The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[oldmansurfer]

When I was in shape I could tolerate much more of a pounding than I can in my old age. When I was relearning to surf I adopted a different attitude and this is partly possible because I am surfing alone at a beach/sandbar break quite often but when I got in the situation that I was getting winded and it wasn't making progress I just turned around and came in then walked down the beach to an easier entry into the lineup and paddled back out. Perhaps this is also possible because I am aware of what the waves coming in are going to do and preemptively take action to avoid getting a worse hammering while coming in through the surf. But I seem to have a knack for dealing with stormy conditions, part of which is being vigilantly aware of my surroundings and also my immediate state of my ability to deal with the ocean as it is. I guess I got used to taking a pounding while bodysurfing. I have bodysurfed a couple days with waves at 20 foot faces and took an incredible pounding and held under much longer than most waves while I am surfing. So before I surfed I was very familiar with what waves can do and how to deal with it. I learned to keep track of the bottom and arrange myself for contact if I am headed in that direction. I am sure the pro surfers are also doing a variety of contortions under the water to get positioned for contact and if not then that is how they are getting injured. Fear of the ocean is maybe because you haven't got a good idea of what the ocean is going to do and when it's going to do that or what you can do to lessen the impact it has on you.

[oldmansurfer]

I thought I would talk about turns I can remember that I did surfing. The first turn I can recall clearly doing was a hard top turn. I was just learning how to surf and wanted to do a hard top turn. I had observed others doing them and tried unsuccessfully to do it and talked to the surfers doing them but none of them had any particular advice on how to do it. What I did is mental imaging. I imagined what it would feel like to do the turn. I stood in my surfing stance and went through the motions, mind surfing imaginary waves. I probably did this at least 15 minutes a day for a week before I found myself on a wave where it was the thing to do. The very first time I tried I was successful and following that I was successful on nearly every other time I attempted to do a hard top turn. It became part of my arsenal. Because of this success I did mental imaging for every new maneuver I wanted to do.

Another turn I learned to do with mental imaging was a fin free turn off the top of the wave. I saw a photo in a surf magazine of Barry Kanaiaupuni doing a radical turn off the top of a wave where the single fin on his board was out of the water above the top of the wave. I really wanted to surf like that so I did mental imaging. I did this for maybe a month before I worked up the nerve to try it in real life and was on a wave where it was the thing to do. I was successful on my first attempt and nearly every attempt after. The funny thing though is that what I was doing was most likely very different from Barry Kanaiaupuni. I would pop the fin free above the top of the wave but the board would slide along the lip at the top of the wave. Depending on the wave I would either stay in that position till the slope of the wave became less steep and the fin would then contact the wave shoving the board forward or the wave would get steeper and steeper and I would be forced to push my front foot down to get back down the face before. Watching movies and videos of surfers doing fin free top turns I have never seen anyone do that. What they do is a quick turn where the fin is out of the water for a second or less. But still it was a turn that felt good. I loved to do it. But I remember the way it felt on that first attempt.

Another turn I did with mental imaging was my backside below the lip speed turn on bigger waves which I talked about recently. I did mental imaging for maybe 2 months before I attempted it but on my first try it worked and became a part of may arsenal after that. I can remember the first time I was completely upside down and my face was just an inch or two away from the wave and recall thinking how odd it was to be in that position. I would have these what I call Matrix moments where everything slowed down and it seemed like I was just hanging upside down under the lip like a bat in a cave, totally weird.

[oldmansurfer]

Some turns I learned to do were accidental. I surfed nearly every day from the time I was 18 until I was 24 when I started college. After college I went back to surfing quite often not every day but maybe a couple times a week. But then my job got in the way and I quit for maybe 12 years and restarted. I can tell you it wasn't like riding a bike I had to learn all over again and i was overweight and out of shape and older. My surfing progressed a bit and I started using a funboard which I called my oldmanoverweightoutofshape board. I learned to use tha board well and I was getting to a point where I wanted to do some power turns like I had done prior where I kicked up a bunch of spray. So one day the waves looked good for trying a powerful slash back type of turn and I leaned and turned as hard as I could but the board came out of the wave instead of digging in and because I was at full extension in the turn I pushed the board over flat on the surface of the wave. So here I was with my back to the wave in the middle of this powerful turn and suddenly my butt was on the surface of the water and my feet were still over the board and the board was still moving through the turn with the momentum from the beginning part of it. So sitting on my butt on the wave I just kind of guided the board around till it was at the bottom of the wave and I stood up something like standing up from a chair. I kept right on surfing as if that was what I wanted to do. The second time I did that turn my neighbor was at the beach and he said "what do you call that turn thing you did?" I told him there was no name for it. I did that same turn three times on three separate days This led to me working to get my back foot a few more inches back from where it was. I surfed most often with my back foot about 2 to 3 inches in front of the fins but realized if I wanted to do power turns I needed to get my back foot a little more back.

