Category: Kayaking

So I’ve written narrative summaries of each day at the Epic Surfski Center in Tarifa Spain, but what exactly did I learn?

The Forward Stroke

My forward stroke is pretty much based on a sprint paddler’s stroke, but with a few mistakes and imperfections thrown in. But at Tarifa, Boyan was teaching what I think of as the “Oscar technique” – lower hands, lower elbows, and most surprisingly, no torso twist – the hips, shoulders and paddle remain mostly parallel throughout the stroke and almost all your twist comes from leg drive rather than torso twist. I’ve been trying to keep my elbows lower this year as a defense against shoulder problems, so that’s not an adjustment. Lower hands make sense in the surf, but I feel they’re probably not optimal on the flat, so I should probably be flexible about that and use the lower hands when appropriate. And I’m not sure I want to eliminate the role of torso twisting entirely.

One thing that showed up in the video tapes, and I’m not sure why I’ve never noticed it before, is that I’m not really getting my catch in at the beginning, and I’m raising my hand over my head in order to get the angle right on the paddle. I’m probably not explaining that right because I’m not sure I understand what is supposed to happen. Boyan briefly mentioned the proper way to do the catch, but we never did any exercises or drills for the catch. I need to do some research, because I really think this is something I need to fix.

Waves

Waves are why I came to Tarifa. I had hopes of experiencing long downwind runs on very large waves on very long wave lengths, the sort of thing you see and drool over on the videos from ocean paddlers. Well, the conditions never quite reached that level – instead we got situations that I’ve seen on Lake Ontario, although possibly more consistent and definitely nicer weather. This year I’ve had a huge break through in confidence and skill and I’ve handled some big stuff with my Epic V10Sport. I’m not scared of falling out, and I don’t get all twitchy and panicky when sideways to the waves. But what I went to Tarifa to learn was how to get the best ride out of the waves, and especially to get some skill and experience when you’ve got multiple overlapping waves coming from multiple directions. And that’s what I got.

The basic change in tactics I learned is to not stop paddling when you find yourself stalled out on top of a wave with the water filling up the cockpit, and not waiting to start your sprint to catch the wave when you feel the stern start to lift. Instead you try to get to your “base speed” as soon as you can, including when you’re riding a wave and it’s starting to die. Then you start your sprint while you’re actually “hull up” pointing up the backside of the wave ahead of you. Once you get on the wave coming up behind you, you use the one just ahead of you to see both where the wave is going so you can turn with it, and also to judge when the one behind you is going to start to lose power. The other related tactic is how to find the next wave – you scan the area just ahead of the boat, watching the waves in an arc on either side if the nose of the boat. Several people refer to that arc as “a quadrant”, but my pedantic engineer nature doesn’t like that name because it’s rarely 90 degrees. Mostly it seemed we were looking about 30 degrees on each side, but you would adjust that to favor one side or the other if there was a predominant wave from one side or you were trying to get to a destination that isn’t quite in the direction of the prevailing waves.

I think I did pretty well with these skills. Sometimes I managed to link – I’d get on one wave, use that speed to catch the next one, and then use that speed to catch the next. And then on the third wave I’d end up stalled out on a wave with the cockpit filling up with water. But it’s a start. It felt especially good when the waves were going in different directions and you’d be basically doing s-turns down the waves. Now that I’ve got the feel, I feel like it’s only a matter of practice, practice, practice.

I didn’t get to blog about yesterday. In a way, it was just “more of the same”. We’d been joined by three German men who’d come with their non-paddling wives. They had been here before, and they were given the V10 Sports to paddle.

In the morning we went to the beach near town to practice going out and coming back through a mild non-dangerous surf. The Germans didn’t bother taking the van with us, they paddled down to the town to join us, and didn’t take any longer to get there than we did. It was Magnus’s turn to paddle today, and Frank was in a V8 as well.

I kept trying to catch a wave in order to practice handling the scenario that gave me trouble the other day, but instead every time I caught a wave it sped past me right at the beach leaving me coming in on the backside of the wave, which of course is the safest and easiest landing. So every landing looked like I knew what I was doing, even though I was doing the exact opposite of what I’d wanted to do.

