Surfing Waves

The dialog about surfing success reminded me that many surfers don't remember individual waves. They may remember the general conditions but not a specific wave. I never realized this until I read Gerry Lopez's biography. People would ask Gerry what was your best wave? I would have asked him that question if I ever met him because I am so sure his best wave was so incredible but he doesn't remember waves. He says he can remember wipeouts better. I guess after you get incredibly tubed at pipeline 100 times they all seem the same. But I can remember waves from long ago. Not all the waves but just the ones that stood out to me. Sometimes I can remember how it felt to ride the wave or to make a turn or how happy I was after riding the wave.

For instance I remember a tube ride I had at Hanalei not because it was so great (although I remember others because they were so great) but because it wasn't so great. I went there by myself and it was one of those days where the Impossibles section was separated from the Bowl section by about a 30 yard flat section. To connect the two together you had to do speed pumps through the flat area which many surfers didn't do (couldn't do? not sure if that is why). There was a bunch of guys out who I knew and one of them came up to me and told me Titus was watching from the lookout and if you wanted to keep surfing here you had to backdoor the bowl. I had not seen this before but Titus would go around and say "You can surf, you can surf, you get out of the water" pointing his finger at the surfers he was talking to. My friend explained to me that meant I had to time the bowl section so that the lip came down before I hit the peak and go from the back side of the bowl and make it out. I must have caught 20 waves that I attempted to do that on. A few of them I was too late and got pounded but most of them I was too early and got incredible tube rides. I don't recall any of those tube rides but they were really great tubes but so many that nothing individually stands out about them but I finally timed it to backdoor the section and the tube was full of chandeliers or whitewater falling from the top of the tube and hitting me or rather I surfed through them or both. I came out of the tube and it immediately collapsed and I can recall thinking what is supposed to be so good about that? For the good waves I can recall the shape of the tube because it was really hollow with lots of room but the face wasn't steep kind of an odd shaped tube but beautiful. but individual waves not so except the one that I backdoored.

So how many of you remember waves after a session and for how long? And while your at it share the waves you remember good bad or ugly. Also if you don't remember waves I would be likewise interested.

Not as good as yours as I've only been surfing for a year.

After a few months I had my pop up sorted in white water and smaller green waves. I had just started trying to bottom turn. I was struggling to get out the back and catch anything over about 2-3 ft so I started having lessons at a local club. It was my second or third lesson with them it was bigger than I would normally even try and get out the back as it was probably 4-5 ft faces with the occasional bigger coming through, somehow I managed to get out the back and I was doing my usual try to catch a wave nose dive and get catapulted off my board. I can remember paddling for a wave and thought I'm going to have this and popped up a treat went for my bottom turn and nailed it the next thing I found I was going down the line on the biggest wave I'd ever caught and I couldn't see over the back of it. As I got further along the wave was running out of power so I tried to turn it and succeeded and then another kind of bottom turn then rode it until it closed out. After that I managed to fly out back again then went back to my usual nose diving and catapulting for the rest of the session. Even though out of about 20 attempted waves I only caught 1 which I managed to stick I can remember walking back up the beach with the biggest smile on my face.

Another wave that I caught the other day I think will stick with me.

I paddled for a wave popped up and I just seemed to have all the time in the world on it I decided it was a a left handed so off I went on my back hand and thought to myself this would be a nice time to try a cutback so I did a lovely cutback and then just carried on with my wave until it closed out. That session I was on the water for 40 minutes tried for 6 waves, caught 4 and nailed 3. Best session ever.

Way back when I first started to surf I went out alone to Kealia beach because there was no one around for me to get in their way. After about two months of doing this my friends who surfed and knew I was learning invited me to join them for a surf. I said "nothing too big" the biggest I had tried was head high and they all said "Oh yeah. It won't be big" So we go to Kealia beach and it's 4 feet Hawaiian which is 2 feet overhead. I said "It's too big." They said "You aren't afraid of those waves, are you?" I had been paipo boarding with them in bigger surf and without them in much bigger surf. So I thought about it and no I wasn't afraid so I said "Don't laugh at me." and I went out. The first wave I caught I dropped down no problem but making my bottom turn I was off balance and ended up overturning and heading back up the face when I wanted to just go down the line. I tried to adjust and over turned again off balance going straight back to the bottom and continued to overturn each time almost falling but managing to stay on my board. I was so relieved to get to the end of the wave, I cut out and looked around hoping no one saw me make a fool of myself and paddled back out. One of the guys paddled up to me and said "I thought you said you didn't know how to surf man. You were shredding it." I said "I was out of control." He said "Totally!" Funny thing about surfing is that even surfers sometimes think you can surf if you don't fall down.

oldmansurfer wrote: Funny thing about surfing is that even surfers sometimes think you can surf if you don't fall down.