The next turn I did that I recall clearly was because of moving my foot back over the fins. I worked on pushing myself back a little on my popup but wasn't sure if I was getting my back foot further back till this turn. The waves weren't anything special and around shoulder high and I was at a point where I should do a cutback and so I did. But what happened was the board was so firmly engaged with the wave that I felt so much pressure from my weight pushing into the board and crushing of my heel on my back foot. I haven't ever experienced that sensation before or since then but it has to be the most powerful cutback I have done at least in recent years. I bruised my heel and it was sore for maybe a week and I put a dent in my board right over the top of the fins so I was sure I had my back foot in the right place. I had not intended to do anything special, it just happened.

[BoMan]

Seriously. You should write a book!

[oldmansurfer]

I am writing a book, one little bit at a time. When I was learning how to surf, I wanted to 'make' every wave. I wanted to be able to cut out at the end and not have the wave pass me by. Consequently I worked on speed initially, reading the wave face and learning what it took to keep up with the wave. So I was learning to go faster and faster and often this resulted in providing me with a place to do a cutback as I approached the slower part of the wave. On one particular day at Kealia I was surfing along and had some water splash on my head after the cutback. I thought that was odd but maybe something in the way the wave was breaking. The next time I did a cutback there was a surfer nearby and I got a huge amount of spray on my head. He was grinning and I thought he had sprayed me with water so I asked him why he did that and he said he didn't do anything and that I did it to myself. I asked if it was the spray from my own cutback? and He smiled and said yes. So this became a thing I did intentionally after that. I haven't seen anyone else do that however the guy who was there said he did that too but I wasn't able to observe him doing that. I am not sure why but don't see any of the pro surfers doing that either. Maybe it doesn't earn any points. However at that stage in my learning curve it was a fun maneuver to do. Perhaps as I progressed I learned more fun things to do as I eventually quit doing that maneuver.

[oldmansurfer]

After restarting surfing I was surfing a sand break. The peaks and takeoff spots shifted daily or more frequently. I would try to ride the wave as far as there was a fun face to play on. Often I would get to the inside which was still 10 yards or so from the beach and do a hard bottom turn. It's was one of those turns where you put your hand down and kind of feel the wave as it was close due to the hard turn and sharp angle making your body almost parallel to the wave. Anyway I put my hand down and felt sand. LOL It was only an inch or so deep . That explained the rough surface developing on my fins. I did that a few times but still recall the extreme surprise from the first time doing that.

On another day I was working on developing a more complete cutback where I went back up into the whitewater like the pros do. It was on a shoulder high wave cutting back and I hit a chop and temporarily lost balance and by the time I regained my balance I was headed straight up the face of the wave and the lip was pitching over. I turned using the force of the lip coming over and the wave swallowed me up and then pushed me back out in front of it. I imagine it looked like I knew what I was doing LOL. Felt great as it was an automatic kind of thing and I just went along with it.

Closer to the beginning of my second time learning to surf, I found that I could do backside bottom turns and backside off the lip turns early on. Not sure why but I think it's because I rotate my upper body more to face the wave which is the beginning of a good turn so a step I didn't need to do since I automatically did it. Then turning off the lip also seemed easier because my head and face turn away from the board and get my face and head out of the potential impact zone if the wave smacks my board back at me. I recall Barely being able to surf but doing these repeated backside bottom turns and off the lips mostly successfully but sometimes the lip would smack me back. I am sure that people who don't know surfing would have thought I was a better surfer than I actually was. It took me a couple years to get a good frontside bottom turn and off the lip.