After we finished, Magnus paddled back with the Germans. I guess we didn’t tire him out enough.

In the afternoon we went out to Punta Paloma for another downwind paddle. The conditions had looked relatively calm, but when we got out there it turned out to actually bigger and more confused that on previous days. I got some really good runs for a while, and then it started getting so confused I couldn’t find anything and over and over again found myself stalled on top of the wave I’d been trying to catch. I started telling myself out loud “catch the small ones, the bigger ones will come”, and that kind of worked. I started catching more waves, and having more fun. Frank appeared to be in some distress, and many times when I looked at him in the back of the Double he was leaning back in the cockpit to relieve his back. The Germans and Magnus were ranging far ahead, and Kassie and I were trading the Lanterne Rouge back and forth. I felt like I was getting better at my old nemesis – where you’ve got two sets of surf at about 90 degrees to each other, one longer and faster and the other shorter and steeper. Trying to pick out where the wave fronts are when there are interference patterns going on everywhere, and trying to stay on this wave when this other wave is attempting to crash over the side of your boat and fill it is a skill I’ve often felt a need for in Lake Ontario, and I think it’s coming along.

Afterwards, Frank said that his back was hurting and he wanted to spend tomorrow taking the ferry into Tangier. So we went into town quite early by Spanish standards, and he went to the port and booked a tour. Then we went to find the restaurant we’d been to on our first two nights was now closed, probably for the season, so we went down a nearby alley and found a really nice restaurant that was just opening up. The food was a bit pricy, on a par with the place we’d been the previous night, but unlike that place the portions were relatively big. And really delicious. And they gave us a free little appetizer – aubergine (zuchinni to Americans) and honey, and free glasses of Muskat wine afterwards. So I was completely impressed.

One last thought – I don’t really feel like I’m really on a wave until I hear the cheerful little burble that the drain makes when the cockpit is completely emptied. Is the empty cockpit the effect of the speed of being on the wave, or the cause of you being able to catch it in the first place? To me it seems like a bit of both.

This morning it was pretty calm and flat, and we headed off to the harbour in Tarifa to do some forward stroke drills. Magnus switched off with his wife, so now it was Karen’s turn to paddle with us this morning. We did the same drills we’d done on the first full day (God, what day is it today, Thursday? I don’t want to think about the rapidly approaching weekend and week end.), although hopefully we did them a little better. Then we went out of the harbour for a bit of a sightseeing trip along the outside of the harbour wall and a nice view of the city rising up the hill.

As has been the pattern for most of the week, the afternoon was breezier and we headed off to Punta Paloma. As has also been the pattern, Kassie joined us. However this time instead of going from the point directly to the hotel, this time we went a little further out to sea, and headed towards the football stadium on the edge of town, making the downwind section closer to 10km rather than the 6km or so the “direct to the hotel” trip was. Frank was in the V10 Double with Boyan, leaving three V8s, two red stripe and one black one. I was half expecting to be demoted to the black stripe one for my cock-up yesterday, but instead Boyan had us draw straws and I ended up in the black stripe one anyway. Hmmm.

On the paddle out the point, we again encountered Ben, the English paddler in the V10 Sport who we’d met yesterday (and again in the excellent “Eco Center” restaurant later). He said “There’s no surf, I just went around the point to look at the Roman village”, which kind of intrigued me. But Boyan knows the conditions like the back of his hand, and he told us to paddle “towards the tip of Africa over there for 5 minutes”. I know I see that it’s Africa I see across the Strait every day, I just get a little frisson hearing it in a context like that.

When we first turned downwind, the waves weren’t much, but they got slowly better and better. By the time of our third little “get together to make sure everybody is having fun and staying safe” on the water, they were getting amazingly good. Most of the time both Karen and Kassie were well ahead of me – I think I was wasting time and energy trying and failing to catch the biggest waves, and they were both doing a better job of seeing and catching the little ones. But on the other hand, when you catch a big one it’s a real thrill. So I’m not going to apologize for that, but I am going to try to get better at spotting the little ones that can give you a push in between hunting for the big ones. I did catch a couple of nice ones that linked to other nice ones where I went from a big one to a small one to another big one all without slowing down or even having to paddle hard. That felt good.

