How to kayak from the beach to outside the breakers
Sea kayaking adventurer Valerie Fons once said, “My greatest fear was waking up in the morning and having to kayak through a surfzone.” She had faced a bear in her tent and an anaconda next to her boat on her journeys; how could she fear a few breaking waves? As a guy who loves the surf zone, I was dumbfounded. I wondered why she was afraid. She told me that she didn’t know how to get through the waves, even with thousands of miles of paddling to her credit. She lacked the skill of entering the surf zone. So, for Valerie and all those competent kayakers out there who suffer the willies about surf, I have put together a few tips on how to successfully make it through the breakers in one piece. Here we go.
The worst likely thing to happen is you get wet. Big deal. So don a wetsuit or drysuit or whatever clothing you need to make you comfortable in the surf, and then wade out in it. Let the breakers hit you. Practice jumping over the waves and diving under and right through them. Swim around in small surf and eventually progress up to 3-foot waves. Body surf until you get a few good rides under your belt. Once you feel good swimming in surf, the worst is over. The fear of getting wet is replaced with the joy of immersion in ionized water. You are now ready to paddle through the surf.
Being in surf should be fun, not fearful. So swim first!
Scout the surfzone before kayaking. This does not mean psych yourself out so you are a quivering mess by the time you get in your boat. Surf scouting means you get high up on the beach and look at the waves for a few minutes. No rush. Notice patterns, see where the waves are steepest, look for channels where waves break less often. Imagine yourself vectoring left and right through the waves until you make it outside the surf. Do this again and again until you can realistically envision yourself making it all the way through, stroke by stroke. This is akin to river kayakers scouting every aspect of a rapid or a climber searching out holds on a pitch. It’s essential that you learn to observe the surf and plan your own path and best time to get through. It’s like learning to drive a car. You must decide when it’s safe to turn onto the street and not let some guy in the back seat decide for you.
Practice maneuvers in the soup zone before breaking through the surf zone. The soup zone is the area just beyond the shore, but before the big breakers. (Note: on really steep beaches, there is no soup zone). Check your boat to ensure it’s shipshape (flotation bags are inflated, hatches are secured, etc.). Strap on your helmet, carry your boat to the water’s edge, get in, put on your spray skirt and turtle your boat down to the water’s edge. When a wavelet laps the shore, scoot into it and voila, you are in the soup. If you paddle a sit-on-top kayak, walk the boat into the soup until knee deep, sit on the seat butt first, then put your feet in. (Never straddle a boat in surf, as bad things can happen).
Venture out to the soup zone.
Once in the soup, just relax, breathe, and sit there for awhile, perpendicular to the oncoming waves. This will take effort, as small waves and currents will try to take you hither and yon. Play for awhile and acclimate to this surf on this particular day. While maneuvering around in the soup, keep a weather eye out for windows of opportunity. Let a few ventanas pass you by, so you can verify that you could have made it. Even if you chicken out and don’t go through the entire surf zone, because it looks too big, too scary, too something, don’t worry. You can keep playing in the soup and make that your goal for the day. But when you see that golden window (no waves breaking) and decide to go for it….
Paddle toward green zones, where the surf isn’t breaking. The late Steve Sinclair called zigging and zagging from green zone to green zone establishing trajectories. If your timing is good (and this takes practice, lots of practice), and you keep up your paddling speed, you may make it through the surf zone without having to face and power through a big breaking wave. This is ideal. But if you must break through one or more large breaking waves, then you have two choices.
Vector from soft spot to soft spot and dodge the biggest waves.
Roll upside down as the wave hits you. According to sea kayaking legend Derek Hutchinson, you should turn upside down when facing a really big wave, let the wave pound your boat hull instead of you, then roll back up after the main turbulence passes. I have used this technique successfully, as have other good kayakers, such as Andy Taylor of Force 10. Unfortunately, if the breaking wave is really big, you may end up getting sucked up the falls and flip end-over-end backwards while upside down. It’s disconcerting. Plus, personally, I don’t like to purposefully have my head hanging down underwater as I’m being dragged by a wave, because there could be a rock or other obstacle that could impact your noggin. That brings us to your second option.
Paddle hard and break the wave barrier. This is ideal. When facing a looming skyscraper, don’t freeze up but fire yourself up mentally, put your head down and paddle like a madman right up the wave face and over the top. Don’t stop paddling until you have broken the wave barrier and gone airborne. After clearing the wave, look seaward for the next comber. You may have to do this over and over and need to keep your momentum. Once you have made it all the way through the surf, relax, catch your breath, and move on to your next activity.
Jim Kakuk starts to plow through the breakers as Eric Soares busts through the crest in a rocky surf zone.
As with Derek’s method, you could still fail to clear the wave and get knocked end-over-end backwards, but at least you have a fighting chance of making it (I summit big waves 95% of the time, even when it seems hopeless). But if you end up upside down, rocking in the foam, just relax, hold your breath, and wait for the moment when the traction lets up a bit. Then roll back up, orient yourself, and face the waves again.
It may take a lot of time and energy to get through a gnarly surfzone, so if you are getting knocked over, quickly re-assess whether you can actually make it through the sets on this day. If you are uncertain, go back to the soup zone and practice there for awhile. When tired go back to shore. You had a good workout and learned lessons. It’s all good.
You can learn about entering surf zones by playing in the soup all day.
On the other hand, if you earnestly believe you can still make it through the surf, then, with enthusiasm, begin the green zone vectoring process again until you make it. We sometimes go out and practice breaking the wave barrier again and again, purposefully smacking the waves and flying, as it is a key skill and lots of fun. Go out and spend a few days climbing waves and I guarantee you will become more confident and proficient in surf. Your fear will diminish and be replaced with calm awareness. Where there is skill, there is no fear.
Please ask questions about getting through surf and offer your suggestions on the best way to do it. And share your wave barrier stories. Just press on the comments button below and go for it. Cowabunga!
Hey, nice article Eric! I can add a couple more tips about going out through the surf. Surfing back in would be a whole different article so we can leave that for another time.
Having taught a lot of surf classes, one of the issues I noticed with students practicing in the soup zone is what I call “creeping out syndrome” (I just made that up now, but read on). When you have a soup zone, it could be fairly wide or fairly narrow and the idea is to stay there, out of range of the bigger impact zone farther out, and stay in control of your kayak. What usually happens to a lot of kayakers is they paddle forward as the soup hits them, then stop paddling, then paddle forward again, then keep repeating that process and before they know it they have crept right up to the impact zone and it’s too late to do anything when the wave of the day arrives.
So what to do? Remember you can back up and you need to learn how to back up (this is also true when setting up outside to surf in). Don’t forget the backstroke. One or two backstrokes, followed by a forward stroke, if necessary, will keep you in position until you decide to make your move. When you get really comfortable, you can let the soup push you back, not too much, but just enough. And look back over your shoulder occasionally to see where you are in relation to the shore (don’t turn your back on the ocean for too long, though!).
Also you only need to paddle forward at the moment the small soup waves hit you; so save your energy. Remember I’m talking about holding position in the soup. When you decide to make you move and paddle out, that’s a different matter.
The ability to maneuver and control the kayak is essential. You may need to use a sweep stroke or two to keep the boat facing into the waves. And of course you need a powerful forward stoke to power out through the impact zone when you decide to go for it. Practice all those strokes!
One word on the ‘roll over, let the wave break on your hull, then roll back up’ method: Like Eric, I prefer to simply power through and hope to hell I make it. But if I know for a fact that I won’t get through and the wave will push me all the wave back to the beach (end-over-end or not), then I might choose to capsize and roll back up after the wave passes. The one advantage to that is your body will be hanging down in the water. That doesn’t sound so good does it? Except your body will tend to hold you in place and when you roll up you won’t have to paddle all the way out again (saving energy is very important for lots of reasons). This is especially true with a boat loaded down with gear. On the other hand, a loaded boat will punch through easier if, and ONLY if, you have plenty of forward momentum when you hit the wave. Another reason to develop a strong forward stroke for sprinting.
Great post, Eric, and on a subject in which I could certainly use some advice. John, I think “creeping out syndrome” sounds just right for the soup zone; it’s so easy to get sucked into it without realizing what’s happening until…OMG!
I don’t have the experience that you mates do with big water, but I spent a lot of time in moderate East Coast surf back in the day, and before I got into sea kayaking, I bodysurfed every time I was at a beach with bodysurfable waves (what else is there to do, right?).
I remember very distinctly one particular sea kayaking outing when the ocean really surprised me by kicking my butt when I really didn’t think I was going to have that big a problem getting through the breakers. I scoped the zone out from the beach for about fifteen minutes, but obviously didn’t read the situation clearly. It was on Cape Cod, which sticks out into the Atlantic in an East / West orientation, and the wind was about 15 – 20 knots from the South. The spilling 4 foot breakers were beautiful but very closely spaced, and the zone was four or five waves deep. I never saw a break in the action and I worked hard for about 3 hours trying again and again to punch through and getting a water sandwich served to me every single time.
The first wave would slow me down, the second one would stop me in my tracks, and then before I could get moving forward again, the third one would nail me, push me back, and knock me down. The thing that surprised me the most is that it didn’t look like it was going to be that bad when I scoped it from the beach (a reflection of my inexperience, no doubt).
I never liked rolling over and taking it on the hull, but it does have the virtue of using one’s body as a sea anchor and holding position better. In this instance, however, it didn’t help at all, because no matter what, I had no forward momentum when that third wave arrived. The local surfers were sitting on their cars, so I should have figured that something was up, but I thought I could get out with my sea kayak in conditions that gave them pause. I was totally wrong about that! Any advice or thoughts on this type of situation greatly appreciated – I’ve forgotten a lot over the years, but my memory of that humbling outing is still crystal clear after two decades…
Moulton, you bring up a really important point. When talking about breaking the wave barrier, it’s not only the size of the wave that counts (and yeah that’s really important!), but the TYPE of breakers. At any given size, a gentle spilling wave, where the energy is released gradually, will be much easier to punch through than a steep plunging or dumping wave where all the energy is released at once.
And then there’s storm surf. What you describe, even if you called them spilling waves, sounds similar to storm surf where the waves are very closely-spaced and they have a lot more energy than they appear to. When I say ‘storm surf,’ I mean surf from a local storm. Of course all surf of any size is caused by storms, but if the storm is very distant, then the waves travel a long distance over the ocean and have time to get ‘organized,’ with space between them.
