Surfing

Here are a couple of videos from last week after the huge swell passed through. As usual, the swell moved the sandbars around so that there were multiple sections to take advantage of.

I'm experimenting here with the Ultrawide lens for my GoPro 13. We're shooting at 1:1 to see how it works. I'm noticing more water spots than on the default lens but I may have gummed it up with hand oils or surf wax. I cleaned it after the first day.

Today we're going to work on thirds. No, not musically, long-istically; e.g., rear and mid sections of a 9' longboard. Here you can see where I removed the wax so I could do a quick check of foot positioning. What we're hoping for is to successfully move back to get better pivoting for carving turns and move forward to get a better trim position. The latter should produce better speed to setup for better turns.

October through December had pretty nice weather and I tried to get into the water to surf a couple of sessions per week.

I also got to the last two Autocross events of the season out at Crow’s Landing. Weather was good, driving was so-so.

In early October, we were still coming back from our Fall Colors tour of Colorado. We saw the colors and the cool ski towns of Telluride, Aspen and Breckenridge. Spent a few days in Boulder, Colorado Springs and then headed down through Santa Fe before coming back through Arizona.

Here's a poor resolution video from early Dec 2024 at Private's. Starting to move through turns a bit better. I'm the foreground wave for a few seconds.

Here are a collection of shots of a board that belonged to Norman Crowell. Norm was married to my mother-in-law for many years. This board hung in the garage rafters of the home we moved into in 1999. After he passed away, we gave the board back to his daughter Leslie. I think it probably still lives in her home on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

Norm was part of the first generation of surfers in Santa Cruz. He made this board based on instructions found in Popular Mechanics in 1936.

As I started thinking about surfing in summer 2023, I pulled out two old boards to check their conditions. They'd been stored under the deck since we moved from the Westside up to Felton. The shorter green board is 7'11" x 22" x3" and was shaped for me by my old friend Mark Goin in 1991. I'm betting I got this to do more surfing at Getchell's with my old boss at UCSC Tim Price.

In late 2023, I sent the green board into Brian Ebert at https://besanding.com to have the major dings fixed. Here are a before and after.

As my head fills with surf training from various sources, I went back in the time machine to find some old classics. The shot above is recent as of Nov 2024 (new picture, old guy).

Here are a few clips I edited down for Longboard Sessions.

Longboard Sessions 3 and 4 11/29-12/4 2024 at Cowell's Beach.

This past week, the swell and tides were in my favor. Everyone else too. If you can’t see it, there are 4 folks behind me and 1 in front of me. Gotta love Cowell’s.

Luckily, the guy in front of me kicked out and I got a nice setup for the section.

Yeah well, the goal isn't to fall. 

I've been trying to get into the water a few times a week. I got a new GoPro as a present and I bought some accessories to capture some video of myself. Video is a great tool to find silly mistakes. I'm making progress. 

I started on a 8'8" foamie but soon got tired of not being able to get the thing turning. I'm now on a 9'1" Torq longboard witch seems to work ok.