When we approached the shore, I told myself to not be an idiot this time, go last, and watch and learn. So Boyan and Frank went in on the double, and then Boyan stood and signalled where we were to go in. Kassie was in, and Karen was heading in, and I was paddling parallel to the shore to try to line up to go in at that same spot when a big wave broke over me and dumped me in the water. Fortunately it was shallow enough that I could stand up and grab the boat, so it looked almost like I planned it that way. I guess today’s lesson is “do your line up outside of the breaker line”.

This morning the wind was pretty light, and I figured we wouldn’t get any surf paddling. Instead, we (Frank and I – Magnus was spending the day with his family and Kassie is on Spanish time so she wasn’t up yet) learnt about how to launch and retrieve in the surf. Boyan, who seems to know every location and every wind condition in this area took us to the end of the beach near town where the waves were coming in and breaking harder than they are back at the hotel. There’s also no rocks around, which is probably a plus for the longevity of his boats considering how we treated them.

Over and over, we practiced controlling the boat by the foot strap, lifting the front end over breaking waves and keeping the paddle away from the boat, spotting the lull between breakers, swinging the paddle down into launch position and getting in the boat and launching out through the waves. I was definitely getting faster and faster at that part of it. Going out through the waves, I frequently got a mouthful or even worse, an eyeful of salt water. Not much you can do about that except hope your eye stops stinging quickly and you can see again.

Coming back in was tricker. When you turned around outside of the surf zone, it was really hard to tell which waves were going to give you a ride, which ones would see you on the backside of a breaker, and which ones would come up behind you, turn your boat the opposite of the way you’d been planning, and leave you with the boat between you and the breaker, running you down and then getting away from you as you ran after it through the surf. Boyan was smart to give me a black stripe V8 instead of the red one, or we’d probably be picking up pieces along the shoreline. Somewhere along the way I managed to lose the water bottle Frank had loaned me, in spite of putting an extra knot in the bungee to hold it in tighter.

But mostly it worked out, where either I got the right spot (behind the breaker instead of in front of it, or in a lull with no breakers at all) and just hopped out and grabbed the foot strap in one fluid motion, or I deliberately came in on a breaker and managed to drag a brace and a foot to get turned in the direction I was expecting and hopped out between the wave and the boat so I grabbed the boat by the footstrap and stood firmly as the wave broke over me and the wave turned the boat harmlessly nose into the sea. The ones where I managed to do the right thing in the breakers were the most satisfying. The ones where I ate sand and lost control of the boat, not so much.

For the afternoon session, Kassie joined us and we headed off to Punta Poloma again. In the parking lot we were surprised to see a car with a V-rack with an Epic V10 Sport. There was a strong on-shore breeze, and Boyan suggested we might just surf out and back in whatever waves, or we might find that the current and tide would make a better situation out beyond the point. Boyan buddied with Frank and I was buddied with Kassie. He trusted Kassie and I with the red stripe V8s this time – a decision I almost made him regret later. We paddled out beyond the point with the guy in the V10 Sport (his name is Ben and he’s from the UK) and after a quick consult, we decided to make an easy paddle towards the hotel, catching whatever waves we could, and then when we got to the hotel there was the promise of more waves and we could paddle in and out on them a bit. Ben stayed at the Punta surfing in towards shore.

This time I decided to try and keep closer to Kassie to benefit from her experience – she hasn’t been paddling for very long, but she’s had a wealth of experiences I can only dream of. Just like yesterday, she kept closer into shore than Boyan and Frank, and we rode the small waves, sometimes catching them by paddling up over the top of them, getting a bit of energy, and trying to use that to paddle over the top of the next one. Not too different from paddling on Lake Ontario, actually. She gave me a few pointers about using my body angle to catch waves and other things.