I distinctly remember one evening years ago (yeah, it was getting dark!) when John Dixon and I decided to play around in some storm surf at the usually benign ‘surfers beach’ in El Granada. The waves didn’t look too bad even though they were big and closely-spaced and, the real kicker, the usually narrow surf zone extended clear out to the reef about a mile away. So I paddled out into the soup and was immediately pummeled. After rolling back up, I was surprised to see I was 100 yards down the beach from where I had launched. John was still standing back there. I had not only been pummeled but carried 100 yards in the ‘longshore’ rip in a matter of seconds. There’s more to the story, but suffice it to say we soon packed up and went home!
That sounds exactly right, John. It was a really long zone, and I never made it past the third breaking wave that I encountered. They were very uniform in size, and I couldn’t discern sets. Those waves seemed have more energy than I was accustomed to, but that’s hard to say for sure; the thing that nailed me again and again was their unrelenting nature – they just kept coming and coming and coming and I got pounded over and over again until I finally threw in the towel and got out of the water. I’m not exactly a sage when it comes to estimating wave height, but it looked like about four feet of breaking white water. Doesn’t sound like much, but I was in really good shape and I got stomped.
I’m looking forward to reading more stories like Moulton’s. I especially like the “Ah thot ah’s gonna die-e-e-!” tales.
John, your point about COS (Creeping Out Syndrome) is well taken. This happens even to experienced kayakers (ahem, cough, choke) who aren’t paying attention and then “Oh Crap! How did that wall o’ water get put in front of me!” happens.
As for “roll over, roll back up”, I know it’s debatable, and that there are good reasons for doing it, such as conserving energy. I just get plumb afeared when my precious little upside-down-in-the-water brain is the drogue slowing my kayak down in a huge breaking wave on a rock or coral reef. I can’t grok that. When facing an invincible wave, I’m more likely to bail out of my boat, dive way down, and go fetal until the turbulence passes. As a good swimmer, I’ll take my chances swimming in and retrieving my boat back on shore. I’d rather waste valuable energy swimming than toast what few brain cells I have left if I hit my head! C’est ce la crap shoot.
Oh yes, check out John’s SURF KAYAKING video mentioned in my website under “DVDs”. And read Gregg Berman’s nice article called “Surfing the Shore Break with Touring Kayaks” in the June 2011 issue of SEA KAYAKER magazine.
Great article Eric! I don’t have too much experience paddling out through surf as most of the put-ins my way are on deeper channels that take you out the back of the surf zones. That being said, I do enjoy getting into the rocks and then punching back out through the incoming surf just for fun. The main point I really agree with here for newbies is the bit about getting out and playing in surf without your boat. I started out as a surfer first and came to paddling much later in life, so nothing to me is more fun that just rolling around in a shorey, diving under waves and allowing your body to get tossed about in the sea. Once you learn to love being one with the sea, you can be far more relaxed when topside in a boat.
On another note: I want to thank Tsunami Ranger photographers Michael Powers and Jim Kakuk for their great shots for this essay and all the others. When the copyright mark says “TsunamiRangers.com”, it’s usually Mike’s or Jim’s shots. If you would like to purchase big versions of these photos, just contact me and I’ll connect you with Mike, Jim or any other Tsunami Ranger photographer.
I forgot to mention in the post, that this “entering the surf zone” is the first in a three-part series. In July I’ll have a post on “exiting the surf zone”, and in August we’ll finish the series with “surf zone etiquette and activities.” Stay tuned!
Hi Eric,
Great surf post and nice contributions from John Lull also.
You mentioned Steve Sinclair, I once asked him how he knew what was possible out there in the storm surf that he played in. His response was that the ocean was his mentor and he referred to the ocean as “Bubba Round Out There”. Your blog validates that you and John also study under with “Bubba Round Out There”.
Keep the smooth side down,
Reg, I’m glad you liked the surf post. As one of the best kayakers in the surf or on the river, you and your words have a lot of merit with not-so-young whippersnappers like me. Thanks!
I really liked your beginner’s approach for buliding confidence by having them spend time in the soup and not just paddling straight out. I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I use it as the first step in teaching my surf zone skills with novices on our multi-day kayak trips in New Zealand. The other steps are 2) holding one’s position backwards to the incoming waves so they get used to looking over their shoulders and practice their reverse paddling, and 3) (after feeling confident with the first two steps), then taking the soupy waves side on (positioning their kayak parallel to the incoming waves). This gives them a better chance at correct timing for their brace into the broken wave and a feeling side surfing when the wave energy has lessoned. Step 4) would just be bracing and side surfing on the other side of their kayak. Once they are good with this, then it’s out to the lineup, with a discussion on “breaking the wave barrier”!
And John Lull’s “creeping out syndrome” is a perfect phrase to describe what they will do if not advised to counter act that unintentional forward movement. Often what I do–if I’ve got the luxury of ‘one on one’–is position myself to their side so they can use me as a reference for not creeping out further, and I’m also there, close at hand, to give verbal instruction if need be.
However, my main point now, would be to comment on the technique that experienced kayak surfers can use–which you describe and give credit to Derek Hutchinson–to avoid be smashed hard and/or surfed backwards. This being the technique of rolling over and taking the hit on the upturned hull of the boat as it faces more or less into the wave.
I agree with both points of view as viable techniques in bigger surf–upside down as one technique and charging hard and upright as the other approach–but it should be pointed out that each technique is suitable for different circumstances. In my way of thinking, capsizing just before the wave arrives is a last resort when the wave has either already just broken or is going to break immediately in front of the kayak. (It does take a bit of experience to know this, so the age old “timing of the wave” learning curve certainly comes into play here.) Now for this technique the assumption is that the paddler has judged that the breaking wave is going to be a very hard hit because of it’s size and or type of break, and is very desireable to be avoided as a reverse endo and thrashing is the likely outcome!
Going back to your position Eric, I would suggest that going for it and paddling hard “to break the wave barrier” is the way to go if there is any remote hope of being able to punch out through the wave as it’s starting to break. With enough momentum a paddler can surprise themselves with what they can achieve if they charge!
So, to recap…the ‘roll over’ is mainly for heavy waves that have already broken or are going to break immediately before the paddler gets to them For an experienced surf paddler, this should be an easy distinction.
By the way, for anyone who is not 100% with their rolls…this roll over method will be the “easiest roll of your paddling days” as the forces will move the kayak backwards making the sweep almost unnecessary…just stick the paddle out there and “think” roll!
Now–and this is very important–one does have to capsize with the paddle set up on the correct side once upside down–this will be towards the wave with the kayak turned to the side only a few degrees, so that one will be rolling up using the energy of the wave rather than having the wave push the kayak into the paddle. (Hope I haven’t worded this too confusingly?!)
Crikey…this was a long response! Anyway, there is so much to learn and so much fun to be had in the surf zone that all these nuances of knowledge are worthy of mention, I reckon!
Thanks for bringing up the surf zone and tips for it. It used to intimidate the “H” out of me and on big days it still does. I’ve found it most helpful to spend lots and lots and lots of time in the surf zone – swimming, body surfing, and paddling. Definitely spend time playing in the soup – bracing, rolling, hovering and then driving through waves. Being a small person, I’ve found that surf zone time in a whitewater kayak is a great way to build confidence and skills (including water reading) that transfer over into a sea kayak.
Cate, you are spot on when suggesting that surfing in a whitewater kayak is the way to go to build confidence and skills. That’s how I learned to surf. I still kayak in a whitewater boat on occasion.
Whenever I have a new student/protege who is eager and able (such as my wife Nancy a few years ago), I put them in a slalom boat in the sea and surf so they learn pure paddling without the benefit/hassle of chines, skegs, or rudders. Later, when they switch to long boats, they are much better.
I discovered the value of rolling over and taking it on the hull from surf kayaking. I had also read about it in Derek’s Sea Canoeing book.
I was at a favorite surf spot and it was really going off; sets were 4′-5′ high and 3 to 6 deep, they were very shapely. I was surfing my Mike Johnson Mako it’s 9′-6″ and pretty low volume planing hull. It’s not really fast until it starts planing.
I was getting good rides inside but wanted to get all the way outside so that I could link sections at the secondary reform zone past a reef. Try as I might, I was taking a lot of breaking waves on my deck, chest and head. Being fin-less, the boat surfs well in all directions: backwards, forwards and sideways; the boat wants to surf and maintaining position isn’t easy. I thought, this is taking way too much energy and I’m taking a beating. So I got into my “spear the wave” set-up for a roll position and capsized just before the wave broke in front of me. Wow! the was so much easier. I felt the hydraulics as the wave rocked across my hull, the set-up position minimizes the drag. Once it passed I paddled further, rolled again, positioned, vectored, waited and finally made it outside. There I caught a good size barrel and surfed into the other sections.
I’ve done similar manuevers in my sea kayak, it seems to really stay put when capsized. I think that I’m in favor of the roll set-up postion as being protective in deep enough water and where there are no submerged hazards. I wear a helmet with a face cage. I also believe that the practice of active kayak surfing has honed all of my paddling, water reading and swimming skills.
Rainer, “What’s our vector, Victor?” You have been watching too many old and very funny movies, dude. “And don’t call me Shirley.”
Anyway, excellent argument for Derek’s “roll over, roll up.” I learned a lot reading your comment. Hey, wait a minute. I thought I was your teacher, not the other way around!
Hey vector out, dude! One thing that should be mentioned in regard to capsizing & rolling back up after the wave passes is you won’t be hanging straight upside down (you better not be!), but will go into a tucked position, right up close to the deck of the boat. This is a very protected position and far more ‘stable’ than most people realize. It’s standard practice if you capsize in the river of course, and anyone with a solid roll will do it instinctively.
Excellent article, thank you. I shall use its techniques soon when introducing a couple of my pals to the surf zone. In your future articles I’d be interested in a discussion of the limitations on manouvering 18 foot long “closed cockpit sea kayaks” when coming in towards the beach in surf. I find my NDK Explorer LV will happily surf straight down the wave, but once turned slightly to one side, to play on the wave, I can’t get it back to straight, whichever way I edge. Bracing and bongo-sliding into the beach is good fun, , but more control would be better. Perhaps a shorter boat? (I’ve just bought an NDK Romany, and will try with that.) Nick.
Same with my Nordkapp back in the day. Went off like a rocket, but once it got turned a wee bit to one side or the other, there was no straightening it back out for me. If the wave was steep and I was zipping along in a straight line, the snout also had a marked tendency to bury itself at the bottom and then …. Aiieeeee – splat. That was with the forward and rear hatches empty, too. Maybe if I was a better paddler with great timing and anticipated the turn and edged & tossed in a hard stern rudder with me paddle it would have been different…
Summer has sprung on the East Coast, so I’m going for a rematch. Didn’t know much about edging back in the day.
