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This beautiful video from Mickey Smith shows some stunning scenery from Co. Clare Ireland. I’ve seen some of these cliffs from land and they are impressive. Mickey’s comment, which transcends the video itself is about the nature of going to sea, and of surfing itself. The comment @ time segment 4:35 on is what makes paddling, paddle surfing, and our lives worth living.

“You learn good lessons from putting yourself in these situations beyond your control. You can’t help but be humbled by that. It’s good for you. It’s good for you to be taken out of thinking you’re in control of your life and put into a situation where you’re not.”

Surrendering to the notion that you control anything is the way to finally be at peace. As someone who often struggles while on land, like our friend Mr. Jack Aubrey, I can tell you that surfing, and being out in an environment such as a storm on the Great Lakes opens your eyes to what is important.

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This is the promo video for the World Surf Kayak Championships that will be held in the Outerbanks of North Carolina, Cape Hatteras in Fall of 2011.

The qualifying event was this past weekend at Cape Hatteras. ESKA, hosted the tournament event. As it turned out, according to ESKA, it was an international event with participants flying in from all over the world, US, Canada, Basque, and the UK.

The Battle For Hatteras Event was hosted at the same time, which made it a full event.

From what I can gather, Battle For Hatteras formed three person teams with any sort of craft to surf in heats for top score against other three person teams. But boat types surfed against boat types, Waveski vs. Waveski, HP boat vs. Hp Boat and so forth. For an amateur, (me) it sounds like something we (Great Lakes) should put together a crack amateur team for the next event.

As it turned out the swell provided 4-5 foot waves for the weekend with one set topping out at 10 feet. This is always a problem for surf events, no waves.

Check out ESKA’s Website for full rundown of the event.

Winners in Category:

• 1st Buck Johnson Grand Masters (old farts) Long Boat
• 1st Charles Salters Long Boat
• 1st Lindsay Usher Women’s Long Boat
• 1st Steve Riordan Wave ski
• 1st Tom May Grand Masters Short Boat
• 1st Garazi Iturralde Women’s Short Boat (also voted best wave of the comp) Sidenote: I wish my name was Garazi Iturralde
• 1st Matt Radis Grand Masters Short Boat
• 1st Anthony Bell Long Boat
• 1st Edu Exteberria Short Boat
• 1st Junior Julen Arriz (only junior) half of life is showing up!

Honorable Mention in Big Letters here, is 3rd place in the long boat division for John Tarbell who is reputedly from the Great Lakes, I will be hunting down more info on this later.

I am planning on heading down for the World Championships in 2011, I hope to have the world championship coverage first hand from Cape Hatteras.

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The New York Times posted a great article about the history of aerial maneuvers in board surfing.

Surf Kayaking has experienced a similar revolution in it’s judged competitions. Aerials maneuvers in kayak surfing, and wave ski competitions are now a high scoring maneuver that does not count against the competitor, and instead scores highly. Judged competitions of course are always the tight end of the funnel for what is cool and acceptable in surfing.

The idea for board surfing was to begin mixing in skateboarding and snowboarding related maneuvers into the competition. The move in the video where it is an aerial loop is pretty out there, and I could see granting full points to a surfer who pulled this move off in a competition. The old guard had long held onto the idea that long duration rides, getting tubed, and pulling off good bottom turns and cutbacks was the bread and butter of the sport. As you can see from the video, it’s a totally different paradigm.

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This image of different types of breaks does a fairly good job of explaining how different breaks are formed.
The type we see the most often on the Great Lakes is the beach break. Though on the east coast of Lake Michigan we often get sandbars that form in deeper water simulating a bit of the reef break or slab type of break. Though I would never say that they form in quite the same way as they do in the ocean.

Beach Breaks form when the height of wave reaches a depth of roughly half of it’s height. So a beach break can be woefully unreliable in terms of where it will break and how big it will be based on the size of the wave. For instance on a big swell day, a wave could be breaking much farther out than on a day when the swell is smaller. The only way to be able to surf it is to watch it over time, observe other surfers and gauge where the best place is to catch the wave. Beach break waves can vary based on the slope of the bottom from gentle peeling breaks, to steep dumping breaks, though the speed and spacing of swells have a lot to do with the type of break. Surfing a kayak in shallow water at a beach break can often result in pitchpoling, neck-breaker surf conditions. For Michiganders this is par for the course, but for those with more options tread with caution.

Lahinch Reef Break in County Donegal Republic of Ireland

Reef Breaks form where a slab of rock, coral reef, or other undersea bottom feature, (sandbar) forms underwater that happens off shore. Waves at this type of break often are very meaty, powerful and occur in deep water. Bird Rock in San Diego as mentioned in a couple of posts is one such break, as is Mavericks, the big wave site in Northern California in Half Moon bay. Reef breaks often have the tendency to break in a bowl or crescent shape so that it may start to break over a rock at the middle and then wrap around and break at the edges later. I will try to find some video where this occurs. It looks cool as hell on film, but is a little freaky when you are out there grabbing greenwater, and then all of a sudden you’re staring an 8 foot close out in the face. If the reef is particularly shallow this can also make wipeouts horrendous.