About a kilometer from the hotel, we circled back to see Frank and Boyan, who were well out to sea and behind us, so we had to go pounding into the waves. But once out there we saw why they’d stayed out – the waves were higher, but much more confused and complicated. You had to really concentrate on what’s right in front of you – I forget the exact phrase Kassie used, but I think it was something about “the pie slice” or words to that effect. (One thing that’s been a constant factor in these paddles is that there is a very strong wind, and so if you don’t stop paddling and face each other you might miss easily half of what the other person says. That has been a factor a few times already, and will be a major factor later in this posting.) (Ohhh,foreshadowing – who says I don’t blog like a writer?) You had to watch the front of your boat and maybe 20 or 30 degrees either side, out to about a boat length, and that’s about it. You attempt to catch the ones that are going in that direction, and ignore the ones that are coming in from the side and dumping water on you. Every now and then I’d look up and think to myself “oh, Kassie’s behind me, how did that happen”, and the next time I’d look up and think “oh, now she’s ahead, how did that happen?” Sometimes I could even spare a look and a thought for Frank and Boyan. But mostly I was watching that slice ahead of me and catching waves. Fun stuff.

After we arrived at the hotel, we did a few passes in and out of the beach. Kassie kept heading back kind of at a strong angle to the beach back towards where we’d come from, Frank was heading off downwind towards Tarifa, and I was trying to go straight out into what seemed like the major waves. Boyan was just sitting by the beach watching us all. Eventually Kassie and I decided that Boyan looked bored of waiting for us, so we decided to head in. I said I’d follow her in because I wanted to learn from her caution. But then she said “You’re not going to like this” followed by words that were whipped away by the wind, and she veered back up the beach again. And suddenly my resolve to watch and learn went out the window – it appeared I had a clear expanse of beach ahead of me and she was well clear, so I didn’t see any reason not to just head in on my own. Big mistake.

On the way in, it seemed nice and flat and I wasn’t getting much of a push, but then suddenly when I got too close to the beach to be surfing I suddenly got picked up by a huge wave. It was really tall and steep, probably the biggest one I’ve ever been on. It would have been awesome if I’d been 500 meters off shore. But as it was the water in front of it was looking dangerously shallow. I threw out a brace and I put a leg over the side of the boat to try to brake off the wave, to no avail. The nose of the boat was diving deep underwater and I was terrified it was going to dig into the bottom and flip the boat (and me) right over – I’ve seen the videos of that happening, and if you’re lucky all it does is break the boat into pieces. So I jumped out on the sea side, trying to hold the boat with my leg. It didn’t work – the boat went spinning up to the high water line (fortunately undamaged), while I was pounded into pudding by the wave breaking on top of me. It turned out that Kassie had spotted that breaking surf and was heading up the beach to a place where it wasn’t breaking so hard, and if I’d stuck to my original plan I might have learned something.

This morning dawned kind of dreary. Overcast, a very light spatter of rain, kind of cold, and very little wind. Oh oh, I thought, this doesn’t bode well. But by the time Boyan showed up, the sun had come out, the wind had picked up a bit, and it had warmed up. Last night a new person showed up to join our little band – Magnus is a kayak dealer in Sweden who has recently started selling and paddling surf skis, and he came here with his wife and two very young children. They didn’t bring a car, so I’m not sure how they’re going to manage logistics, but that’s not my problem.

We headed out to our old familiar Punta Paloma. This time, we didn’t do a downwind to the hotel, because the wind was mostly onshore and the tidal current was going the other direction. Instead the four of us just paddled out and surfed in. It worked out pretty well, because you could start paddling out close in to shore in the wind shadow, then swing out past some breakers on the rocks near the tip of the point, and be in some fairly strong surf heading almost directly into the shore. I was in the red stripe V8 which is a bit lighter than the black stripe V8 I paddled so far. The lightness made a surprising difference in how easy it was to get up to speed when chasing the back side of a wave, which I think means you get more rides. I still think I’d rather have the longer and faster V10 Sport when the conditions aren’t overwhelming, but I’m here to learn how to catch waves, not set speed records.

At first I’d been buddied with Frank, and Boyan was giving instruction to Magnus, since he was a couple of days behind us. But after a few out and back runs, Boyan switched to giving instruction to Frank, leaving Magnus and I to our own devices.

