Surf skis are an amazing water craft. They are sleek, fast, they literally can fly through the water. (Especially if you go over a wave fast enough, they actually launch) They really are the fun discipline of the ironman to ride, that is of course after you have actually learned how to ride them. When starting though, they can be bloody frustrating, infuriating in fact.
My introduction to surf skis was on Lake Hugh Muntz on Australia’s Gold Coast. I had half a dozen sessions with fellow surf life saver, Wayne Marshall. Wayne was great, showing me and a handful of others the basics of riding surf skis with forgiving vessels. I remember being proud of not tipping over at all on these lake sessions, until that is that Wayne tried to get me to do jump starts…
6 months later, following some off season kayak training in the Currumbin Creek, I had my introduction to ocean paddling. My world was turned upside down (yes I do mean that in the literal sense). While all my fellow training crew were flying through the water, I could not get out the break without tipping over. Balance is so important in these craft and the only way to acquire it is to spend the time being tipped off. I can remember during these sessions, despite all the encouragement I was getting to keep working at it, Wayne called me Depth Charge Damo, honoring the amount of time I spent beside and under my ski, as opposed to on top of it.
The basic skill of balancing on these craft requires core strength. This is a clear area of improvement for me. It is your core strength that enables your lower body to make all the slight adjustments to counter for waves, wind, bumps in the water and variations while you paddle. Another trick which helped me with my balance as I improved was to always push back with my legs. This creates a kind of wedge with my bum jamming into the back of the seat.
I can remember one time getting really angry with it. I was trying so hard to remember everything but nothing was really helping. In this state of anger, I just put everything out of my mind and attacked. It worked really well on this occasion. Sometime I get so caught up in the hundreds of technique refinements that I forget to just ride. Going hard helped me both getting out past the waves and riding them in on this occasion so often these days I bring back to simplicity, concentrate on one thing or just ride hard.
Catching waves is another challenge I have to overcome. Oh the joy. For weeks and weeks every wave I tried to catch slowly took the nose of the ski, turned it up the wave where no steering would point it back toward the beach, until I was either pointing back out to sea or was smashed by the breaker. You have to paddle fast. If you cannot get that rudder infront of the wave back into the water where it can steer, you have no hope of riding the wave to the beach.
But knowing to paddle fast and paddling fast are two completely different things. One of my most enduring memories is wondering how I was expected to continue paddling fast when I was trying to keep or regain my balance. When you are tipping over, you do everything in your power to right the ski so you don’t end up swimming. Continuing paddling in these circumstances is definitely not one of your priorities.
Oh dear I have a lot of work ahead of me. I needed to learn to crawl, walk and run before I could even remotely start thinking of competing.