I had my shaper make me some other boards one of them a wide thick 7'6" board for slower smaller days. I was surfing it daily for a while to get used to it and one day there was a fast breaking wave with a steep wall. That board was awesome as it was really fast on those fast waves and I went to do a cutback and cutback right into the tube of the wave as it was catching up to me. Wiped out but this reminded me of another day when I was younger surfing a break we called Pakalas. It's a very long left breaking wave. Took me 20 to 30 minutes to paddle all the ways out on this day which was about 10 to 12 foot faces. The wave was so long I did every maneuver I knew multiple times on each wave. I did a couple of cutbacks into the tube and made it back out on waves about twice as big as the first instance I mentioned. I knew this was possible as I had seen Solomon, a local surfer, do this very thing but surprised to find I could do that too. I only caught 4 waves but the rides were extremely long like maybe half a mile or more. So a couple minutes riding in and 20 to 30 minutes paddling back out. To cut back into the tube wasn't hard as it was tubing and cutting back you headed back to the tube then do a snapping turn back right before you get in the tube and because you quit moving because you are changing directions the wave covers you up and then you come out because the waves aren't that fast.

[oldmansurfer]

I had my old man shaper make me a board for riding tubing waves. It was a 7 foot pintail with continuous rocker and I was riding it all the time when Horners the left near my house was breaking at about 3 to 6 foot (6 to 12 foot faces). There were a bunch of surfers out but they were all at the main break. There was another break over to the side deeper than them that no one was riding so I went out there. It was difficult to catch a wave there but I tried and paddled for a 5 top 6 foot wave that broke under me but I could feel the pull of the wave as of I had caught it. It was so difficult for me to catch a wave that size with this board on that day and I was desperate. So I popped up and was on the lip going over the falls, not sure how I made it but I did. It was like I was meditating. I could feel the board and see the edge of the lip below it and came down right with it the scooted out in front and made a bottom turn originally to smack the lip but the lip was this mutant double wave sort of thing with two lips and I wanted to change my direction but the board was already set to go and I guess I thought if I tried to change the course I would fail so I went along with where the board wanted to go and smacked both lips and came back down in whitewater and rode out into the flats below. I am so sure the others thought I could surf much better than I could be cause I did this insane maneuver. I can recall one of the guys out there who was doing a surf lesson telling the guy he was teaching "Sometimes you just have to go for it" LOL Yet in reality I wasn't going for it just going along with the wave and the board.

[BoMan]

It's was one of those turns where you put your hand down and kind of feel the wave as it was close due to the hard turn and sharp angle making your body almost parallel to the wave. Anyway I put my hand down and felt sand. LOL It was only an inch or so deep.

Haha...I did something like that over a rocky bottom. On the next wave I wiped out as soon as I got to my feet and discovered the fin was missing!

[oldmansurfer]

Maybe a month or two prior to touching the sand I lost a fin (surfing quads) and didn't notice till I was putting my board in the car which maybe explained that one also. But that was how I noticed the rough edge of the fins.

[oldmansurfer]

Using my 8 foot funboard I used to do a turn where I pushed the tail hard up into the pocket right below the lip and pivoted the board back in the opposite direction. This resulted in the board getting pushed sideways by the whitewater then the fins will catch and swing the board back to face the correct direction. I really liked this sideways motion. It just feels cool as it isn't the way the board normally moves. I also did a maneuver I called a sideways foam climb where I was on a small wave around waist high to shoulder high and there was a certain look where the white water was on top of a one foot high wall and I would turn up onto the foam so my board was pointed down the line and the foam would push me back toward the beach and the fins would engage and make the board go the right direction swinging the nose to point toward the beach.

[oldmansurfer]

Back when I was using single fin boards I used to turn at the top of steep waves which resulted in me sideslipping down the face. At first I didn't think that was what was happening but other surfers mentioned to me that I was doing that. I was like what? NO! That's impossible! but I did this both frontside and backside. When I did it frontside it was mostly at a break in Kalihiwai that breaks right in front of a cliff. The wave is steep and often breaking right in front of a cliff and I had seen people get smashed by the lip dropping down to the bottom and doing a bottom turn so I wanted to turn sooner and what would happen is the board would drop sliding slightly as just the rail holds a bit then as soon as the fin catches the board shoots forward and is already pointed down the line. Horners the big left breaking wave near where I live was the usual place I did the turn at the top and I can recall one particular wave although there were more than one but the first one I recall the lip pushing on my back as I dropped then when the fin caught I shot out in front of the lip. With multiple fin boards this doesn't work so well although I have done this on waist to shoulder high waves at Horners with my quad. Not a turn but my instinct to do this led to me doing a massive airdrop. I was at Horners and without thinking did this turn at the top on a steep wave. I had done this several times before and corrected myself by pointing the nose down the wave and typically successfully negotiating the steep face in the normal manner. However this time by the time I turned the board the wave went concave below me and I dropped off the top of the wave (around 8 foot drop). While falling I pulled my legs up and I guess the air beneath kept the board in contact with my feet then as I approached the bottom I extended my legs to push the board back into the water. To my surprise I stayed on the board and made a bottom turn and finished the wave. You might ask me how I knew what to do? I have no clue as I wasn't thinking but reacting and that was how I reacted.