Magnus turned out to be pretty good, considering his recent arrival to surf skis – he just plowed out into the wind without any hesitation, and rode them back in like a champ. I’d be paddling hard to get on a wave, and I’d look over and he’d be on a smaller wave but moving faster than me with no effort. But I caught my share of waves too, so we stayed pretty much together. It was heading into the waves that he seemed to really leave me behind. So we surfed in and out a few times, and went back in.

After lunch, the wind had gotten even stronger, the waves bigger, and the current was in our favour, so we went back to Punta Paloma to do a downwind run back to the hotel. Kassie was free of her early morning conference call and was able to join us. So it was me, Kassie and Magnus in the V8s, and Frank and Boyan in the V10 Double once again. With three of us buddied together, and both Kassie and Magnus having proven to be faster than me into the wind, I felt I had to make a real effort to keep up with them. Fortunately I was once again in the red stripe V8 while both of them were in the black stripe V8s, so they were handicapped enough that I was mostly with them.

When we turned downwind for the hotel, it was kind of surprising how well matched everybody was. Even the Double was right there in the mix. For the most part Kassie was taking the closer to shore line, Magnus was taking the way out to sea line, and I was in the middle – although there was some switching around. The seas were both bigger and more confused than any day previous. For the first part, there was a strong wave set heading back towards the beach where we’d launched, but smaller ones heading the direction we wanted to go, so it was a matter of picking the waves you wanted to surf and not being thrown off your stroke or your attempt to get on that wave by stronger waves coming from the side. Sometimes they’d break in and fill up your cockpit, which was disconcerting, but you’d soon get a bit of a push from a wave going the right direction and the scupper drain would empty out the cockpit nicely. (The scupper makes an amusing sucking noise when you’re fully drained and going with a bit of speed – it’s one way to tell that you’re on the wave.) As we got closer to the hotel, the waves going in the direction we wanted were getting bigger and the ones going onshore were smaller, which made it easier to get some really long runs. Kassie and I were both whooping with joy – Magnus was further out to sea so I couldn’t tell if he was making joyful noises that were being whipped away by the wind, or if the stereotype of the dour Swede was true in his case.

I swear I got on one wave that was worth the whole price of admission right there – it gave me a massive push, and it just never seemed to want to end, and when it did start to die, I spotted a wave front moving in a slightly different direction, used my speed from the dying wave to get on it, and got another long push. It was awesome.

When we got to the beach in front of the hotel, all three of us turned back out to have another go. We didn’t go too far, and Kassie said something about not wanting to leave it too long because of the breakers in the shore. We turned and surfed in together, dodging kite boards (and the kite boards dodging us as well). But then Kassie said she didn’t know how she was going to get in. Magnus gestured for me to go first, so I took off my leg leash, closed my scupper, and went to surf the last few dozen meters into shore. I immediately regretted closing the scupper as a wave broke into the cockpit, so I re-opened it, paddled a few strokes until it emptied, and closed it again (have I mentioned how much I love having a foot controllable scupper?) As I got close to the shore, I just angled the boat and jumped out on the wave side and grabbed it. Walked it down until I had the stern handle, and started pulling it into shore. This time Boyan was waiting to grab the front handle instead of Angel, and we got it out of the water and on the beach, no muss, no fuss, no bother. I followed his lead and banked up sand on the side of my boat like he’d done on the double so it wouldn’t go flipping down the beach again – having the red stripe boat, you’ve got the perfect recipe for disaster – a light boat so it lifts in the wind, but fragile and expensive if it breaks. While I was taking care of that, Boyan was catching Magnus’s boat in the surf line, but Kassie still didn’t seem to want to come in and was paddling parallel to the shore. I don’t know if it’s because she’s lighter, and not as physically strong, but she didn’t seem to want to chance it even after Magnus and I had done it with no problems. Frank and I carried the V10 Double up to the hotel, so I didn’t see how she eventually got landed.

So now I’m sitting here in the bar/porch (because there is no wifi in the room) looking at the sliver of moon and a very bright Venus (thank you, “Night Sky” app), the lights of Africa across the Straits, and listening to the surf come in. It’s only 7:30 so it’s probably too early to go to dinner – Spanish restaurants rarely open that early, so a bit more web surfing. Today was a great day.