The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[jaffa1949]

Is there an interest in a topic featuring our ancient fossil record, tall tales and true from the legendary past?

At what age will our elders and legends be committed this thread?
Hmmmm, history beckons!

[BoMan]

Sign me up

I'm 70 and would like to discuss ancient Kahuna... popups, flexibility, gear, fun sessions and more. It would be inspiring for the younger folks to see how long we can extend our water time!

[jaffa1949]

I can hear the cans of WD40 being shaken around the world, welcome to the joint of the month club!
We will discuss creak ups a latter day version of pop ups,
zimmer frames are optional!

There are already questions about various body part replacements and after for surfing.
We cover the sound your hearing aids make shorting out when you duck dive!

Welcome to the world of Bald Murphies!

[oldmansurfer]

We used to surf uphill in the snow with no leash

[oldmansurfer]

The disadvantages of surfing long ago glassed in fins, no leash, no surf wax. The advantages include less crowded lineups and no surf leash. The disadvantages of no leash meant you are going to lose your board at some point although you gain a lot of skill in not losing your board. Besides being careful to not become parted from your board you learned to hang on to it when you wiped out. I used to have crush marks on the rails of my board from the death grip I put on it at times. But for a beginner they spent a lot of time swimming for their board so it kept them out of the lineup. Surfers would often tow loose boards back out to the lineup to their owners but they didn't do this for beginners unless they were a friend. So most surfers were also very good swimmers but not necessarily. At one break I surfed two of the regulars were brothers who couldn't swim well. Part of the rules of that break were you had to take the board back out to them if they lost it and you were near it. I used to use paraffin or candles to wax my board. The paraffin was wax used for canning food It worked okay but the wax made for surf boards were better, offering better grip.

[BoMan]

The disadvantages of surfing long ago glassed in fins, no leash, no surf wax. The advantages include less crowded lineups and no surf leash.

The lack of wetsuits also limited crowded lineups for those of us in colder water. I routinely ran up and down the beach to get my circulation going before getting wet!

If you lived inland surf reports were HARD to find. Once in a while I would look at the newspaper tide chart or call a friend who lived on the coast but I usually just drove to the beach and paddled into whatever was there. Many rides were straight into shore.

With only a few people out surfers were more friendly and willing to talk than they are today.

[jaffa1949]

You often knew all the nearby local surfers, you waved at any VW kombi you saw even more if they had boards on top!
There were various cafes and milk bars which were surfari stops and tall tales and true were swapped. One special one was the Oak Cafe at Hexham in NSW neustadt north of Newcastle, which once you crossed the bridge you were in the Promised land of uncrowded point in the 60s some were not yet discovered!

[oldmansurfer]

Yeah there were no surf reports on my island so I would call a guy I knew on the north shore to see if the surf was up. One day he says it's 6 to 8 feet maybe with larger waves coming in but not very good kind of blown out. I thought oh well that sound better than anything I saw on the east side so I headed out that way and it was an awesome day with nearly perfect waves. I learned then if he said the size and that it was not very good I better get my board and head out because that means he intended to surf it again later in the day and he didn't want anyone coming out LOL. I often just headed in one direction because of the island being round and the road only going three fourths of the way around you had to make a choice because it took 45 minutes to an hour to get to the north shore or the south or west side so I didn't want to spend my whole day driving back and forth. Most days I would surf whatever there was on the east side after work but on the weekends I would often travel if there wasn't decent surf. Or sometimes I had other activities like hiking that I would do, However quite often there was decent surf on the east side and lots of different breaks. I would head to Wailua and check out the several breaks there then to Kealia beach and look at the breaks there then I often skipped Anahola because it never looked very good on the days I did check it and go straight to Kalihiwai and from there to Hanalei which had several high quality breaks. And if nothing I might head to Haena or decide which was the best option of the waves I had seen and go there which might be all the way back to Wailua. Sometimes you see a trend in the waves as you travel like getting bigger or more stormy or vice versa. so you could guess what was ahead. Lucky to have lived on an island with so many good breaks. If I thought the other direction was more likely to be good I would generally pick either the south side or the west side or just plan on going to Pakala which has a long breaking left (south west) and not waste time stopping at all the various breaks along the way. Very often if you're driving a car with surfboards on the roof and pass others going the other direction with surfboard on the roof they would usually give a thumbs up or down to let you know what they thought of the waves. As time went on I found those thumbs to be less accurate but initially they were a good preview of coming attractions. Sometimes I would get together with a bunch of other surfers and we would look for new breaks or try out old breaks that we never had been to. Gradually I became a solo surfer as there weren't enough surfers I knew who wanted to ride the bigger gnarlier waves that I enjoyed.

[BoMan]

skimboard.jpg (48.28 KiB) Viewed 2922 times

Did you ever eat sand with one of these?

[oldmansurfer]

Trying to recall..... Not sure if I ever did. We had home made versions that we slid on that were longer in one direction but rounded ends and usually painted or coated with resin to seal the wood a little. You see all these videos of guys riding waves with their boards but not me. I had a friend who did that a little but I don't think our boards were good enough. I loved to ride into a wave and launch into the air as high as I possibly could. When I got older we would tow on them behind a car and see how fast we could go. Which was of course a rather dangerous thing to do and we stopped when someone got mangled up a bit

[BoMan]

Which was of course a rather dangerous thing to do and we stopped when someone got mangled up a bit

I miss the days of not worrying about consequences until I got mangled. We used bicycles and skateboards to "water ski" on the street without pads or helmets. Poor driving, crowned roads and stop-rocks kept my knees bloody!

