Another great article in the NY Times about surfing. That’s two in a week! This one about the annual Big Wave competition at Mavericks close to San Francisco.
If I am completely honest, I, like many sailors, am a bit of a snob about the technical superiority of sailors over other watermen. This article showed me how misguided I was in thinking that surfing is only about physical fitness and an instinctive “oneness” with the waves. It’s incredibly technical.
Some of the competitors at Mavericks wrote their own software that aggregates and processes tons of data about waves and weather to forecast how the conditions will change at Mavericks. Some even dived the reef to understand how it affects the waves.
All I ever do is hit the buttons on the GPS. I am humbled!
Having grown up in Hawaii, I finally became ashamed of having to say “No” to the inevitable “Did you surf?” question. So one winter I was out there I went to the Hans Handemann School of Surfing (no, it’s real, I swear I didn’t get that off a Saturday Night Live skit) and took a lesson.
What totally blew me away was what incredible patience it takes.
You see the movies and the videos and it’s all raucous guitars and speeding bodies and boards on roaring walls of water. What you don’t see so much is the waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And knowing which wave is gonna be the right one to go after.
Every time I saw a good set coming in, I would start tensing up to paddle. The kid who was the instructor for me & the other tourist earned every dime I paid just by quietly going –
“Not this one”.
“Not this one”.
“Not this one”.
“This one. Go.”
I sure didn’t do anything worth videotaping that day, but I managed to get a couple of good rides (standing up, even!) where without the instructor, I would have totally worn myself out in half an hour trying to catch waves that weren’t gonna work.
OK, that’s more on the instinctive-oneness-with-waves level, but even that’s a pretty cool skill to have!
I’m glad you have learned that you were misguided in your judgment of surfers. Most surfers who I know sail, paddle, row, windsurf, swim…anything to be on the water. You would be surprised how much of a better sailor you can become by doing other water sports. 🙂