Nick, John Lull and I will write an “exiting the surfzone” post on this Tsunami Rangers website in July, so stay tuned. Hopefully we’ll be able to give details on how to get in without losing control. My quick & short answer to your 18-foot boat dilemma is “Broaching is fun.” Perhaps one of our readers can answer that particular question for you in a succint and practical way. Readers?
You’ll never get an 18-foot boat staightened out once you are broached in the surf. You’ll just have to ride it in sideways or until (if) the wave releases you in the soup. The trick with long boats is to get exactly the right trajectory (almost, but NOT QUITE, straight down the wave), with some paddling momentum, when you catch the wave. Then you might be able to surf it all the way in that way, holding the angle with a stern rudder stroke.
A better option with a long boat in steep surf is to ride the top of the wave, which takes a lot of practice and really good timing.
John you say ” You’ll never get an 18-foot boat staightened out once you are broached in the surf. You’ll just have to ride it in sideways or until (if) the wave releases you in the soup.”
Almost always true for me however it depends a bit on the hull shape and size of the surf.
I have found that fish-form kayaks will get back straight from a broach once the wave has passed underneath me and will ride the soup again in front and possibly surf down the face of a reformed wave.
I find quite the opposite in a Swede-form hull.
Broached, the wave passes underneath me but then it spins me around BACWARDS and I start to surf in reverse. Needless to say that if the kayak is not really rockered I end up endoing. Good fun, as long as I am ready for it 🙂
The action is visible at 2:45 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGw7ASEb5SA
Yeah, I should know I should never say “never.” There are a couple of exceptions. A gentle, soft spilling wave is a different matter and you can do whatever you like on such a wave (they are very rare here in Calif, but common in Florida). And of course if the wave has passed underneath you, it’s no problem to spin out, since the wave has released you. But that won’t often happen in a typical plunging wave.
As Eric says, you can just relax and ride the broach. The key to that is holding the boat on edge with just the right angle so it planes as the wave pushes you shoreward.
Hey cool video. I kept watching and waiting for the wave to finally pick you up, but once that happened it looked like a great time!
I agree with John that your video was totally awesome Gnarly Dog! Thanks for sharing.
Yep, when broaching the trick is to dig deep into the wave, brace and enjoy the ride. We’ll discuss this in more detail in our July post on exiting surf and/or in August in the “surf etiquette” post (see, your broaching can be bad for anyone downwave. That’s an etiquette/safety issue).
Eric asked me to relate this episode, so here goes. He was training me and my friend Denise to race in the Sea Gypsy extreme kayak race and we were practicing landing and taking off at Miramar where the race starts and ends. Denise and I were paddling a Tsunami X-3. It was not a big day and we had surfed in beautifully. When we went to go out again, we misjudged the timing a little. A set was coming in. Eric can tell how high the waves were; I don’t really know. The soup zone was kind of wide, so it took us a few strokes to even get to the surf zone, and when we got there the set was starting to break. The X-3 is a really big boat, and we were paddling pretty hard so we got over the first wave okay. Then the next one came and I saw Eric clawing his way over the crest with my left peripheral vision. I had a bad feeling. Denise and I got over that one just after Eric, but the front half of the boat caught air and we came down pretty hard. I don’t know what made Denise stop paddling, but she did, and the biggest waves were still to come. I started yelling at her to paddle, and she turned around and looked at me, saying, “It’s all right, we’re through”, or words to that effect. (See above comments about not turning your back on the ocean.) I could see the next wave building, set to break right on top of us. We were dead in the water. (See above comments about paddling hard in the surf zone.) I completely chickened out and went overboard with my paddle. I dove off the left side of the boat into the wave and went down deep. Denise got creamed, and thereby hangs another tale. I had to go up and down about 4 more times until the set went through, and when I came up I was gasping and the 150-pound X-3 was flying through the air toward the beach. Denise wasn’t in it. I swam in. (See above comments about being able to swim in the surf zone.)
Nancy, thanks for relating this great story. The waves that day were averaging about 4.67 feet and peaking just over 6 feet. (note: I use the Chris Cunningham method of sitting body height to determine wave size. If I’m sitting at 3 feet above the water and the wave is twice as high as I am in vertical feet, then it’s 6 feet high.) These waves were doable, but Miramar is not a place to lose your momentum whle breaking through a set.
Denise and Nancy couldda shouldda made it through, but a moment’s hesitation in a 24-foot boat stopped their forward progress and they were just a log missile sitting in the surf, waiting for a wave to propel them to their target back in the soup. They both ended up in the drink and sans boat, which is another tale to tell in a future post on “rescue swimming.”
A few additional comments on Entering the Surf: When scouting look for soft spots where the energy of the waves have been broken up by exposed or submerged rocks or sand bars. Your can hopscotch your way through a long exposed break by catching these “eddies”. Also converging waves, waves that meet at an angle, will sometimes cancel out each other and if you position yourself in the middle of the zipper will give you a free lift, most exhilarating!
Good advice, Jim. Thanks. I will discuss playing in zippers (convergence waves) in a “surf etiquette and activities” post in August. Stay tuned to this station.
To dovetail with Jim’s comments on reading water; identifying where the rip channels are can make it faster and easier to paddle through the Soup Zone and Impact Zone.
Studying the wave faces will usually show areas of turbidity, where sand and silt are being carried back into the ocean from the shore break. These rip channels work best just after a set of waves has come through, as the current often steepens the incoming wave faces and makes them break earlier. During a lull in the sets, it’s like walking on a moving sidewalk. Conversely, these are the areas of moving water that get swimmers in trouble as a rip current, also making it hard to land your kayak.
Momentum is key to getting outside, having it will allow you to “break the wave barrier”. Even a displacement hull will plane if a certain speed is reached. Applying extra speed at the critical moment, when encountering a wave, should keep the bow above water and lift the hull.
An excellent read: Wave and Beaches the dynamics of the ocean surface by Willard Bascom
Yes, WAVES AND BEACHES is a must-have book for all sea kayakers.
And you bring up a good point about rip currents. These are escalators that take you right out to sea. That’s a good thing (typically) when kayaking, not so good when trying to swim near shore. (aside: if you are swiming and get caught in a strong rip, swim perpendicular to the rip, that is, parallel to the shore, and you will get out of its tractor beam).
Great article, Eric! I like the emphasis on spending a lot of time in the surf zone to build skills. You can read books and watch videos, and they help, but there’s nothing like reality to really learn. I’d have to disagree with your last comment, though, “where there is skill, there is no fear”: I was fairly skillful at one time and still managed to scare the crap out of myself on many occasions. Besides, fear is a good thing; it keeps you focused on the task at hand.
On the “prophylactic surf roll” vs. punching through, I agree with Mark Hutson; they are for different circumstances. It’s like asking which is better, a low brace or a high brace. A low brace is always preferable when it will do the job, but sometimes a high brace is the only thing that will keep you upright. A boat will punch through a wall of whitewater up to a certain size (that size being dependent on the type of boat and how fast the paddler can make it go), but beyond that, try as you may, you’re going over backwards. The bow lifts, the sterns sinks, the wave keeps coming and over you go. That’s when I roll first, just as I am about to hit the whitewater. Then, the curvature (rocker) of the boat being reversed, and the paddler under it instead of taking the hit in the chest, the whitewater tends to push the boat down and underneath, much like a surfer’s “duck dive”. It works beautifully but like lots of things takes some practice.
I also agree wholeheartedly with Gnarlydog on the shape of the boat. Fishform design is made for rough water and surf. They are not as fast on flat water, but they are (in my opinion) the only way to go in rough water. Swedeform (also called, humorously, “Anti-fishform” in some older references) shapes were designed for flatwater racing, and they excel at this. Many manufacturers modified the Swedeform shape in an effort to have their cake and eat it too, but the result is that many maneuvers in the surf and in heavy weather are difficult or impossible. Surfing of any kind is especially difficult with Swedeform shapes, as the high volume stern lifts rather than sinks when you take off on the wave, and then the wave drives the pointy low volume bow underwater, with unpleasant results.
It IS possible to work from “surfing” sideways in a broached position to surfing straight into the beach. We did this regularly in the 20′ Oddysea surf ski; but it is strongly Fishform with a lot of volume in the bow and relatively little in the stern. The trick is to scull strongly in the high brace position and rotate at the waist, working the bow around towards the beach, so that eventually you end up sculling beside the boat, rather than perpendicular to it, and at that point you sit up and surf straight in. It can be frustrating, though, because if the boat hits a little backwash coming out from shore or other significant irregularity on the water’s surface in front of the boat, it will slap you back around into the broach position and you’ll have to start over again.
You speak with the voice of experience. I totally agree with what you say about boat design. The Oddysea is pretty different from most sea kayaks. In any kayak design, having a relatively low volume stern is a real advantage in surf, rough seas, and wind. I finally realized that’s what I like about my Coaster, which is a shorter sea kayak with a low volume stern & relatively high volume bow). The short length is also helpful for maneuvering, but it’s really the low volume and low-profile stern that does the job. With less stern, there is less for the wind, waves, and breaking surf to push around, literally! And that gives you much better boat control. Not the only factor of course, but a lot of sea kayak designers don’t seem to realize it. Or maybe they are more interested in having lots of room for gear, or for “stability,” or something like that.
Ok, don’t mean to hijack this into a boat design issue (obviously the best design for surfing is a surf kayak, but it’s useless for anything else), but what you said struck me as the truth!
I remember that boat..wasn’t that what you were paddling on the trip we did in So. Oregon? I liked the shape, and as I recall it also had a nice planing surface on the bottom.
Yeah, same boat and I still have it. Not really a planing bottom as it has a keel line and a ‘displacement’ hull with a pretty good keel at the stern. So it tracks well, but when leaned will carve and turn easily. It’s a sea kayak though and as such, not really a surf kayak. I think it surfs real well for a sea kayak, though. It’s all a trade-off.
Great subject! Has anyone out there ever used the capsize option, and subsequently pitchpoled 180 degrees, then ended up upright and riding the wave in? I have never done so myself, but it seems like it might be doable, the main difficulty probably being preventing a likely forward pitchpole after catching the wave, since the wave would be even steeper (or broken) than before. I would imagine that a short surf boat would have a better chance. My shortest boat is a 14′ Tsunami X-15, probably too long to execute this without the aforementioned subsequent forward pitchpole. Anyone ever try this, or seen it done?
Tony
Derek Hutchinson, in his book SEA CANOEING, calls this the “reverse loop and flick”. I have never done it, and I think it is more suited to small river-type boats, though I suppose that theoretically one could master it in a larger craft with sufficient practice. A Tsunami X-15 might be just the thing.