[oldmansurfer]

I remember one foam climb that I did. I have done a bunch of them but this was a huge one. I was surfing at the sand break near my home and the waves had about 10 to 12 foot faces. I was riding along doing a bunch of turns keeping up with the wave but a huge section maybe 20 or 30 foot section broke in front of me. I was ready to go to the top of the wave in that section so I just did that climbed way up to the top of the crumbled section and back down, just acted like it wasn't broken and came out in front of the section and kept going on the rest of the wave inside of it. It was a little bit bumpy but basically just like doing a weak turn off the top. I really never got the idea of when and how to do foam climbs but that one worked well. It seemed a little scary to me as that was a huge amount of whitewater and I was not familiar with foam climbs. Actually usually when I do them they work but I don't do them very often. Most likely I could do them in other situations if I could recognize when to do them.

[oldmansurfer]

I remember one backside cutback that I did where I was laying down with my face close to the water in fact my nose dragged slightly in the water and came around to do something like a frontside foam climb into the whitewater and as I did looking out over the ocean I could see the other surfers were watching me and I laughed thinking they must be wondering what the heck I am doing as I was going backside and now I am doing a frontside turn. Some days at Horners, I would take off out of place, too far down the line with the wave breaking way over. To adjust I would do a frontside bottom turn and off the lip to get back to the backside breaking wave. I never noticed anyone watching me but if they did, they would be wondering that as well.

[oldmansurfer]

I remember a day of getting tubed backside at a break on the north shore of Kauai called Waikoko. I hear that the current set of surfers have separate names for different parts of that break but don't recall if it was the break over a little or the main break. Waikoko is mostly a left breaking wave but there can be some nice rights as well. It's a reef break on the corner of Hanalei bay and it breaks out into the bay. The edge of the bay is a rock cliff and it sometimes offers a sheltered area to paddle out in and wait for between the sets to paddle all the way out. I think this was one of those days breaking with about 10 foot faces initially and then it got smaller but very hollow tubing waves. I was getting tubed on nearly every wave backside. One wave in particular I recall because I was riding along and very deep in the tube so wanting to go faster I did a little speed pump but in so doing my head contacted the lip and I felt the wave pulling my head down. There seemed to be nothing I could do as the wave just kept pushing my head down and because I am backside that means I am starting to bend at the hips which pushes my head further out into the lip causing a greater force on my head. It finally just pushed me off the board and into the reef. I did a shoulder roll on the reef. This is a maneuver I learned in judo classes I had as a kid but I was ready for the reef and knew it was coming and already planed on doing that before the wave got me off the board. I suffered some minor scratches on my arm, nothing worth stopping surfing for. But the significance of that wave was it made me want to learn to do something else for speed. The result of which is my backside under the lip speed turn. However had I known how to do that in that situation it wouldn't have helped most likely because the wave was too small at that point to do it.

[oldmansurfer]

This was in the days before leashes. There was a fast breaking wave that would occasionally break like maybe every other month at Kealia where I learned to surf . It was very fast but most of the surfers chose to not attempt to ride it. The ones who did were often rewarded with good tube ride but then the wave would closeout or pass them by. I made up my mind one day to try to surf that wave and make it all the way over to where everyone else surfed at so the whole length of the wave. On my first attempt I dropped down and wasn't able to complete my bottom turn and the wave passed me by. On the next wave I made the bottom turn and couldn't get back up the wave before it passed me by. On the next one I managed a top turn and back down then the wave passed me by. So little by little I made it further and further along the wave. In order to turn faster I had to preset my body leaning in the way I wanted to go then throw my arms up for going up the wave and down for going down the wave. Eventually I was leaning forward and my legs were going up and down the face as fast as I could make them go changing height about 4 or 5 feet but my body would stay in the middle. It's like I was constantly falling forward but my legs were going up and down like pumping a skateboard for speed only going up and down instead of sideways. On the first wave I made to the end and rode off the back of the wave I was going so fast and there was another wave behind coming in and I was going to hit it so I jumped off the side of my board as the it hit the wave. My feet hit the water and immediately I was cartwheeling head over heals. It was so violent of a thrashing on the surface of the water it seemed fortunate that I wasn't injured. I did maybe 3 complete head over heels somersaults until I slowed down enough to sink into the water. On the next wave I made I tired landing sideways and that was maybe even worse. I spun so fast it felt like my arms might be ripped off. So I tried to dive into the water and while it wasn't as bad I ended up just and inch from the bottom and thought that was lucky. The next one I tried landing flat on my back and I skipped a couple of times and then changed my posture and was thrashed a bit before I stopped. It was an improvement but I then decided to just let myself skip till I slowed down which was about 3 skips and the forth landing I would sink. That was the winner. Then one of the other surfers paddled over to me and said they figured I was going 30 miles per hour on that one. I asked why and he said because you skipped 3 times. At the moment I was irritated with that response. It was a dangerous situation and making a joke wasn't what I needed, not to mention the number of skips were under my control so had little to do with the speed, but after I went in I realized they were just telling me that they had seen what I was doing and were impressed although probably they all thought I was crazy to do that LOL This is how I learned to do speed turns. After a couple sessions on these fast waves and I started to work on slowing down.

