Surfing Waves

So I'm riding a 8' Superfish and only learning...I can catch unbroken waves but only going in straight lines! When I try to turn I seem to lose momentum and sink.. any help please...

Well outer edge, we need to ask when you catch your unbroken waves are you going across them or straight to the beach?
There is a lot of advice on here and an 8ft boards not a bad start.

You may be standing too far back on the board and just bogging the tail and the rail, heaps about turn the board and some pretty good videos of people making progress.
Have a big browse through the site. Lots of help will come your way, get in the surf as much as possible it will begin to make sense

Hey jaffa...im angleing take off and using a little trimming but pretty much straight down at angle!!! Im improving heaps, only been at it a few weeks!! But havent started using the step deck yet so defo not too far back..When i have a seem to sink...when really im trying to carve
Perhaps im expecting too much too early and just enjoy the straight line cruise for now...

Hi outer edge you are talking a bit Irish , straight down at an angle?
With a little bit more knowledge I suspect the step deck you are talking about is the tail pad so if you are not standing on that, that's good. Most probably it is all just part of the learning curve.
Turns work better if you can generate speed .
Where are you learning to may factor in too.
If you are just leaning to turn this too will bog you.
Try back foot pressure (which does slow the board) and pushing the front around with front foot .
Changing the back foot position will help, the softer the waves the more difficult it is.

If you watch good shortboard surfers, they seem to turn just by leaning and carving around. However (a) its much harder to do that on a longboard and (b) you can only do it if you have a lot of speed.

So watch longboarders on youtube or whereever; they turn either with long carves (so only a slight pressure on the rails) and a long turn or, more often, by weighting the back foot more and swinging the nose around - as Jaffa says.

Secondly, if all is failing still, you need to increase your speed. eg pumping or slight turns up and down the wave until you have speed

Had a similar problem starting out. So i decided to sit around for a bit and watch what others where doing and just like jaffa is saying, I put more pressure onto my front foot or i would move up just a bit to keep the nose of my board gliding with the water.

Im like a bull at a gate and want to get it sussed straight away but somethings things just take time i guess Thank for your comments, i will be applying these to my next visits out...peace