It is performed, though, from the upright position rather than rolling first. As I said in my post, rolling in front of the whitewater allows the boat to be pushed down, under the wave, preventing pitchpoling.
Tony, I have never ended up surfing from capsized, but have rolled down the face of a wave while surfing, rolled back up and continued surfing a few times in the past. I would also like to hear about a “capsize, flip 180 and surf” if someone has done it, purposefully or not. Probably some boaters have done it in a surf or slalom kayak, or a wave ski or surf shoe.
I don’t know if anyone (including Derek, lol) has actually mastered a ‘reverse loop and flick” to the point they can do it on command and in control. I bet it’s been done more than once by accident, though. And yeah, those sorts of tricks are much more doable in a surf or whitewater kayak.
I’ve had strange things happen after getting demolished in a wave. Usually I just got worked and when things settled down I’d roll up again (except a couple times when I got ripped out of the boat!). But in some rare instances, during the ‘rag doll’ phase (while being shaken around under water like a rag doll), the paddle sort of magically caught a portion of the wave, I rolled up and continued surfing down the wave, either backwards or forwards. Totally unplanned and by accident, but a great trick when it happens. And that would almost always be in a surf kayak.
Once though, in a sea kayak (the Coaster), out at the place we call ‘microwave’ I got tossed by a wave and suddenly realized I was upside down, in the air in freefall. I landed behind the wave on my head (but relatively softly) and was able to roll back up. That instant of upside down freefall was maybe one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever had in a kayak.
Hi all
Fish form or swede form I think it more where the Volume is placed and if it has rocker or not .I paddle a swede form boat with a High Volume bow with a small amount of rocker ..surfs amazingly,maneuvers very well and handles big ocean conditions as well .
In fact I would say ( and this is hard as I sell and manufacture these boats) it handles better than fish form boats.
Which takes me back to my argument that there are many areas that make up the handling of a boat not just (fish or swede ) form
My preference for getting out is timing first.Second choice if caught out would be to roll under then up .Love doing this move in clear water watching the wave roll over you is just awesome .
I live in the California soup: upwelling brings plankton, small fish, big fish, seals, sharks, and the entire food chain. No space between the water molecules!
It seems that everyone has their preferences in boats, and that’s good. Over the years, I’ve tended toward sit-on-tops made of Kevlar with seatbelts and fishform hulls with rocker. I like responsive rudders which help when surfing, tracking, or any time you need to compensate for the rocker. As for entering surf, any type of kayak works well enough, as long as it isn’t a wide, stable, heavy Tupperware kayak with sponsons and no secondary stability. That’s my two cents.
The stats show that most commenters favor Derek’s roll-over, roll-up method of dealing with strong incoming surf. I’m not in that group. If a huge wave is just ready to break, my strong preference is to crest it and move on to the next challenge.
If a big wave has already broken and there’s no time to quickly vector to a greener or softer spot on the wave, my first choice would be to “lift” my boat up in the foam by pressing down on the paddle face at the entry-point of the paddle stroke while simultaneously vectoring at an acute angle of about 5-15 degrees to the weaker side of the foamy breaker.
This creates a “lifting ferry” effect in the break and works really well to keep momentum and avoid the having to “give up” and roll over routine. You may still get dragged by the wave, but you are upright and able to paddle on, gaining yardage and eliminating the risk of running out of breath (and passing out) or hitting something with any part of your body. John Lull knows what can happen if you hit something while going backwards in a wave. Imagine how bad it would be if your body ran into the bow of an outgoing boat while you were underwater….
Getting back to breaking the wave barrier stories, or I should say FAILING to break the wave barrier, my most memorable, scary, and potentialy deadly experience has already been written up on page 206 in my book (‘Sea Kayaking Safety & Rescue’). That experience was due to a serious lack of attention on my part. Since everyone reading this blog has my book, you can just look it up. What? You don’t have the book? It’s available at Amazon or from Wilderness Press (get the 2nd edition as it has a bonus chapter on stroke technique). Now that the shameless promotion is finished here’s a tale of my second scariest wave barrier experience.
I was paddling with Michael Powers and Bonnie Brill in some rock gardens south of Point Arena. We were cruising along an inside passage, looking for a route out toward the open sea between the rocks. I started out a narrow slot between 10-foot high rock walls, with Michael and Bonnie some distance behind me. As I reached the mouth of the slot, I watched a few waves break just outside. Then, when I detected a window (or so I thought), I started out. Just as I exited, a large wave welled up in front of me. It quickly steepened up and appeared to be roughly the height of a skyscraper. Let’s just say it was well overhead and I knew for a fact I couldn’t make it through. I also knew there was a rock wall behind me, as the entrance to the slot behind was very narrow.
So I paddled as hard as possible on the off chance I could punch through. For an instant I noticed how beautiful the glassy, vertical wave face appeared, with the sun shining dimmly through it (I remember that very clearly), then the whole world exploded and I was yanked violently up, down, sideways, every which way, and finally came to rest upside down. This was not a good place to go for a swim, with nowhere to get ashore and more breaking waves on the way. Luckily I made my roll, then quickly paddled out to safety.
I turned around and gestured wildly to Michael & Bonnie as they started paddling out of the slot, blissfully unaware of what had just happened to me, and blissfully unaware of the possibility of getting slam-dunked as I had. Luck was on their side, naturally, and they calmly, slowly paddled out during a major window with no waves at all. I don’t think they even believed me when I told them what had transpired just before they paddled out!
Good timing is important, but good luck can be even better.
John, If you were out paddling in big surf with Michael AND Bonnie, and you lived, that says a lot. They are both blessed people who always luck out and all the bad stuff happens to people around them. Right?
I thought you were going to tell the tale of you surfing backwards while Bonnie was paddling out through the surf….Yes, no?
I don’t know about that. Both Michael & Bonnie have gotten their share of ‘bad stuff,’ on the water (some of which is also well-documented in my book!). But they were so lucky that day, they didn’t even realize it.
Oh yeah, you’re referring to the kayak spearing in the back incident (also in my book, pg 186; that’s enough plugs for the book, lol). That was a very horrendous experience. I learned that time that other kayakers in the surf are far more dangerous than the actual waves!
And Moulton, there was no grace under pressure on my part. Just sheer terror, mostly. Michael & Bonnie did exhibit a lot of grace under no pressure, though.
You’re too modest by far, John. Rolling up after that thrashing, under those circumstances (no where to run, no where to hide) speaks volumes. I stand firm by my observation…
OK you guys, since I enjoy surfing so much, you have sucked me into commenting on this blog(I am a blog virgin). All of what I have read is valid stuff, and I hope I am not repeating some of your techniques.
Going for it is good if you think you realistically have a chance of making it over the crest,but the consequences of not making it, such as going endo totally disoriented and out of control is not to my liking.
When you decide making it isn’t going to happen, and with experience you will have a good idea, broach your boat(boat parallel to wave face)and dive into the wave face enough to keep from rolling down wave. Your boat deck will be flat against the wave face and your paddle slightly extended as in a brace position. On bigger waves you will keep the paddle in tight to your body or the hydralics will rip it out of your grasp.
In this position you and your boat will be pushed along sideways in a somewhat controlled manner until the energy dissipates enough to lever up to a sitting position. It takes a little practice to get the timing down and how much energy you need to exert to balance the wave’s force. Unlike some of the descriptions I have read, you are not hanging upside down under your boat, but burried in the wave face horizontal or higher, depending on how high you can ride in the wave face without being rolled down wave.
I have used this technique to save my ass in 12 ft + waves(from the backside). The big waves may elevator you up and spit you off the top where I have experienced an eight foot free fall back into the wave, but just hold your position and maybe take a breath before you dive back into the face. Once the energy has released you enough to feel comfortable and has gotten you to green water, use a sweep paddle stroke to point your boat down wave and you may be able to surf it out. You can even use this broach technique to start surfing on waves you are comfortable with, and easier than chasing wave creasts to launch off of.
As has been mentioned, the type of boat you paddle will influence your experience, and it will certainly take longer to get a sea kayak into broach position than a surf or play boat. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I do prefer side surfing to ass over tea kettle
Oh, one more thing. someone mentioned(I would look to see who, but with my limited computer skills I would probably lose my place)doing rolls while surfing. It is called a windowshade roll, where you surf parallel to the wave face after take-off, then set up down wave in roll position and then roll down wave. Hold the position and the rising water up the face of the wave will bring you back up to a sitting position. You need a big enough wave and start high enough up on the wave to where you are still on the face after you roll. Mahalo, Dennis
Good point Dennis (and good to hear from you!). The broach method will work fine in a surf zone. Even thought you’ll probably be pushed clear back to the beach, at least you’ll remain upright and relatively in control. However, in some situations, like the story I related a few posts back, you might get pushed sideways right into a rock or a cliff, which would not be such a good idea. Still, it would be better to hit the rock with your hull, so the broach, which would present your hull to the rock, might be the lesser of several evils.
And obviously, it’s best to never get caught between a rock and a big breaking wave. That’s rule number one of rock garden paddling.
Good points, Dennis and John. Yes, broaching works, if you can set up in time and don’t mind starting over again through the surf, Personally, I would broach, as Dennis suggests, rather than turn upside down. I have done both with good results, but still prefer to MAKE IT over that big wave. Although one time (it’s in the book CONFESSIONS OF A WAVE WARRIOR and also published in CALIFORNIA KAYAKER magazine) I knew I wasn’t going to make it over a Godzilla wave, so I turned downwave and tried to surf the giant beast. That did not turn out so good, and my boat was destroyed. But I lived, by diving down to the sea floor and swimming up behind the wave. That is my choice of last resort.
The bottom line is that any method works in moderately sized waves. In impenetrable waves, everything is a wing and a prayer. The main thing is to not panic, and instead relax, and let things play out. Right?
Eric you make what is probably the most important point here. I think it bears repeating and emphasizing. If and when you are mowed down by a big wave, tossed about upside down like a rag doll, the very worst thing you can do is panic. If you panic and seize up (instead of relaxing), you’re more likely to be injured, and you use up more oxygen so you’ll run out of breath sooner.
That’s obviously important when underwater! Relax and you’ll immediately find it much easier to hold your breath and do what’s necessary; either roll up or bail & swim. I’ve experienced this directly on several occasions. It brings to mind another great anecdote, but I’ll save that for another time.
Aside from any safety considerations, it’s just plain lots of fun powering up the faces of oncoming swells. At times, you even launch completely into the air (“breaking the wave barrier”, as Eric calls it). With my Tsunami kayaks, I can tell by the feel of the foot pedals when the rudder has left the water. It’s even better if I can get the 20′ Tsunami X-2 completely airborn, but that is a rare event, with larger waves and good forward momentum a must. The crash upon landing on the backside of the wave with the X-2 is phenomenal!