[oldmansurfer]

I was probably doing a speed pump per second at the maximum speed so I was kind of leaning forward with my back to the wave and it was an off balance position so that if I stopped I would just quickly fall off the board. My legs were flying and it was a bit amazing to me that I was able to move that fast up and down but it was almost automatic at that point.

[Geezer]

When I was in shape I could tolerate much more of a pounding than I can in my old age.

LOL, sadly, fitness isn’t entirely in our hands…..

[oldmansurfer]

Unfortunately there are quite a few surfers who have that disease called A G E. Some turns I did on big waves. The biggest waves I have ridden were from a break close to where I live called Makaiwa. It was somewhere around 40 foot faces and I did not have a big wave gun but had my 7'2" fast board made by my shaper which I used in all conditions. In my experience with bigger waves there is always a place that you can take off at if you just work your way deeper into the lineup. Perhaps this isn't true but in every bigger wave that I tried to surf that was true. I was surfing Horners and looked out at Makaiwa and it looked like a painting of the perfect barrel. The waves did not appear to be moving. I just had to go out which was another half mile out. When I got out there it was massive 40 foot faces and nearly perfect left breaking tube. I was both scared and excited and was howling and hooting at the top of my lungs. While it might not be possible I swear I heard an echo in the giant valley between the consistent waves. There I was way the heck out with no one around in seriously dangerous conditions although perfect as well. I tried to assess my situation. If I just paddled back in it was going to be difficult due to currents and trying to not get caught by the waves. Theoretically a doable thing but catching a wave in would be much better. If I messed up it would likely be the worst pounding I have ever had and maybe result in my death. However I had this mentality that I would regret not giving it a try for the rest of my life and so what is worse.... dying or regretting it for the rest of my life? Obviously I chose not regretting it.


The first wave I caught as I tried to do a bottom turn I wasn't able to handle the g-force and my legs buckled and my butt touched my ankles but managed to keep going. I just rode that wave straight and cut out after a while. On the second one my butt hit the board and I bounced off and fell backward onto the face of the wave. However I was going really fast by that time and I did a big skip and bounced right back onto the board. So for a moment I was on my back completely off the board but the wave shoved me back on the board. I just skipped off the water and bounced exactly back onto the board back into almost my normal stance. I stood there thinking how lucky that was and could feel the spray from the lip landing closeby which motivated me to finish the turn and I figured it was a sign that I wasn't ready for these waves and I rode that wave all the way to the beach around 0.75 miles in.

Because of that I worked on my leg strength by jumping out of a tree and landing in my stance. I started out at about 4 feet high and worked my way up to 12 feet or so. The other thing I did was to change my stance. I figured out a stance that was stronger and made a cardboard cutout of my board and practiced daily till I got it right. I wanted my back foot perpendicular to the stringer and as far back as it could go. The length of my feet limited how far back I could go and I wanted and inch or so extra on each side because I knew it might be hard to get it exactly precisely in that relatively narrow part of the board although on my cutout with months of practice I could do that.

