallow reef break and dangerous. However since then I have been spit out of many waves even my home break waves and even sometimes so much force it blows me completely off my board. I have much smaller simpler goals these days

[oldmansurfer]

I know perhaps some of you think I am crazy for getting pounded so many times but I forgot to mention they said if I wasn't able to backdoor the bowl they might not allow me to surf there. Also you only get pounded when you are going too slow or enter too late (and the pounding you take from inside a tube isn't so bad generally). If you are too early which was quite often the case for me at Hanalei then it was a beautiful huge hollow curving tube. And if you backdoor it all just perfect it is a beautiful tube but for me that was difficult and more of the times that I made it was a wet ride with foam and chandeliering water curtains all over the place. Man all this has got me wanting to get tubed even more. I am still working on my cutback...hmmmmmmm....maybe I should tube hunt for a bit

[oldmansurfer]

So I have run out of stuff to post in this thread but recent talk of speed turns reminded me of a story. I was surfing at Kealia beach my usual spot back in the day. The usual guys were out at the usual peak but there was a fast breaking peak over a ways am about a 4 foot swell (Hawaiian 4 foot). This was a freight train right that broke from time to time and usually no one surfed it except me because I liked the challenge of trying to make it. Anyway the fast breaking wave broke from quite a distance over and ended right in front of where the regular break was so if I could keep up with the wave I would end up by them then paddle back over to my break. Anyway on one wave I wiped out right by the end of the wave and it sent me skipping across the water. I gathered my board and started paddling back and one of the surfers paddled over to me and said "You were going 30 miles per hour on that one!" I said "Really? How can you tell?" He said "You skipped three times. If you skip once we figured 10 mph and twice 20 mph and that time it was three times so 30 mph." I laughed and said "What about the time I cartwheeled head over heels?" He said "We figured it was between 50 and 100" and laughed.

[oldmansurfer]

So in reality there is no way to estimate speed by how many times you skip. Initially I was irritated that they would be telling me how fast I was going but in retrospect I guess they were recognizing that I was working up some speed. Skipping depends partly on speed and partly on angle of attack and partly on the orientation of your body and what you do when you hit the water. Now I never got hurt during any of those wipeouts/failed cutouts but the potential was there. What seems to be the most violent in head over heels cartwheeling, your head is smacking the ocean repeatedly and you have absolutely no control. Landing sideways and rolling will result in a similar violent out of control thrashing. Penetrating the ocean is dangerous too particularly in this situation where speed comes from turning and not the size of the wave. I could easily hit the bottom even entering at an angle not to mention the deceleration that occurs when you do that. If your body isn't lined up properly it will torque your back. Then there is skipping which isn't so bad so I had been learning how to skip which is why I skipped 3 times on that wave. Often when I wipeout I chose how I do it especially when it seems to me to be a matter of safety.