Tony
coming from the opposite end of the surf learning curve to yourself, it was a great read. I had my first experience of deciding to roll under a larger wave recently, so this discussion was very topical for me. I have a lacerated finger at present so typing is a bit of a chore, I won’t repeat it here but I have related my experience on my blog should you wish to laugh at/with me.
Hi, how likely is it that a surfer gets swept out to sea. A swimmer would never go out as far as a surfer. They would call it being swept out to sea and they would only go a little bit further than where they are still able to stand. They will quickly realize that they are getting tired, they are getting water in their mouths and nostrils and the big waves just aren’t worth it.
Hi Louise, thanks for reading and thanks for your question. The thing about being swept out to sea is it’s dependent on currents. Swimmers often get swept out because of rip tides. But rip tides don’t go on forever. For one thing, all you have to do is swim parallel to the shore and pretty soon you’ll be out of the rip and can swim in to the beach. In a worst case scenario, a swimmer could get swept out to where the rip dissipates and then swimming in is relatively easy, depending on distance, as long as you don’t swim against the rip tide itself. Bottom line, you have to get out of the rip. Surfers, however, use rip tides to easily get out past a break. The rip pulls them quickly out and there is usually a flattening of the waves where the rip resides. Then the surfer can choose where to set up to catch rides. I have actually never heard of a surfer getting swept out to sea. As you suggest, surfers area already “out there” beyond the rip tides. Surfers can drift out of position because of wind, waves, or longshore currents which pull you along the beach but not away from it. That just means paddling back to the original position. I’ve been in both rips and longshore currents as a swimmer, either body surfing or because I crashed my kayak, and the main thing is not to panic. It’s not actually that big a deal unless as you say, the swimmer is fatigued or in a major current such as the one that might take you out the Golden Gate. I hope that answers your question. Let us know if you need more info. Thanks again for reading!
[…] post, we discussed how to safely get from the beach, through the breakers, and out to sea (see https://tsunamirangers.com/2011/06/20/entering-the-surf-zone/). Everything written there about scouting, swimming in surf to acclimate, and practicing in the […]
[…] put our sanity aside for a second and discuss surfing first up. You wrote a great post recently on entering the surf and playing around in the soup. For us beginners who, errr, aren’t exactly good rollers, this […]
[…] miles from shore, in cold water, in strong wind, in big seas, at night. Then learn to paddle in surf, rocks, and caves. Then, no matter the place, no matter the conditions, you likely will be able to […]
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Hey, nice article Eric! I can add a couple more tips about going out through the surf. Surfing back in would be a whole different article so we can leave that for another time.
Having taught a lot of surf classes, one of the issues I noticed with students practicing in the soup zone is what I call “creeping out syndrome” (I just made that up now, but read on). When you have a soup zone, it could be fairly wide or fairly narrow and the idea is to stay there, out of range of the bigger impact zone farther out, and stay in control of your kayak. What usually happens to a lot of kayakers is they paddle forward as the soup hits them, then stop paddling, then paddle forward again, then keep repeating that process and before they know it they have crept right up to the impact zone and it’s too late to do anything when the wave of the day arrives.
So what to do? Remember you can back up and you need to learn how to back up (this is also true when setting up outside to surf in). Don’t forget the backstroke. One or two backstrokes, followed by a forward stroke, if necessary, will keep you in position until you decide to make your move. When you get really comfortable, you can let the soup push you back, not too much, but just enough. And look back over your shoulder occasionally to see where you are in relation to the shore (don’t turn your back on the ocean for too long, though!).
Also you only need to paddle forward at the moment the small soup waves hit you; so save your energy. Remember I’m talking about holding position in the soup. When you decide to make you move and paddle out, that’s a different matter.
The ability to maneuver and control the kayak is essential. You may need to use a sweep stroke or two to keep the boat facing into the waves. And of course you need a powerful forward stoke to power out through the impact zone when you decide to go for it. Practice all those strokes!
One word on the ‘roll over, let the wave break on your hull, then roll back up’ method: Like Eric, I prefer to simply power through and hope to hell I make it. But if I know for a fact that I won’t get through and the wave will push me all the wave back to the beach (end-over-end or not), then I might choose to capsize and roll back up after the wave passes. The one advantage to that is your body will be hanging down in the water. That doesn’t sound so good does it? Except your body will tend to hold you in place and when you roll up you won’t have to paddle all the way out again (saving energy is very important for lots of reasons). This is especially true with a boat loaded down with gear. On the other hand, a loaded boat will punch through easier if, and ONLY if, you have plenty of forward momentum when you hit the wave. Another reason to develop a strong forward stroke for sprinting.
Oh yeah. I have some wave barrier stories (don’t we all?). I’ll post one later on.
Great post, Eric, and on a subject in which I could certainly use some advice. John, I think “creeping out syndrome” sounds just right for the soup zone; it’s so easy to get sucked into it without realizing what’s happening until…OMG!
I don’t have the experience that you mates do with big water, but I spent a lot of time in moderate East Coast surf back in the day, and before I got into sea kayaking, I bodysurfed every time I was at a beach with bodysurfable waves (what else is there to do, right?).
I remember very distinctly one particular sea kayaking outing when the ocean really surprised me by kicking my butt when I really didn’t think I was going to have that big a problem getting through the breakers. I scoped the zone out from the beach for about fifteen minutes, but obviously didn’t read the situation clearly. It was on Cape Cod, which sticks out into the Atlantic in an East / West orientation, and the wind was about 15 – 20 knots from the South. The spilling 4 foot breakers were beautiful but very closely spaced, and the zone was four or five waves deep. I never saw a break in the action and I worked hard for about 3 hours trying again and again to punch through and getting a water sandwich served to me every single time.
The first wave would slow me down, the second one would stop me in my tracks, and then before I could get moving forward again, the third one would nail me, push me back, and knock me down. The thing that surprised me the most is that it didn’t look like it was going to be that bad when I scoped it from the beach (a reflection of my inexperience, no doubt).
I never liked rolling over and taking it on the hull, but it does have the virtue of using one’s body as a sea anchor and holding position better. In this instance, however, it didn’t help at all, because no matter what, I had no forward momentum when that third wave arrived. The local surfers were sitting on their cars, so I should have figured that something was up, but I thought I could get out with my sea kayak in conditions that gave them pause. I was totally wrong about that! Any advice or thoughts on this type of situation greatly appreciated – I’ve forgotten a lot over the years, but my memory of that humbling outing is still crystal clear after two decades…
Moulton, you bring up a really important point. When talking about breaking the wave barrier, it’s not only the size of the wave that counts (and yeah that’s really important!), but the TYPE of breakers. At any given size, a gentle spilling wave, where the energy is released gradually, will be much easier to punch through than a steep plunging or dumping wave where all the energy is released at once.
And then there’s storm surf. What you describe, even if you called them spilling waves, sounds similar to storm surf where the waves are very closely-spaced and they have a lot more energy than they appear to. When I say ‘storm surf,’ I mean surf from a local storm. Of course all surf of any size is caused by storms, but if the storm is very distant, then the waves travel a long distance over the ocean and have time to get ‘organized,’ with space between them.
I distinctly remember one evening years ago (yeah, it was getting dark!) when John Dixon and I decided to play around in some storm surf at the usually benign ‘surfers beach’ in El Granada. The waves didn’t look too bad even though they were big and closely-spaced and, the real kicker, the usually narrow surf zone extended clear out to the reef about a mile away. So I paddled out into the soup and was immediately pummeled. After rolling back up, I was surprised to see I was 100 yards down the beach from where I had launched. John was still standing back there. I had not only been pummeled but carried 100 yards in the ‘longshore’ rip in a matter of seconds. There’s more to the story, but suffice it to say we soon packed up and went home!
That sounds exactly right, John. It was a really long zone, and I never made it past the third breaking wave that I encountered. They were very uniform in size, and I couldn’t discern sets. Those waves seemed have more energy than I was accustomed to, but that’s hard to say for sure; the thing that nailed me again and again was their unrelenting nature – they just kept coming and coming and coming and I got pounded over and over again until I finally threw in the towel and got out of the water. I’m not exactly a sage when it comes to estimating wave height, but it looked like about four feet of breaking white water. Doesn’t sound like much, but I was in really good shape and I got stomped.
I’m looking forward to reading more stories like Moulton’s. I especially like the “Ah thot ah’s gonna die-e-e-!” tales.
John, your point about COS (Creeping Out Syndrome) is well taken. This happens even to experienced kayakers (ahem, cough, choke) who aren’t paying attention and then “Oh Crap! How did that wall o’ water get put in front of me!” happens.
As for “roll over, roll back up”, I know it’s debatable, and that there are good reasons for doing it, such as conserving energy. I just get plumb afeared when my precious little upside-down-in-the-water brain is the drogue slowing my kayak down in a huge breaking wave on a rock or coral reef. I can’t grok that. When facing an invincible wave, I’m more likely to bail out of my boat, dive way down, and go fetal until the turbulence passes. As a good swimmer, I’ll take my chances swimming in and retrieving my boat back on shore. I’d rather waste valuable energy swimming than toast what few brain cells I have left if I hit my head! C’est ce la crap shoot.
Oh yes, check out John’s SURF KAYAKING video mentioned in my website under “DVDs”. And read Gregg Berman’s nice article called “Surfing the Shore Break with Touring Kayaks” in the June 2011 issue of SEA KAYAKER magazine.
Great article Eric! I don’t have too much experience paddling out through surf as most of the put-ins my way are on deeper channels that take you out the back of the surf zones. That being said, I do enjoy getting into the rocks and then punching back out through the incoming surf just for fun. The main point I really agree with here for newbies is the bit about getting out and playing in surf without your boat. I started out as a surfer first and came to paddling much later in life, so nothing to me is more fun that just rolling around in a shorey, diving under waves and allowing your body to get tossed about in the sea. Once you learn to love being one with the sea, you can be far more relaxed when topside in a boat.
FP, I could not agree with you more!
On another note: I want to thank Tsunami Ranger photographers Michael Powers and Jim Kakuk for their great shots for this essay and all the others. When the copyright mark says “TsunamiRangers.com”, it’s usually Mike’s or Jim’s shots. If you would like to purchase big versions of these photos, just contact me and I’ll connect you with Mike, Jim or any other Tsunami Ranger photographer.
I forgot to mention in the post, that this “entering the surf zone” is the first in a three-part series. In July I’ll have a post on “exiting the surf zone”, and in August we’ll finish the series with “surf zone etiquette and activities.” Stay tuned!
