No Idea

Eskimo roles and rips

Here we go with a round up of Thursday’s surfing.  I was supposed to rent a board and skip the lesson, but I am a spaz and forgot to bring some ID or credit card to secure the deposit on the board.  So I took another lesson, got to wear my own new wetsuit though, no more ripped up surf school wetties.

The instructor told us it was going to be a tough lesson as the waves were fairly big and very heavy.  I think we had about a 4ft swell and there was a strong undercurrent.  The “rip” was pulling in one direction and the waves pushing in another, this made it really hard to get out to the lineup out the back.

I was keen to get out in the surf and since I was considered an expert (as I had already had two lessons) an instructor took a bunch of us straight out the back, it was a bloody hard paddle.  My arms were killing me.  When we were heading out there we were told to do Eskimo rolls to avoid the heavy breakers churning us up.  Now an Eskimo roll is a maneuver that basically involves you laying upside down on your board as the wave passes overhead.  This is pretty scary but also kind of cool as you get to see the wave from underneath.  The hard part is rolling back upright, I have not mastered that yet, so I have to awkwardly dismount underneath, surface and then turn my board the right way up again and get back on it.  I don’t think the instructor was impressed.

I caught one big wave from out the back and it quickly put me through the washing machine.  I was churned around for a couple of seconds and not really sure which way was up, you have to be very comfortable with being underwater when this happens.  Although I consider myself one of these people who are comfortable in the water I think I would be kind of frightened for my life if I was churned around any longer than I was.

For the rest of the lesson I stuck to the whitewater, as I have said before this is where I really belong.  Even so it was hard, hard work.  The undercurrent was constantly making it tough to get anywhere and I got clobbered very hard in the head by a wave.  It’s amazing how hard a wave can hit you, I really felt like someone had punched me in the back of the head.  Later my board whacked me in the chest which is still hurting, I also pulled muscles in my feet and my back ached for the rest of the day.  It was a tough old ride, well for me, I am kind of a wuss.

That said, I stood up a couple more times which was totally rad.  I was catching many more waves than in the previous lessons.  Looking forward to my next outing, probably on next Thursday, 4-6ft swells on the surf forecast, should be very interesting.

In other news it rained 20mm in 10 minutes yesterday, it was quite exciting to watch that from the back yard.

December 8th, 2007 

Labels: Tags: australia, eskimo, surf, surfing, water, wipeout