About a year later the surf was huge once again at the same break. This time I could handle the drop and the bottom turn and I caught a bunch of waves. At first I was really scared and didn't try anything but these were fast at first but slowed way down shortly and were these huge walls that were slowly breaking. In order to catch them I had to go into the faster tubing part just barely. The first turn I tried was a cut back and I cut back from the top of the wave but saw this huge whitewater advancing toward me and I turned back down the line about half way down the massive face of the wave however I quickly realized I was moving way faster than the wave so I turned back and got closer to the whitewater before turning back again. So it was a zigzagging cutback. I did another cutback but didn't zigzag and then I tried an off the lip turn (maybe 30 feet or more in front of where the wave was breaking). The lip in that area in front of where the wave was breaking was a flat area about 6 to 8 feet wide and when I did a hard turn there my fin popped out and I was sliding sideways along this lip. So my board was pointed down toward the bottom of the wave and I was laid down like I was doing a hard turn but I wasn't turning and instead sliding along this flat area at the top of the wave. I was going so fast but it also felt like the wave was pushing my board somewhat keeping the speed up on the lip, I just kept sliding ann sliding and sliding. Wasn't sure what to do so I waited till I slowed down a bit and stuck my hand into the water and pulled myself over the edge into the massive over 30 feet drop. Then I dropped down and repeated it. I was flying, going so fast just by the force of the wave without any attempt from me to go fast. I tried to not get closer than 10 feet from the breaking part of the wave. I remember as I rode in that slow section of the wave my board was making a zipping sound something I hadn't noticed at any other time surfing, maybe just because I had lots of time to notice things due to the huge spaces on that wave. After the first one I did several more not waiting for the board to slow down. I was having so much fun but realized most likely I was lucky to not have fallen down and have to deal with taking these waves on the head so I rode a wave in after maybe 8 waves ridden. Most of the waves were ridden till the faces were about 20 to 25 feet then I cut out and paddled back out. But on the wave in I recall surfing it through the break called Horners and thinking I wanted to cut out there because the waves had only about 16 foot faces and it wasn't exciting.

[BoMan]

So what is worse.... dying or regretting it for the rest of my life? Obviously I chose not regretting it.

This should be your signature. Fun post ...and props for remembering your rides in such detail!

[oldmansurfer]

I was very fit in those days and could hold my breath for a very long time so it's possible I could have survived wiping out on those waves but I didn't want to push it. I'll write on about the other big wave day I surfed and did push it The above cutback is the biggest cutback I have ever done in my life but it reminded me of another cutback I did prior which at that point was the biggest cutback I had done in my life. Basically I don't do cutbacks on larger waves generally speaking mostly because I want to stay away from the breaking part of the wave because I am concerned for my health and wellbeing. In the above situation it was weird because while huge the part of the wave I surfed was slow breaking. But this one day at Kealia it was a huge hurricane swell coming in breaking in the 8 to 15 foot size which is 16 to 30 foot faces. The usual place I surfed had a big peak breaking both left and right which I surfed in a couple of similar swells already and the other side of the bay had a 5 part break. The furthest outside was a beautiful tubing spitting right breaking wave that looked really inviting (probably around 20 to 30 foot faces) but it broke in front of a rocky small cliff kind of shoreline and I knew if I got caught inside that would be potentially a disaster. The next part of the break was a freight train that started after the previous section spit. It was big and fast and I am pretty sure I could ride that part as well but it also broke in front of the boulders. The next section was a slower tubing wave around 16 foot face that looked easy to ride inside of that was a much smaller freight train fast break and inside of that a nice small (6 to 8 foot faces) shore break tubing wave. I decided on the inside 3 parts of that break.

I paddled out to the third part of the break and it looked awesome but it took me about 20 or 30 minutes to find a spot that would let me catch the wave and it was over toward the boulder/cliff shoreline and I knew I needed to be aware of that but never wiped out on that section so that was good. On the first wave I caught as I dropped down the face I heard this incredibly loud noise that resembled a tree trunk breaking. I realized it was from the at least 3 foot thick lip that was coming down in that area and I was so afraid I jammed a hard bottom turn and did a speed turn to get away from that lip. It was successful but now I was on the shoulder and slowly lumbering thick lipped wave was breaking 10 yards behind me so I figure a cutback was needed and did this huge cutback which went further back than I wanted to but the result was I got tubed when I very likely would not have gotten tubed if I knew my cutback was going to bring me so close to that thick lip. I caught a few more waves all of them quite similar except I was careful not to cutback enough to get me tubed except for one of the other waves by accident I went too far back and got tubed again. That part of the wave was so scary. It was so loud and intense. But the inside sections after it were fun. I got to relax on the inside after the death defying outside part LOL at least that is how I felt.