Hi Eric,
Great surf post and nice contributions from John Lull also.
You mentioned Steve Sinclair, I once asked him how he knew what was possible out there in the storm surf that he played in. His response was that the ocean was his mentor and he referred to the ocean as “Bubba Round Out There”. Your blog validates that you and John also study under with “Bubba Round Out There”.
Keep the smooth side down,
Reg
Reg, I’m glad you liked the surf post. As one of the best kayakers in the surf or on the river, you and your words have a lot of merit with not-so-young whippersnappers like me. Thanks!
Eric,
I really liked your beginner’s approach for buliding confidence by having them spend time in the soup and not just paddling straight out. I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I use it as the first step in teaching my surf zone skills with novices on our multi-day kayak trips in New Zealand. The other steps are 2) holding one’s position backwards to the incoming waves so they get used to looking over their shoulders and practice their reverse paddling, and 3) (after feeling confident with the first two steps), then taking the soupy waves side on (positioning their kayak parallel to the incoming waves). This gives them a better chance at correct timing for their brace into the broken wave and a feeling side surfing when the wave energy has lessoned. Step 4) would just be bracing and side surfing on the other side of their kayak. Once they are good with this, then it’s out to the lineup, with a discussion on “breaking the wave barrier”!
And John Lull’s “creeping out syndrome” is a perfect phrase to describe what they will do if not advised to counter act that unintentional forward movement. Often what I do–if I’ve got the luxury of ‘one on one’–is position myself to their side so they can use me as a reference for not creeping out further, and I’m also there, close at hand, to give verbal instruction if need be.
However, my main point now, would be to comment on the technique that experienced kayak surfers can use–which you describe and give credit to Derek Hutchinson–to avoid be smashed hard and/or surfed backwards. This being the technique of rolling over and taking the hit on the upturned hull of the boat as it faces more or less into the wave.
I agree with both points of view as viable techniques in bigger surf–upside down as one technique and charging hard and upright as the other approach–but it should be pointed out that each technique is suitable for different circumstances. In my way of thinking, capsizing just before the wave arrives is a last resort when the wave has either already just broken or is going to break immediately in front of the kayak. (It does take a bit of experience to know this, so the age old “timing of the wave” learning curve certainly comes into play here.) Now for this technique the assumption is that the paddler has judged that the breaking wave is going to be a very hard hit because of it’s size and or type of break, and is very desireable to be avoided as a reverse endo and thrashing is the likely outcome!
Going back to your position Eric, I would suggest that going for it and paddling hard “to break the wave barrier” is the way to go if there is any remote hope of being able to punch out through the wave as it’s starting to break. With enough momentum a paddler can surprise themselves with what they can achieve if they charge!
So, to recap…the ‘roll over’ is mainly for heavy waves that have already broken or are going to break immediately before the paddler gets to them For an experienced surf paddler, this should be an easy distinction.
By the way, for anyone who is not 100% with their rolls…this roll over method will be the “easiest roll of your paddling days” as the forces will move the kayak backwards making the sweep almost unnecessary…just stick the paddle out there and “think” roll!
Now–and this is very important–one does have to capsize with the paddle set up on the correct side once upside down–this will be towards the wave with the kayak turned to the side only a few degrees, so that one will be rolling up using the energy of the wave rather than having the wave push the kayak into the paddle. (Hope I haven’t worded this too confusingly?!)
Crikey…this was a long response! Anyway, there is so much to learn and so much fun to be had in the surf zone that all these nuances of knowledge are worthy of mention, I reckon!
Thanks for your detailed suggestions, Mark. I also like your distinction as to when to break the wave barrier and when to roll over, roll up.
Thanks for bringing up the surf zone and tips for it. It used to intimidate the “H” out of me and on big days it still does. I’ve found it most helpful to spend lots and lots and lots of time in the surf zone – swimming, body surfing, and paddling. Definitely spend time playing in the soup – bracing, rolling, hovering and then driving through waves. Being a small person, I’ve found that surf zone time in a whitewater kayak is a great way to build confidence and skills (including water reading) that transfer over into a sea kayak.
Best of days on the water,
Cate
Cate, you are spot on when suggesting that surfing in a whitewater kayak is the way to go to build confidence and skills. That’s how I learned to surf. I still kayak in a whitewater boat on occasion.
Whenever I have a new student/protege who is eager and able (such as my wife Nancy a few years ago), I put them in a slalom boat in the sea and surf so they learn pure paddling without the benefit/hassle of chines, skegs, or rudders. Later, when they switch to long boats, they are much better.
I discovered the value of rolling over and taking it on the hull from surf kayaking. I had also read about it in Derek’s Sea Canoeing book.
I was at a favorite surf spot and it was really going off; sets were 4′-5′ high and 3 to 6 deep, they were very shapely. I was surfing my Mike Johnson Mako it’s 9′-6″ and pretty low volume planing hull. It’s not really fast until it starts planing.
I was getting good rides inside but wanted to get all the way outside so that I could link sections at the secondary reform zone past a reef. Try as I might, I was taking a lot of breaking waves on my deck, chest and head. Being fin-less, the boat surfs well in all directions: backwards, forwards and sideways; the boat wants to surf and maintaining position isn’t easy. I thought, this is taking way too much energy and I’m taking a beating. So I got into my “spear the wave” set-up for a roll position and capsized just before the wave broke in front of me. Wow! the was so much easier. I felt the hydraulics as the wave rocked across my hull, the set-up position minimizes the drag. Once it passed I paddled further, rolled again, positioned, vectored, waited and finally made it outside. There I caught a good size barrel and surfed into the other sections.
I’ve done similar manuevers in my sea kayak, it seems to really stay put when capsized. I think that I’m in favor of the roll set-up postion as being protective in deep enough water and where there are no submerged hazards. I wear a helmet with a face cage. I also believe that the practice of active kayak surfing has honed all of my paddling, water reading and swimming skills.
So what’s our vector, Victor?
Rainer, “What’s our vector, Victor?” You have been watching too many old and very funny movies, dude. “And don’t call me Shirley.”
Anyway, excellent argument for Derek’s “roll over, roll up.” I learned a lot reading your comment. Hey, wait a minute. I thought I was your teacher, not the other way around!
Hey vector out, dude! One thing that should be mentioned in regard to capsizing & rolling back up after the wave passes is you won’t be hanging straight upside down (you better not be!), but will go into a tucked position, right up close to the deck of the boat. This is a very protected position and far more ‘stable’ than most people realize. It’s standard practice if you capsize in the river of course, and anyone with a solid roll will do it instinctively.
Excellent article, thank you. I shall use its techniques soon when introducing a couple of my pals to the surf zone. In your future articles I’d be interested in a discussion of the limitations on manouvering 18 foot long “closed cockpit sea kayaks” when coming in towards the beach in surf. I find my NDK Explorer LV will happily surf straight down the wave, but once turned slightly to one side, to play on the wave, I can’t get it back to straight, whichever way I edge. Bracing and bongo-sliding into the beach is good fun, , but more control would be better. Perhaps a shorter boat? (I’ve just bought an NDK Romany, and will try with that.) Nick.
Same with my Nordkapp back in the day. Went off like a rocket, but once it got turned a wee bit to one side or the other, there was no straightening it back out for me. If the wave was steep and I was zipping along in a straight line, the snout also had a marked tendency to bury itself at the bottom and then …. Aiieeeee – splat. That was with the forward and rear hatches empty, too. Maybe if I was a better paddler with great timing and anticipated the turn and edged & tossed in a hard stern rudder with me paddle it would have been different…
Summer has sprung on the East Coast, so I’m going for a rematch. Didn’t know much about edging back in the day.
Nick, John Lull and I will write an “exiting the surfzone” post on this Tsunami Rangers website in July, so stay tuned. Hopefully we’ll be able to give details on how to get in without losing control. My quick & short answer to your 18-foot boat dilemma is “Broaching is fun.” Perhaps one of our readers can answer that particular question for you in a succint and practical way. Readers?
You’ll never get an 18-foot boat staightened out once you are broached in the surf. You’ll just have to ride it in sideways or until (if) the wave releases you in the soup. The trick with long boats is to get exactly the right trajectory (almost, but NOT QUITE, straight down the wave), with some paddling momentum, when you catch the wave. Then you might be able to surf it all the way in that way, holding the angle with a stern rudder stroke.
A better option with a long boat in steep surf is to ride the top of the wave, which takes a lot of practice and really good timing.
John you say ” You’ll never get an 18-foot boat staightened out once you are broached in the surf. You’ll just have to ride it in sideways or until (if) the wave releases you in the soup.”
Almost always true for me however it depends a bit on the hull shape and size of the surf.
I have found that fish-form kayaks will get back straight from a broach once the wave has passed underneath me and will ride the soup again in front and possibly surf down the face of a reformed wave.
I find quite the opposite in a Swede-form hull.
Broached, the wave passes underneath me but then it spins me around BACWARDS and I start to surf in reverse. Needless to say that if the kayak is not really rockered I end up endoing. Good fun, as long as I am ready for it 🙂
The action is visible at 2:45 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGw7ASEb5SA
Yeah, I should know I should never say “never.” There are a couple of exceptions. A gentle, soft spilling wave is a different matter and you can do whatever you like on such a wave (they are very rare here in Calif, but common in Florida). And of course if the wave has passed underneath you, it’s no problem to spin out, since the wave has released you. But that won’t often happen in a typical plunging wave.
As Eric says, you can just relax and ride the broach. The key to that is holding the boat on edge with just the right angle so it planes as the wave pushes you shoreward.
Hey cool video. I kept watching and waiting for the wave to finally pick you up, but once that happened it looked like a great time!
I agree with John that your video was totally awesome Gnarly Dog! Thanks for sharing.
Yep, when broaching the trick is to dig deep into the wave, brace and enjoy the ride. We’ll discuss this in more detail in our July post on exiting surf and/or in August in the “surf etiquette” post (see, your broaching can be bad for anyone downwave. That’s an etiquette/safety issue).