Similar thing happened to me on my 7'6" board. I hadn't really surfed it much and when I took off on a wave I was totally off balance and getting squirrelly all over as I dropped down the face of a head high wave. When I got to the trough of the wave I thought I started to get a little bit of control and began a quasi bottom turn, but I lost control again, of course, and the board proceeded to head right back up the face of the wave. I got up to the lip of the wave and it passed me by. It probably looked like I just decided to kick out, but the reality was that my board was riding me rather than the other way around.

When it comes to remembering waves, it seems like my takeoffs tend to imprint themselves more often in my memory. I have mental snapshots of the initial moment I gazed down the face of the wave. When it comes to my surfing memories, however, I seem to form stronger memories of surfing breaks rather than waves. I remember the character of the beaches I've surfed, body boarded, scuba dived, and lounged on. I was looking at this cam the other day

https://new.surfline.com/surf-report/sa ... e/forecast
and remembered taking out my first surfboard there way back when I was in high school. I went alone because none of my friends wanted to surf and, for some reason, I decided to go surf the Santa Ana river mouth. I don't know why I picked a river mouth to surf, especially one that was carrying the effluence of Orange County, but that's where I took my first board and discovered that riding a skateboard and surfing were two very different things.

I remember a wave that wasn't that great but probably looked good from the shore. It was a year or so ago and the usual onshore windblown wind swell but every once in a while a nice even breaking wave that looked really good came in like maybe every 5 to 10 minutes. So i was out there for 20 minutes before I managed to lineup that nice wave and rode it to shore. It was maybe a 4 foot wave overhead but not too much. I found it was a really weak slopey wave even though it broke evenly with all the way to the beach and the lip was fast breaking. I had to work really hard to stay on the wave. Every bottom turn had to project forward and the top turns couldn't because it was too slopey and I had to come straight back down to get speed for the bottom turn. I made about 6 top turns before it hit the beach break. I was out of breath because I had to work so hard turning to keep up with it. Then suddenly about 5 surfers came out of nowhere and paddled out to the break

oldmansurfer wrote:......Then suddenly about 5 surfers came out of nowhere and paddled out to the break

This is a law of nature.....occurs after every superlative wave.

I forgot to mention one other thing about this wave is that it came in at about a 45 degree angle more toward the beach than the rest of the waves. Oh yeah and while I said I was out of breath at the end of the wave I remember after about 4 bottom turns to top turns I was out of breath and thinking "I'm out of breath already! How much longer will this go on?" I also remember being surprised by how the wave seemed to want to run away without me on the first couple of bottom turns. I had to work extra hard on the first couple of turns but after that it became a kind of rhythm and I became more sure the wave wasn't going to get ahead of me.

i'm still only 12 so most good waves are overhead im still starting out but id have to say my most memorable wave or session was when i went to feteh point. and it was memorable because im 5 foot 1 and 35 kilos so almost every board i try is like a tanker but this time i was on a firewire spitfire that was 50 litres. Still way too big but it was much more fun than a longboard. My best wave was when a set rolled through and i timed it perfectly to pop up and slowly turn down the line but I was going so fast that time seemed to slow down and i managed to pump the board and kick out of the wave when it died down.

My best failed wave was when i was in Mauritius out at small reef sets were 8 foot (faces) and just when the first set wave came through i whipped my board around and started paddling i was already popping up then this teen on a 9 foot rental longboard comes and ruins my first almost double overhead wave no one knows about surf etiquette. Luckily i wasnt using my dads shortboard but instead a rental 5'11 hybrid fish with a rounded nose.