Now, Go Catch Some Waves!

Be back after Thanksgiving. Gots to go eat.

See Ya!

Maui SUP Vid — cool new angle

Just came across this on YouTube and it here and it features an on-the-wave camera angle that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Really gives you a sense of what it feels like on a wave. To make it ez on ya, I’m talking about the stuff at .05 sec, 1min35sec and 3min25 sec. Have a look. Pretty instructive. Also that first one has some sweet cross-stepping moments in it:

How to Stand Up on Your Stand Up!

If you haven’t been to the Gong site, you really owe it to yourself to take the trip. There’s *tons* of how-to stuff there, pages and pages, reams and reams. Sure, a lot of the text is in French. Then again, a lot of the text is accompanied by pictures that tell the story as well as the words could.

Anyway … if you’ve never stood on a stand up board before, it can be pretty daunting. Not to worry, though, because Gong is here to show you how. And please visit GONG to see a larger version of these pictures and so much more you won’t believe it. Go Gong!

Most Important Post of the Year!!!!!

Remember how a week or so ago I posted about the accident that California SUP-guy Jim Brewer got into — fell on his paddle (a paddle with a edge not covered by a protector or tape …) and cut open his leg? Well, you’d think that would be the end of it. But it’s not. Things got worse. Much worse. Here’s the story, from yesterday’s post by Jim (Jim’s Santa Barbara Blog):

Against my better judgement I will write this post. It’s personal but there are some lessons to be learned. Lessons like taking care of your SUP equipment because strange things can happen. Don’t always trust people and what they tell you just because they think they know it all. Take care of your family because they are all that matter in the end. Like I stated in a past post. A blog or "the blog" was really for folks to share their personal life and all the cool fun stuff they do. It’s really a kind of diary of your life. So what does this post have to do with SUP? Well it all started with an innocent paddle out in some mediocre waves on my new SUP board and my old carbon paddle. I ate shit and landed on the blade and it cut my lower leg to the bone. You know this story by now so I will fast forward. After I left the ER with a tendon stitched back on I was to return in 10 days to get the stitches out and I’m good to go. NOT!! Turns out the doc didn’t notice that the real big tendon that runs along the ridge of my foot and up my leg was 100% severed. Gone. He didn’t see it because it wasn’t there. So yesterday was the day of the operation to re-connect it and by far the worst day of my life…..hands down. I’m not a religious man but if I’m wrong and there is a hell, I was there yesterday paying a visit. The details of my experience are deeply personal but since this is my diary I will air it out now.

The Drop-Knee Turn Pt 2

There’s nothing classier than the drop knee turn. For whatever reason — probably it has to do with almost terminal stiffness — I can’t get it right. But that doesn’t stop me from liking to read about how it’s supposed to be done, just in case one day my stiffness should give way and the sunshine of general overall flexibility shine down on me for once in my life. Anyway, here’s the great Wingnut on the turn, coming at you from surfline.com:

The drop knee turn.
Where style and function come together.
The function part, transferring your weight back to the tail to "lever" the tail down, lifting the nose out of the water to start the turn.

But its a matter of placement. The foot, more specifically the ball of the foot and the toes, need to be on the side of the stringer that the turn is headed.
So that when you start to "sink" into the turn, dropping the knee to deck level, begin to crank down and pivot the board into the turn, the arms go up (style and balance) and help direct the flow of the turn.
As the board comes around, the front foot doing the "fine tuning"… Once you have it around the transfer back to a flat foot, where the heel must come down to allow the turn to come back around, down the line.
Good luck…
Wingnut

Surfline | Who the F&*K Knows

How to Make Your SUP Go Faster

Want to make your board go faster on the wave? Those nutty French guys at Gong know how. Advice & pix via them:

How to increase your speed ? Use your legs !
Bend your knees and push !!!

How to Carry that Weight!

I haven’t tried the leash-wrapping-the-paddle method yet but I will soon, just to see how it works. Meanwhile, here are pix of how it looks. The first two are from Seabreeze, the second two from srfnff. My main question is, can you do it in the water with a wall of whitewater barreling your way?

Why Are SUP Paddle Blades Angled?

From Paddle Surf Warehouse:

There are many reasons why the blade on a stand up paddle is angled. The main reason is with the blade angled forward from the shaft the front part of the stroke is more-effective thus making the stroke longer.

The longer the stroke the more efficient the stroke is. Another reason is that it prevents lifting water at stroke’s end which expends less energy making it easier to go through the water. Bent Shaft paddles deliver more of your effort to the water. You’ll go farther, faster, and with less effort.
A straight-shaft paddle wastes effort lifting water at the end of the stroke; an angled paddle does not.

www.paddlesurfwarehouse.com

How to Cut your Paddle (Carefully!)