Eric asked me to relate this episode, so here goes. He was training me and my friend Denise to race in the Sea Gypsy extreme kayak race and we were practicing landing and taking off at Miramar where the race starts and ends. Denise and I were paddling a Tsunami X-3. It was not a big day and we had surfed in beautifully. When we went to go out again, we misjudged the timing a little. A set was coming in. Eric can tell how high the waves were; I don’t really know. The soup zone was kind of wide, so it took us a few strokes to even get to the surf zone, and when we got there the set was starting to break. The X-3 is a really big boat, and we were paddling pretty hard so we got over the first wave okay. Then the next one came and I saw Eric clawing his way over the crest with my left peripheral vision. I had a bad feeling. Denise and I got over that one just after Eric, but the front half of the boat caught air and we came down pretty hard. I don’t know what made Denise stop paddling, but she did, and the biggest waves were still to come. I started yelling at her to paddle, and she turned around and looked at me, saying, “It’s all right, we’re through”, or words to that effect. (See above comments about not turning your back on the ocean.) I could see the next wave building, set to break right on top of us. We were dead in the water. (See above comments about paddling hard in the surf zone.) I completely chickened out and went overboard with my paddle. I dove off the left side of the boat into the wave and went down deep. Denise got creamed, and thereby hangs another tale. I had to go up and down about 4 more times until the set went through, and when I came up I was gasping and the 150-pound X-3 was flying through the air toward the beach. Denise wasn’t in it. I swam in. (See above comments about being able to swim in the surf zone.)
Nancy, thanks for relating this great story. The waves that day were averaging about 4.67 feet and peaking just over 6 feet. (note: I use the Chris Cunningham method of sitting body height to determine wave size. If I’m sitting at 3 feet above the water and the wave is twice as high as I am in vertical feet, then it’s 6 feet high.) These waves were doable, but Miramar is not a place to lose your momentum whle breaking through a set.
Denise and Nancy couldda shouldda made it through, but a moment’s hesitation in a 24-foot boat stopped their forward progress and they were just a log missile sitting in the surf, waiting for a wave to propel them to their target back in the soup. They both ended up in the drink and sans boat, which is another tale to tell in a future post on “rescue swimming.”
A few additional comments on Entering the Surf: When scouting look for soft spots where the energy of the waves have been broken up by exposed or submerged rocks or sand bars. Your can hopscotch your way through a long exposed break by catching these “eddies”. Also converging waves, waves that meet at an angle, will sometimes cancel out each other and if you position yourself in the middle of the zipper will give you a free lift, most exhilarating!
Good advice, Jim. Thanks. I will discuss playing in zippers (convergence waves) in a “surf etiquette and activities” post in August. Stay tuned to this station.
To dovetail with Jim’s comments on reading water; identifying where the rip channels are can make it faster and easier to paddle through the Soup Zone and Impact Zone.
Studying the wave faces will usually show areas of turbidity, where sand and silt are being carried back into the ocean from the shore break. These rip channels work best just after a set of waves has come through, as the current often steepens the incoming wave faces and makes them break earlier. During a lull in the sets, it’s like walking on a moving sidewalk. Conversely, these are the areas of moving water that get swimmers in trouble as a rip current, also making it hard to land your kayak.
Momentum is key to getting outside, having it will allow you to “break the wave barrier”. Even a displacement hull will plane if a certain speed is reached. Applying extra speed at the critical moment, when encountering a wave, should keep the bow above water and lift the hull.
An excellent read: Wave and Beaches the dynamics of the ocean surface by Willard Bascom
Rainer,
Yes, WAVES AND BEACHES is a must-have book for all sea kayakers.
And you bring up a good point about rip currents. These are escalators that take you right out to sea. That’s a good thing (typically) when kayaking, not so good when trying to swim near shore. (aside: if you are swiming and get caught in a strong rip, swim perpendicular to the rip, that is, parallel to the shore, and you will get out of its tractor beam).
Vector on, bruddah!
Great article, Eric! I like the emphasis on spending a lot of time in the surf zone to build skills. You can read books and watch videos, and they help, but there’s nothing like reality to really learn. I’d have to disagree with your last comment, though, “where there is skill, there is no fear”: I was fairly skillful at one time and still managed to scare the crap out of myself on many occasions. Besides, fear is a good thing; it keeps you focused on the task at hand.
On the “prophylactic surf roll” vs. punching through, I agree with Mark Hutson; they are for different circumstances. It’s like asking which is better, a low brace or a high brace. A low brace is always preferable when it will do the job, but sometimes a high brace is the only thing that will keep you upright. A boat will punch through a wall of whitewater up to a certain size (that size being dependent on the type of boat and how fast the paddler can make it go), but beyond that, try as you may, you’re going over backwards. The bow lifts, the sterns sinks, the wave keeps coming and over you go. That’s when I roll first, just as I am about to hit the whitewater. Then, the curvature (rocker) of the boat being reversed, and the paddler under it instead of taking the hit in the chest, the whitewater tends to push the boat down and underneath, much like a surfer’s “duck dive”. It works beautifully but like lots of things takes some practice.
I also agree wholeheartedly with Gnarlydog on the shape of the boat. Fishform design is made for rough water and surf. They are not as fast on flat water, but they are (in my opinion) the only way to go in rough water. Swedeform (also called, humorously, “Anti-fishform” in some older references) shapes were designed for flatwater racing, and they excel at this. Many manufacturers modified the Swedeform shape in an effort to have their cake and eat it too, but the result is that many maneuvers in the surf and in heavy weather are difficult or impossible. Surfing of any kind is especially difficult with Swedeform shapes, as the high volume stern lifts rather than sinks when you take off on the wave, and then the wave drives the pointy low volume bow underwater, with unpleasant results.
It IS possible to work from “surfing” sideways in a broached position to surfing straight into the beach. We did this regularly in the 20′ Oddysea surf ski; but it is strongly Fishform with a lot of volume in the bow and relatively little in the stern. The trick is to scull strongly in the high brace position and rotate at the waist, working the bow around towards the beach, so that eventually you end up sculling beside the boat, rather than perpendicular to it, and at that point you sit up and surf straight in. It can be frustrating, though, because if the boat hits a little backwash coming out from shore or other significant irregularity on the water’s surface in front of the boat, it will slap you back around into the broach position and you’ll have to start over again.
Have fun!
Andy
Hey Andy, good to hear from you!
You speak with the voice of experience. I totally agree with what you say about boat design. The Oddysea is pretty different from most sea kayaks. In any kayak design, having a relatively low volume stern is a real advantage in surf, rough seas, and wind. I finally realized that’s what I like about my Coaster, which is a shorter sea kayak with a low volume stern & relatively high volume bow). The short length is also helpful for maneuvering, but it’s really the low volume and low-profile stern that does the job. With less stern, there is less for the wind, waves, and breaking surf to push around, literally! And that gives you much better boat control. Not the only factor of course, but a lot of sea kayak designers don’t seem to realize it. Or maybe they are more interested in having lots of room for gear, or for “stability,” or something like that.
Ok, don’t mean to hijack this into a boat design issue (obviously the best design for surfing is a surf kayak, but it’s useless for anything else), but what you said struck me as the truth!
John—
I remember that boat..wasn’t that what you were paddling on the trip we did in So. Oregon? I liked the shape, and as I recall it also had a nice planing surface on the bottom.
Andy
Yeah, same boat and I still have it. Not really a planing bottom as it has a keel line and a ‘displacement’ hull with a pretty good keel at the stern. So it tracks well, but when leaned will carve and turn easily. It’s a sea kayak though and as such, not really a surf kayak. I think it surfs real well for a sea kayak, though. It’s all a trade-off.
Cheers,
John
Great subject! Has anyone out there ever used the capsize option, and subsequently pitchpoled 180 degrees, then ended up upright and riding the wave in? I have never done so myself, but it seems like it might be doable, the main difficulty probably being preventing a likely forward pitchpole after catching the wave, since the wave would be even steeper (or broken) than before. I would imagine that a short surf boat would have a better chance. My shortest boat is a 14′ Tsunami X-15, probably too long to execute this without the aforementioned subsequent forward pitchpole. Anyone ever try this, or seen it done?
Tony
Tony—
Derek Hutchinson, in his book SEA CANOEING, calls this the “reverse loop and flick”. I have never done it, and I think it is more suited to small river-type boats, though I suppose that theoretically one could master it in a larger craft with sufficient practice. A Tsunami X-15 might be just the thing.
It is performed, though, from the upright position rather than rolling first. As I said in my post, rolling in front of the whitewater allows the boat to be pushed down, under the wave, preventing pitchpoling.
Good luck!
Andy
Words of wisdom, Andy and John.
Tony, I have never ended up surfing from capsized, but have rolled down the face of a wave while surfing, rolled back up and continued surfing a few times in the past. I would also like to hear about a “capsize, flip 180 and surf” if someone has done it, purposefully or not. Probably some boaters have done it in a surf or slalom kayak, or a wave ski or surf shoe.
I don’t know if anyone (including Derek, lol) has actually mastered a ‘reverse loop and flick” to the point they can do it on command and in control. I bet it’s been done more than once by accident, though. And yeah, those sorts of tricks are much more doable in a surf or whitewater kayak.
I’ve had strange things happen after getting demolished in a wave. Usually I just got worked and when things settled down I’d roll up again (except a couple times when I got ripped out of the boat!). But in some rare instances, during the ‘rag doll’ phase (while being shaken around under water like a rag doll), the paddle sort of magically caught a portion of the wave, I rolled up and continued surfing down the wave, either backwards or forwards. Totally unplanned and by accident, but a great trick when it happens. And that would almost always be in a surf kayak.
Once though, in a sea kayak (the Coaster), out at the place we call ‘microwave’ I got tossed by a wave and suddenly realized I was upside down, in the air in freefall. I landed behind the wave on my head (but relatively softly) and was able to roll back up. That instant of upside down freefall was maybe one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever had in a kayak.
Hi all
Fish form or swede form I think it more where the Volume is placed and if it has rocker or not .I paddle a swede form boat with a High Volume bow with a small amount of rocker ..surfs amazingly,maneuvers very well and handles big ocean conditions as well .
In fact I would say ( and this is hard as I sell and manufacture these boats) it handles better than fish form boats.
Which takes me back to my argument that there are many areas that make up the handling of a boat not just (fish or swede ) form
My preference for getting out is timing first.Second choice if caught out would be to roll under then up .Love doing this move in clear water watching the wave roll over you is just awesome .
CLEAR water? What’s that?
I live in the California soup: upwelling brings plankton, small fish, big fish, seals, sharks, and the entire food chain. No space between the water molecules!
John
Hey Lawrence, thanks for your observations.
It seems that everyone has their preferences in boats, and that’s good. Over the years, I’ve tended toward sit-on-tops made of Kevlar with seatbelts and fishform hulls with rocker. I like responsive rudders which help when surfing, tracking, or any time you need to compensate for the rocker. As for entering surf, any type of kayak works well enough, as long as it isn’t a wide, stable, heavy Tupperware kayak with sponsons and no secondary stability. That’s my two cents.
The stats show that most commenters favor Derek’s roll-over, roll-up method of dealing with strong incoming surf. I’m not in that group. If a huge wave is just ready to break, my strong preference is to crest it and move on to the next challenge.