[oldmansurfer]

The thing we did on skateboards was to sneak up on a car at a stop sign and crouch down then grab the bumper and stand up once they got going and hope they didn't see you till you got some speed. Had to quit because they would see me too often and call my parents and tell them what I was doing.

[BoMan]

It’s inevitable that over time, you will become an Ancient Kahuna. At some point in your surfing career, you’re going to discover that your body isn’t in the same shape it once was. Happily, experience in the water can make up for a lack of physical prowess.

I turned 70 this year and reflect on this a little every day. Here are a few ideas to keep having fun!

1. Don't be ashamed to ride a board with more foam. Adding volume will make it easier to paddle into waves and give you more stability when riding.

2. There's nothing wrong with changing your popup if it helps you catch waves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g916Io4MThw&t=2s

2. With age comes stiffer muscles, poor balance, and a loss of flexibility. To deal with this, it helps to stretch every day and focus on your problem areas. So if your lower back hurts after a session, start there with your stretching routine.

3. Know your body and be honest. Don't surf too many days in a row or too many hours in a single day.

4. Think twice before paddling out on big days — one mistake can get you injured. Surfing small waves can keep you surfing for decades.


Do you have an Ancient Kahuna surfing tip?

[oldmansurfer]

If you want to surf bigger waves just gradually work your way up in size. Use whatever board you want to use in bigger waves in smaller waves first and get used to the way it works before trying it in bigger waves. There’s lots of old guys surfing bigger waves. Problems arise from lack of conditioning and lack of familiarity. Stay in shape and learn about the break you want to ride and the board you want to use

[BoMan]

Back in the day everyone had to ride leashless and it's been said that this improved one’s connection to the wave and mastery of the craft. I agree. Riding without a cord definitely increased my focus and think more carefully about each ride. If I didn't pick the right wave, get into position to catch it, and surf in the sweet spot, I'd have a long swim to retrieve my board!

Fast forward. I see more and more longboarders freeing up their footwork and honoring tradition by sliding sans cord.

Your thoughts?

[oldmansurfer]

In order to surf leashless you need to be in better shape, better conditioning and to make it worthwhile you need to be a better surfer

[BoMan]

Derek Hynd without a leash and fins!

Fun to watch but not something to do in a crowd.

[jaffa1949]

Derek was an early Newport Beach Sydney Australia, part of a crew that included Tom an Nick Carroll, Martin Potter, “Newport Plus”.
Derek was a rising talent but lost an eye in a surfing accident, he wrote many article for surf magazine and has quite an interesting view coincidently, on surf competitions and the current issues in surfing. He has been delving into finless surfing at JBay for years now!

[BoMan]

I got my first board in the 60's with money earned from mowing lawns.

It was a dinged up, 9 foot poly that was sooo heavy I could barely get it to the beach. I had to secure it carefully against the wall in my room because any fall was a danger to life and property. Popping up was a cinch but turns were a struggle because at the time I barely weighed enough to engage the fin. "Titanic" could catch ripples and carry me forever!

Your first one?

[oldmansurfer]

My parents bought me a board for my 18th birthday. It was a 6'10" diamond tail single glassed in fin board with no leash. The recommended shortboard at the time was 6 inches longer than you height but because I was a beginner it was 2 inches more. I was really into paipo boarding at the time and took it to the beach to try it out but it was too difficult so put it in the corner of my room. I appreciated it because it represented that my parents were no longer afraid of me going in the ocean maybe because other things I did scared them more LOL but up till then they worried and tried to discourage me from being in the ocean where basically I felt like I belonged. I felt like a fish and would get depressed if I didn't get in the ocean at least every other day. Yeah but so into paipo boarding I was starting to do a drop knee ride and then switched to plain knee riding so I could use my body more in projection turns still no fins on the board (all rail turns). I made a new paipo board that took me 2 weeks to make and it was awesome then one day I was flying along on a wave with close to 15 foot face and hit the lip and came down only to get hit by the lip as I got to the bottom. It didn't feel like much of a clobbering but it broke my brand new paipo board in two. So depressed I got home and sat in my room thinking it will take me two weeks to make another and I saw the brand new surfboard sitting there. I already knew surfing had an advantage over knee boarding in that you could make more use of your body to get more projection from a turn so I thought okay how hard can it be? I saw some surfer friends and asked them how to learn to surf and they said "surf as often as you can". For me that was every day 2 hours after work and more on the weekends. By 2 weeks I was riding along and doing turns needed to stay in the pocket on 90% of the waves I caught. Lucky for me to live in a place with so much waves. It turns out that board my parents bought was made by one of the best shapers on the island (Kauai) and it suited me well to learn to surf. I still recall paddling for an unbroken wave and taking the drop only wipe out at the bottom. I would do that for 9 or 10 waves then suddenly I am riding a wave wondering how I did that? I figured out you have to lean down the wave then shift your weight back as you get to the bottom. So maybe I was usually pulling back a bit because of the drop but it is just like dropping down the side of a swimming pool on a skateboard. If you are afraid you lean back and fall if you lean forward then you will be able to change to a more normal stance as the board changes direction at the bottom. Anyway so there I am riding a wave and Of course I ride right off the end of the wave because I didn't turn back to the power of the wave. Well by 2 weeks I was doing well enough it convinced me to just forget about paipo boarding although it took me nearly 2 years before I got to an equal level of where I was paipo boarding. I used that board till the deck delaminated twice LOL I used syringes from my father to inject resin under the glass to stick it back down. Then I got my next board which was even better.