Yesterday I had my second surfing lesson. My mate cancelled the night before due to the dismal surf forecast. Instructor messaged me to indicate he was keen to go ahead, so I decided to put some faith into him and turn up with either the hope that there would be enough surf or I could do just the surfskate and defer the surfing part another day.
The morning before the scheduled lesson my neighbour and I both went surfing in a messy waist high mix of building easterly swell and dying SW swell in a cross shore wind. A crossed up swell does not go well in the open ocean and it was hard to get rides of a reasonable length. We don't get much east swell due to the proximity of Tasmania and when we do it is short fetch/period. Dying East swell and dead SW swell with cleaned up wind conditions yielding 1' waves predicted for lesson date.
We got going with the surf skate component of the lesson and with me as the only student it was very intense and tiring. I was told to put more knee bend into the turns which increases the amount of exertion needed. Had all sorts of things corrected such as arm position and where I was looking plus a new and non-intuitive arm movement for cutbacks. The idea seems to be that kooky dry land surf skate movements translate to smooth surfing.
Prior to the surf skate the instructor had been scanning the ocean and asked me "what do you think?" It looked tiny, I said "is it short boardable?". He said "I think it is" and pointed out one sandbank where he said the left was running nicely. I wasn't convinced, the ocean was completely empty with one person suiting up and pulling a traditional single fin longboard out of his van. By the end of my surfskate the longboarder was back in the carpark, "very rare it gets this small" was the report. He had however spent close to an hour in there.
No one else in. Very clean conditions. I suppose the waves could be considered perfectly formed tiny little wedgy peak with tapering wall running the length of the sand bank with a trench in the middle splitting it into two sections. The second section even smaller, but steeper. Things went surprisingly well, all rideable waves lefts (backhand). I got past the trench on one wave and managed to get the over the shoulder look as I approached the top and then the correct off the top arm movement to wrench the board back down. Instructor said he could see spray coming off the top of my waves. "You just got milk out of a rock" he said. He is Brazilian, maybe it is a literally translated saying.
I was also able to get that non-intuitive cutback arm movement in on some waves, some half baked attempts because a full on cutback would have lost me the gutless wave. I got pushed very hard. Clean short period swell offering plenty of waves and I was repeatedly told "go for this one", "go for the next one after this one" ... Super stocked from yesterday and taking a rest today. My front quads have some soreness.
Some interesting points - looking towards the right target is a big part of my remedial tuition. On one wave I didn't see a section forming because I was looking down and got stuck behind, possibly other parts of my lesson were going through my head, I can't remember exactly. On another wave I came off the top and into a cutback and suffered from mental overload not knowing what arm position to use. I had also absorbed Snr Sopa's comment about bogging on a previous free surf and have been trying to get back some of that even footed board feel I used to have, but lost while struggling to apply the new technique. I suppose it must be coming back because I would not have been able to make the tiny waves with heavy footedness.
Surfing is far more technical than I ever imagined and I am shocked at after decades of surfing how little I understand about the movements needed to complete turns correctly. Hopefully future video I collect will show that the progress is real and not imagined.
