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September 23, 2003
Learning to Towsurf
This morning a new swell rolled in, 3'4'. Surfed over at a secret spot just me and da boyz. It was a little inconsistent but then we would have the pick of the sets when they came in.
I was driving back over to country for a second surf when I got the call "we're taking the skis out" from Garrett. Launched the ski and went to a secret spot and trained on the 3- 3 1/2 foot wave, this peak really near the beach with a short left, and a longer right. On the inside of the wave the shelf was really shallow, like 2 feet deep only.
Robbie and Garret went first, with Robbie doing a flip on one wave, and a few smaller airs on others, then garret, who probaly went the fastest on his board getting whipped in. He was doing the best really, ripping it. This one wave he got whipped at going top speed, went like 30-40 feet past the wave then carved and went the other way, a bunch of lips, ripping it.
Brian went next, then me. I had to use Garretts board which has straps set up for regular foot, but I'm goofy, so we just loosened them up. It was hard to figure out which side of the wake to go on some times.
Getting back on the sled at speed was hard, and other technical details were practiced a bit, overall I felt like I did pretty good, even though we did fall off the ski a few times when three of us rode at the same time.
Ice is broken, yes!!!
On another note, I went to the Hawaii state Tow surfing safety -certification class on Saturday, Ken Bradshaw, Archie Kalepa, and Jim Howe were the instructors. Pretty much we went over the laws relating to tow-in surfing in Hawaii, equipment requirements, where and when you can go towing in. We also went over some risk management think techniques, like being a risk-technician rather than a risk-taker. Very interesting stuff, I may post some of it here.
Posted by hawaiisurf at September 23, 2003 07:00 PM
Comments
very cool. i'd love to hear about the tow-in safety class.
Posted by: sean at September 24, 2003 06:09 AM