Surfing Waves

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15CTThPUaqYVO703Qoa8QpUu6FaSDcb2E/view

My 5 year old grandson was afraid of the waves. Digging up sand fleas, making castles and throwing seaweed were the highlights of his every trip to the beach. After a summer of swim lessons in the pool, I finally managed to get him into the ocean where he stood on a bodyboard long enough for the foam to push him towards his mom. His attitude changed after that. He started looking at other kids riding the shore break and wanted to join them. Next summer he will!

If you share our love for surfing with a young person, tell the story.

What a great thing to be able to share your love of the ocean with a novice. To pass on your knowledge. That part of you will live on with him

Awesome story BoMan! Thanks for sharing. That first wave can change everything. Glad you could share the stoke with the next gen

I wanted to get my son into surfing for a while now but he was always more into the traditional sports in school like baseball etc. But this past spring he decided that he wanted to learn to surf.

While we were waiting for the weather to get warmer, we went over some of the fundamentals and etiquette before he went in for the first time. Ya never really know how much of that is sinking in. But if you've surfed long enough, you probably know the ocean has a way of correcting you, if you try to skip any of that.
After a few surf sessions he was starting to gain confidence and taking bigger waves. And joked about taking a party wave when he gets good enough.

Then one day the waves were picking up and had some size.. i was on a shortboard and he had the softop. I dropped into a wave going backside and i see my son paddling back out in front of me. I took the high line so i could go around him and he paddled toward the whitewater. Right around the time i thought it was a victory for surf etiquette.. i started to cutback towards the whitewater and i see my son’s softop bouncing around in the soup. I'm thinking that’s weird maybe his leash came off? Then his board fully emerged from the wave and suddenly i see my son still holding onto his board while he's careening towards shore and we're both looking at each other laughing and in shock.
He said he tried to just punch through the wave, instead of turn turtle, but it spun him back around and he was somehow bellyboarding back to shore before he realized what had happened haha
It wasn't really the party wave that i had imagined but its still something I'll never forget.

By the end of the summer, he was totally hooked on surfing and now he's counting the days until the water is warm enough to venture back in again