If a big wave has already broken and there’s no time to quickly vector to a greener or softer spot on the wave, my first choice would be to “lift” my boat up in the foam by pressing down on the paddle face at the entry-point of the paddle stroke while simultaneously vectoring at an acute angle of about 5-15 degrees to the weaker side of the foamy breaker.
This creates a “lifting ferry” effect in the break and works really well to keep momentum and avoid the having to “give up” and roll over routine. You may still get dragged by the wave, but you are upright and able to paddle on, gaining yardage and eliminating the risk of running out of breath (and passing out) or hitting something with any part of your body. John Lull knows what can happen if you hit something while going backwards in a wave. Imagine how bad it would be if your body ran into the bow of an outgoing boat while you were underwater….
Getting back to breaking the wave barrier stories, or I should say FAILING to break the wave barrier, my most memorable, scary, and potentialy deadly experience has already been written up on page 206 in my book (‘Sea Kayaking Safety & Rescue’). That experience was due to a serious lack of attention on my part. Since everyone reading this blog has my book, you can just look it up. What? You don’t have the book? It’s available at Amazon or from Wilderness Press (get the 2nd edition as it has a bonus chapter on stroke technique). Now that the shameless promotion is finished here’s a tale of my second scariest wave barrier experience.
I was paddling with Michael Powers and Bonnie Brill in some rock gardens south of Point Arena. We were cruising along an inside passage, looking for a route out toward the open sea between the rocks. I started out a narrow slot between 10-foot high rock walls, with Michael and Bonnie some distance behind me. As I reached the mouth of the slot, I watched a few waves break just outside. Then, when I detected a window (or so I thought), I started out. Just as I exited, a large wave welled up in front of me. It quickly steepened up and appeared to be roughly the height of a skyscraper. Let’s just say it was well overhead and I knew for a fact I couldn’t make it through. I also knew there was a rock wall behind me, as the entrance to the slot behind was very narrow.
So I paddled as hard as possible on the off chance I could punch through. For an instant I noticed how beautiful the glassy, vertical wave face appeared, with the sun shining dimmly through it (I remember that very clearly), then the whole world exploded and I was yanked violently up, down, sideways, every which way, and finally came to rest upside down. This was not a good place to go for a swim, with nowhere to get ashore and more breaking waves on the way. Luckily I made my roll, then quickly paddled out to safety.
I turned around and gestured wildly to Michael & Bonnie as they started paddling out of the slot, blissfully unaware of what had just happened to me, and blissfully unaware of the possibility of getting slam-dunked as I had. Luck was on their side, naturally, and they calmly, slowly paddled out during a major window with no waves at all. I don’t think they even believed me when I told them what had transpired just before they paddled out!
Good timing is important, but good luck can be even better.
Jeepers, talk about grace under pressure…
John, If you were out paddling in big surf with Michael AND Bonnie, and you lived, that says a lot. They are both blessed people who always luck out and all the bad stuff happens to people around them. Right?
I thought you were going to tell the tale of you surfing backwards while Bonnie was paddling out through the surf….Yes, no?
I don’t know about that. Both Michael & Bonnie have gotten their share of ‘bad stuff,’ on the water (some of which is also well-documented in my book!). But they were so lucky that day, they didn’t even realize it.
Oh yeah, you’re referring to the kayak spearing in the back incident (also in my book, pg 186; that’s enough plugs for the book, lol). That was a very horrendous experience. I learned that time that other kayakers in the surf are far more dangerous than the actual waves!
And Moulton, there was no grace under pressure on my part. Just sheer terror, mostly. Michael & Bonnie did exhibit a lot of grace under no pressure, though.
You’re too modest by far, John. Rolling up after that thrashing, under those circumstances (no where to run, no where to hide) speaks volumes. I stand firm by my observation…
Thanks Moulton, but it was all sheer reflex, nothing more I assure you.
OK you guys, since I enjoy surfing so much, you have sucked me into commenting on this blog(I am a blog virgin). All of what I have read is valid stuff, and I hope I am not repeating some of your techniques.
Going for it is good if you think you realistically have a chance of making it over the crest,but the consequences of not making it, such as going endo totally disoriented and out of control is not to my liking.
When you decide making it isn’t going to happen, and with experience you will have a good idea, broach your boat(boat parallel to wave face)and dive into the wave face enough to keep from rolling down wave. Your boat deck will be flat against the wave face and your paddle slightly extended as in a brace position. On bigger waves you will keep the paddle in tight to your body or the hydralics will rip it out of your grasp.
In this position you and your boat will be pushed along sideways in a somewhat controlled manner until the energy dissipates enough to lever up to a sitting position. It takes a little practice to get the timing down and how much energy you need to exert to balance the wave’s force. Unlike some of the descriptions I have read, you are not hanging upside down under your boat, but burried in the wave face horizontal or higher, depending on how high you can ride in the wave face without being rolled down wave.
I have used this technique to save my ass in 12 ft + waves(from the backside). The big waves may elevator you up and spit you off the top where I have experienced an eight foot free fall back into the wave, but just hold your position and maybe take a breath before you dive back into the face. Once the energy has released you enough to feel comfortable and has gotten you to green water, use a sweep paddle stroke to point your boat down wave and you may be able to surf it out. You can even use this broach technique to start surfing on waves you are comfortable with, and easier than chasing wave creasts to launch off of.
As has been mentioned, the type of boat you paddle will influence your experience, and it will certainly take longer to get a sea kayak into broach position than a surf or play boat. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I do prefer side surfing to ass over tea kettle
Oh, one more thing. someone mentioned(I would look to see who, but with my limited computer skills I would probably lose my place)doing rolls while surfing. It is called a windowshade roll, where you surf parallel to the wave face after take-off, then set up down wave in roll position and then roll down wave. Hold the position and the rising water up the face of the wave will bring you back up to a sitting position. You need a big enough wave and start high enough up on the wave to where you are still on the face after you roll. Mahalo, Dennis
Good point Dennis (and good to hear from you!). The broach method will work fine in a surf zone. Even thought you’ll probably be pushed clear back to the beach, at least you’ll remain upright and relatively in control. However, in some situations, like the story I related a few posts back, you might get pushed sideways right into a rock or a cliff, which would not be such a good idea. Still, it would be better to hit the rock with your hull, so the broach, which would present your hull to the rock, might be the lesser of several evils.
And obviously, it’s best to never get caught between a rock and a big breaking wave. That’s rule number one of rock garden paddling.
Good points, Dennis and John. Yes, broaching works, if you can set up in time and don’t mind starting over again through the surf, Personally, I would broach, as Dennis suggests, rather than turn upside down. I have done both with good results, but still prefer to MAKE IT over that big wave. Although one time (it’s in the book CONFESSIONS OF A WAVE WARRIOR and also published in CALIFORNIA KAYAKER magazine) I knew I wasn’t going to make it over a Godzilla wave, so I turned downwave and tried to surf the giant beast. That did not turn out so good, and my boat was destroyed. But I lived, by diving down to the sea floor and swimming up behind the wave. That is my choice of last resort.
The bottom line is that any method works in moderately sized waves. In impenetrable waves, everything is a wing and a prayer. The main thing is to not panic, and instead relax, and let things play out. Right?
Eric you make what is probably the most important point here. I think it bears repeating and emphasizing. If and when you are mowed down by a big wave, tossed about upside down like a rag doll, the very worst thing you can do is panic. If you panic and seize up (instead of relaxing), you’re more likely to be injured, and you use up more oxygen so you’ll run out of breath sooner.
That’s obviously important when underwater! Relax and you’ll immediately find it much easier to hold your breath and do what’s necessary; either roll up or bail & swim. I’ve experienced this directly on several occasions. It brings to mind another great anecdote, but I’ll save that for another time.
Aside from any safety considerations, it’s just plain lots of fun powering up the faces of oncoming swells. At times, you even launch completely into the air (“breaking the wave barrier”, as Eric calls it). With my Tsunami kayaks, I can tell by the feel of the foot pedals when the rudder has left the water. It’s even better if I can get the 20′ Tsunami X-2 completely airborn, but that is a rare event, with larger waves and good forward momentum a must. The crash upon landing on the backside of the wave with the X-2 is phenomenal!
Tony
I’m with you Tony. I love to break the wave barrier and go airborne. It’s almost more fun than surfing. Almost.
Another great post Eric,
coming from the opposite end of the surf learning curve to yourself, it was a great read. I had my first experience of deciding to roll under a larger wave recently, so this discussion was very topical for me. I have a lacerated finger at present so typing is a bit of a chore, I won’t repeat it here but I have related my experience on my blog should you wish to laugh at/with me.
http://logofthegoodshipclementine.blogspot.com/2011/05/surf-lesson-on-saturday.html
John,
I enjoyed reading your surf tale. Thanks for sharing!
If you liked reading “Entering the Surf Zone,”, you might be interested in our latest blog post: https://tsunamirangers.com/2011/07/18/exiting-the-surf-zone/. Please feel free to share the link with your friends.
Happy paddling!
Hi, how likely is it that a surfer gets swept out to sea. A swimmer would never go out as far as a surfer. They would call it being swept out to sea and they would only go a little bit further than where they are still able to stand. They will quickly realize that they are getting tired, they are getting water in their mouths and nostrils and the big waves just aren’t worth it.
Hi Louise, thanks for reading and thanks for your question. The thing about being swept out to sea is it’s dependent on currents. Swimmers often get swept out because of rip tides. But rip tides don’t go on forever. For one thing, all you have to do is swim parallel to the shore and pretty soon you’ll be out of the rip and can swim in to the beach. In a worst case scenario, a swimmer could get swept out to where the rip dissipates and then swimming in is relatively easy, depending on distance, as long as you don’t swim against the rip tide itself. Bottom line, you have to get out of the rip. Surfers, however, use rip tides to easily get out past a break. The rip pulls them quickly out and there is usually a flattening of the waves where the rip resides. Then the surfer can choose where to set up to catch rides. I have actually never heard of a surfer getting swept out to sea. As you suggest, surfers area already “out there” beyond the rip tides. Surfers can drift out of position because of wind, waves, or longshore currents which pull you along the beach but not away from it. That just means paddling back to the original position. I’ve been in both rips and longshore currents as a swimmer, either body surfing or because I crashed my kayak, and the main thing is not to panic. It’s not actually that big a deal unless as you say, the swimmer is fatigued or in a major current such as the one that might take you out the Golden Gate. I hope that answers your question. Let us know if you need more info. Thanks again for reading!
At first i was afraid of kayaking in rough condition but Not anymore rather I enjoy it now.
Hello, Williams! Thanks for reading and commenting. Glad you’re enjoying the rough stuff 🙂