Month: April 2008

Conditions: Bigger, Rougher Waves*
Gear: Rental foam board

Day Two of my surf class was Sunday April 27th, 9-Noon. Also with Adventure Out.

Day Two was when all the hard paddling from Day One (and all the rock climbing from the day before day one) finally caught up to me. Ow.
Owwww.

I was exhausted, but happy. The waves were much harder to paddle out into, fewer lulls and a lot more whitewater. I only caught three waves the whole day and didn’t get past kneeling on the board, but it was still fun. Hard work, but fun.

Injury report: I took a bit of an ambitious wave and fell. Underwater I could feel my leash go taught and I knew the board was probably not someplace I wanted it to be. Sure enough when I came to the surface, WHACK I got nailed with the board right in the face. Good thing I was doing the safety head cover the instructors told us about or I’d probably have gotten a black eye.

*This day was prob more like 3-5 feet with a lot of wind and back to back sets. No real downtime and some tough waves to paddle through.

Conditions: Small Clean Waves*
Gear: Rental foam board

Day: AWESOME

My first surf class was Saturday April 26 from 9am to Noon with Adventure Out.
I can’t recommend these guys enough.

The lesson included a wetsuit; a board; plenty of time on dry land learning safety, wave reading, etiquette, and pop ups; plenty of time in the water learning to paddle, dodge waves, timing, standing and turning. The instructors were great. They spent the time hanging out with us and helping us each individually work on our timing and telling us what to do on the next wave to get better.

I stood up a few times, cheated a few other times by just getting up to my knees instead of a clean pop-up, and turned once. It was sooooo much fun.

I got pretty much hooked right then and there.

*This was before I started checking Surfline religiously for conditions. It was probably 2-4 feet, not a lot of wind and the sets were pretty chill. Lots of time to rest between sets.