nose-diving...

[surfgoth]

awesome photos jaffa!

another thing is to pay attention to is swell size and direction and how it affects your local break. depending on the swell direction relative to your beach, you could get big walled up closeouts or a bunch of peaks with nice corners. youre going to pearl on a wall a lot more than a good corner.

surf relative to the tides. go closer to high tide when the waves are more rampy and mushy. youll have more time to get up. if its low tide and pitching, youre gonna have to get up a lot faster.

[cwall]

Thanks, Goth. I'm at a newbie break so its mostly walls, but I didn't realize that waves are more pitchy the closer you get to a low tide. Gonna try to hit it at 3/4 high on the incoming from now on. Unfortunately, that's when the winds are at peak right now, but, hey, I guess its never gonna be perfect......

Also just gonna hang out in the white water for awhile so it probably doesn't matter anyways.....

[surfgoth]

Thanks, Goth. I'm at a newbie break so its mostly walls, but I didn't realize that waves are more pitchy the closer you get to a low tide. Gonna try to hit it at 3/4 high on the incoming from now on. Unfortunately, that's when the winds are at peak right now, but, hey, I guess its never gonna be perfect......

Also just gonna hang out in the white water for awhile so it probably doesn't matter anyways.....

youre in la? yeah tide is going out in the morning this week. solid swell, too. it was walled up this morning near venice, but there were a couple good corners. by thursday, high tide will be at like 6:30am, so you could go out an hour or so after that and it should still be better for you. next week youre good.

[cwall]

Success!! Got up w/o nosediving like 20 times yesterday! Paddle hard, keep yourself forward on the board before you pop, but then put those hands as far back as you can when popping up so the nose doesn't dig. Didn't care how kooky it looked to see a grown man mucking around in the whitewater; I was too busy being amped about standing up. My favorite part of the day was the 8 year old fat kid telling me that "surfing works better when you go way out" and then asking to borrow my board. Not today, Pal, not today. (Venice surf cam DID look nice, but Santa Monica was just a big wall of death.)

I watched some more simply surf videos and I think a low tide might be better if I'm just gonna kook it up in the wash; it all just depends on if they break farther out on a low or a high.

[surfgoth]

awesome man, sounds like you had a blast

[LJSurfa]

Congrats dude.