Paddle length gets discussed a lot … but not so often how to cut your paddle down to that length. Here’s a corrective, from the fine folks at supglobal.com:

When you get your paddle you may need to cut the shaft to the correct length and glue the handle back on. To do this:

Measure your height onto the paddle starting from the bottom of the blade (or get someone to hold it against you and mark off your height on the shaft in pencil.

More Ivan, in S.A., on a Starboard Fish

Guess I’m going to have to continue my Ivan Van Vuuren fascination and hero worship by posting this new YouTube video. This time, he’s surfing Jeffrey’s Bay, in South Africa, and riding Starboard fishes, either the 9 or the 9.8. I happen to own a number of Starboards, including a 9.8, so it’s great to see him give these babies a workout and prove to me, once again, it’s the rider that makes the machine and not the other way around. Also, about halfway through, it’s fun to see Ivan take one on the chin while paddling out. Hey — it happens to everybody. Enjoy.

Some Paddle Length Theory ….

This comes via John Hibbard over at the Starboard forum. He knows his stuff, so it’s a good post to read.

Length is a personal thing really and you are doing the right thing by trying it at full length first. A ball park figure is to cut the paddle down to between 6-9 inches longer than you are tall.
Another way to do it is to turn the paddle upside down so it is standing on it’s handle. Hold the paddle in front of you and where the shaft starts to flare away into the blade that should be at about eye level.
The best advice is to use it for a while at full length (use insulating or Duct tape around the handle to hold it in place), see how you get on and then cut off a small amount of the shaft and use the paddle for a few times again (use tape to secure the handle again). Once you reckon you’ve got it right then use some 5 min epoxy to hold it in place.

The full length isn’t really going to hinder you in flat water as you are always generally standing up right and driving forward with a pretty straight body angle. It’s in the surf where too much length (!) will be apparent -

Don’t Ride Your SUP Leashless!

There really shouldn’t be any debate about this. Wear a leash. Let me say it again: wear a freaking leash. Or, if you don’t, then stay away from me. This is from sup global:

A leash will stop your board running away and hitting someone else when you fall off. Stand up paddle boards are big things and could seriously injure somebody if they hit them. A leash is an essential. You need to make sure that your leash is about 1ft longer than your board if you are going to do cool stuff like nose riding (otherwise you won’t make it to the end of the board !). If you know you are falling off, or if you bail out intentionally because a big wave is coming that you can’t make it over, try and grab the leash as close to the board as possible, this means that you control, as much as possible, the board in the surf, preventing it from racing off and potentially hitting someone else. If you are going to surf please avoid the coiled XM leashes. While they are perfect for distance paddling they are dangerous in the surf as they get tangled up, making the leash shorter and the board more likely to fly back and hit you.

Getting the right Stand Up Paddle Boarding Equipment

Catching Your First SUP Waves!

Here’s another one from Bill at Ke Nalu, all about catching those first couple of waves:

Generally you’re standing pointed out at the waves, looking for one you like and the location of the peak. Once you find one, paddle towards the peak, and when the wave is still a pretty good distance away (unless you’ve become REALLY good at turning around) start your turn. Don’t panic and rush it, get the blade in up by the nose and push yourself around with steady, powerful sweeps. When you are pointed more or less at the beach, switch sides and start paddling. The reason for the switch is that you will almost always overdo the turn, even when you think you haven’t turned enough. You don’t want to switch just as the wave starts to lift the tail.

Bone & Blood — Edge Your Paddles!

Just came across this at Jim Brewer’s Blueline Paddle Surf blog. Scary stuff. And the first of my cautionary tales. Pay attention to this. It’s important. Put some edging on your paddle. Do it today! Jim says:

While test surfing the Blane Chambers 9′3" Ripper in some great waves I went over the falls and landed on my paddle blade. My foot went limp and after looking down to check for damage I found that I had a big ass gash on my lower front leg. After looking even closer I realized that I was looking at my bone! Turns out the paddle blade cut right down to the bone and cut the tendon along the way. Lots of blood followed. After getting out of the water and heading to the car a friend in the parking lot saw my leg and drove me to the ER. Thanks John. I now have my tendon sewed up as well as my leg. I will be on crutches for awhile and out of the water. Shit happens and it’s all part of the game. Santa Barbara Stand Up Paddle Surfing

Jim’s leg:

Before SUP: Canoe Paddle Surfing!

I came across this the other day, a clipping I took from Swaylocks, the board-building site, in which Blane Chambers, in his early days of stand up, wrote about his canoe-paddle-surfing technique. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, I think at the time Blane *only* did CPS and eschewed SUP entirely. By now, CPS is anachronistic but it does have its uses. Like when? Like when the wind is howling offshore and the second you stand up to paddle you’re blown over the horizon. Solution? Get on your knees, bro, and go low!

Here’s how Blane described it back in 2006:

Get plenty practice before you head out into the waves by sprinting in flat water. Once you get the stroke down you can head out into the surf… Make sure no one is around… Getting into a wave kneeling goes like this…. Most important thing is to be lined up straight and get that momentum up. Stroke hard! Get that baby up to a speedy glide and maybe even an extra couple strokes for good measure…

Hula Hooping for SUP Skills?

I was floating around the Internet yesterday and came across a new site, Stand-Up Paddle Surf School, run by Hawaiian SUP instructor Maria Souza. Great site, but what interested me most were the pictures of her SUP students doing a dry land exercise with Hula Hoops.

Just to clarify, I dropped Maria a note and she responded: "Yes that is a hula hoop and this is Hawaii, I use props to warm up the CORE, where I focus my lesson, It is a 2 hours of educational techniques that can be taken to the water and to daily life." What I also think it is that Hula Hooping ought to also be pretty good for hip mobility, which is a good thing to have on a SUP. Give it a shot! Stand-Up Paddle Surf School

How to Use Your Paddle to Turn

Here’s an interesting post from over on SUP Surfing Global Forums on how to use your paddle while on the wave. The thread starts off with a question: "I have seen a lot of the Hawaiian guys swap hands on the paddle when turning front hand and back hand - but it feels really unnatural to me (not that I am as good as those guys) how do you guys get into the turns ?" One of the answers goes like this:

You can get ‘big turns’ with the paddle either way- the ‘Hawaian’ preferred treatment for the backside turn seems to lean heavily in favour of laying back against the paddle placed behind your back foot.

this definitely allows you to bury the rail and tail and produce the most effective turn, but beware getting too far over the back of your board as you throw a big one of these cos without the Hawaiian power you might find yourself falling off the back! it’s possible to completely slide even an SUP board one-eighty like this.

The Correct Paddle Length, Visually

Thanks to prolific poster DJ over at Seabreeze Forums!, we now have this visual approach to paddle length. Even DJ would agree, however, that a little shorter is a little better if you’re going to be using your SUP mainly in the surf. DJ says:

Because paddle blade size can vary and you want the blade fully dipped I like this system to find the right length for you.
DJ

Admin note: the illustration below comes from Starboard.

Seabreeze Forums! - Stand Up Paddle Paddle Length

How to Stand on a SUP Your First Try!

This post is part of a series of posts that I am going to excerpt from the great Ke Nalu site. When all is said and done, just about everything that a beginner *needs* to know will be both here and there, and after that it’s just a matter of practice on the water and reading about the subtleties and nuances here. But just because I’ll be covering all the bases as Ke Nalu covers ‘em, that doesn’t mean I won’t be looking at them again, plucking more good beginner stuff from other places, because different perspectives on the same thing are always valuable. How one guy says it might not sink in, but then the next guy comes along and voilak, the light bulb begins to blaze. Anyway, with that as preamble, here you go, how to stand up on a stand-up board for the very first time, as postulated by the good guys at Ke Nalu:

Pick a day with minimal wind, little or no chop, and small waves. If you’re doing this on a lake–good for you. That’s perfect.

The easiest way to start is on your knees. Get in about two to three feet of water, push the board forward and slip onto it in a kneeling position right about in the middle. Read more

The Perfect SUP: One Man’s Search

I’ve taken this post wholesale from csx355’s most excellent blog, http://csx355.blogspot.com/. In his SUP career, he’s owned a good number of boards, none of them perfect, which is the way it’s always going to be for everyone, most likely. But that doesn’t keep him from looking. This post details that search, it’s a great, instructive read that we can all learn from and nod our heads to, and it starts a little something like this:

It’s very simple - I want the perfect board. I want the board that will give me MOST of what I want in a single board and this post is going to be a bit of a brainstorming of the characteristics and traits that I like and dislike in the boards that I have and have ridden.

Read on for more of the search!

Great SUP Board Reviews

If you’re in the market for a new board, either beginner or more advanced, then probably the first stop you should make is not at your local SUP dealer’s showroom floor but at Ke Nalu’s online “Board Showcase” review of boards. Last time I looked it presented over 55 evaluations of SUP boards from, among others, Starboard, Naish, Angulo, PSH, ULI, Laird, Jimmy Lewis, C4, Oxbow and Amundson.

Here’s how the introduction on the index page goes: “Each board result has pictures of the board, basic specifications (taken from the manufacturer) an excerpt from the company website or marketing materials (edited for space and to manage the hype), evaluators comments and a summary comment from us. Each set of quotes indicates a different evaluator. … Our summary comment comes from reviewing the evaluation checkboxes and considering the weight and skill level of each rider. Each board was evaluated for paddling, surfing and cruising.”

Really good stuff, really worth checking out: Ke Nalu Board Showcase

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