Point Breaks are rarer still in the Great Lakes, Steamer Lane is a very famous beach break because of the surf contest. Point breaks are great for using the sheltered side from the swell to capture wrap around waves that are more uniform with clean lines. Depending on the prevailing swell direction and the way the point juts into the ocean these can be great spots. They tend to break in a predictable uniform manner. But if the swell direction changes you can have a pond with nothing to surf which happens from time to time for the Santa Cruz Surf Fest.

I don’t personally have any preference for one or the other of these types of breaks. Point Breaks and Reef Breaks are nice because you typically paddle out on flat water to catch a wave rather than through an intimidating beat down of beach break to catch even one ride. Knowing which type of wave you are surfing and watching how boardies and other paddle surfers are catching waves will give you a lot of intel on how to surf each type of break. Barring that, you will have to head out and do it by trial and error. I usually use landmarks even when I can watch other surfers. I place myself in the same place in the lineup each time using feature on shore, and then another further down the coast line to triangulate my position.

If you have good videos of any of these particular types of breaks you want to share drop me a line.

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My Surf Kayak Monkey Face from Keith Wikle on Vimeo.

I think surf kayaking is cool. Luckily, I know I am not. Try not to look in the mirror too often, you may laugh at what you see.

This was a great day surf kayaking on Lake Michigan this August. Steep six foot waves and warm water to play in!

Go Kayak Now!
Sea Kayaking and Surf Kayaking for the moving water enthusiast.
http://www.gokayaknow.com

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The fall storm season is on with a vengeance. When the wind starts to howl we get waves on both sides of the lake. Today the wind is at gale force with 50 knot winds out of the west.

The result of the storm weather is this picture:

Fall Storm on Lake Michigan Sept 29 2009

This fall storm on Lake Michigan is blowing at 50 knots directly out of the west and is creating, according to NOAA, 14-19ft waves on Lake Michigan near shore. Despite the sheer magnitude of this storm, the size of the waves, and the wind speed, this is horrific weather for surf kayaking. You can’t break out because of the direct on shore wind. The wind basically keeps you on the beach. When you set your paddle down to put your spraydeck on, your paddle blows away down the beach. Your gelcoat is sand blasted by the sand on the beach. You might actually make it off the beach, but then just get pummeled by the surf that you can’t make any progress against because of the force 10 winds.

Also the waves, if you managed to break out are so squashed down by the wind that you aren’t likely to find a well formed wave in a set to drop in on. So the overall recommendation is to stay on the beach until the storm has peaked. After about 4 years chasing storms, driving to the beach to find the storm is so strong I can’t even catch a wave, here are the conditions I look for in both the launch spot, or break, and the weather.

• A sizeable storm of sufficient magnitude to last several days with winds over twenty knots (as is the case with the current storm).
• A northerly or southerly bend in the wind direction in order to take advantage of a pier, or jetty as a wind and wave break.
• Wait until the after the peak of the wind has hit, and watch the wave formations, not just the wind.
• Triangulate using the webcams, Spyglasshill.com and the Lake Michigan cam. In this way you can see how things are moving on both sides of the pier. If it is dead on the north side in a north westerly gale, it will be dead on the south end of the pier as well. However if it is blowing at 25 knots and looks gnarly on the north side, it might be perfect on the south side.

Wave formations around piers are the best way in a small surf kayak to get waves like they form on the ocean. On the last day of a storm, when the wind begins to die off, the waves will form into uniform periods and sets and become nice and glassy. The waves are rather crumbly at the top when the wind is up above 30 knots as they are in the picture. These are the waves you want, not the waves at the peak of the storm.

This diagram gives a really good picture of the sort of conditions and the area in which to catch waves. This may hold true for ocean waves under some conditions as well, but is pretty specific to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan during fall. (it’s pretty niche I know).

Great Lakes Surf Kayaking Diagram for Conditions on Lake Michigan

This diagram of wave formation for surfing and surf kayaking on the great lakes shows what I think about every time the wind starts to blow. And unfortunately what a huge nerd I am.

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The New York Times wrote an excellent travel piece about winter surfing on Lake Superior.

The waves in the pictures are stellar, clean spillers, not the norm on the north shore by any stretch of the imagination, don’t be fooled.

They also mentioned the venerable Superior Surf Club. Great article about the fresh water surfing phenomenon. I would love to see some growth in the Great Lakes Kayak Surfing club. Oh wait, there isn’t one? Did I just start it? I soooo did. Anyway…Our winter surfing is somewhat limited at the moment by 4 foot pack ice about 200 yards out. We need some meltage and soon.

Is it clear that I am dreaming of open water and waves, even if it is cold.

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Ocean Paddler TV has been showing some awesome footage of both paddle sports and surfing in Hawaii.

This video of both the sailing canoe and the surf ski race had my blood pumping wishing to hell I could be out there catching a ride like that.

Surf Skis being 20 feet long and 19″ wide and typically propelled with a wing paddle will make a well conditioned paddler fly!! And as there is little I like more, (ok I love surfing) than flying downwind in a long boat with the wind at my back this video made me want to buy my ticket to the big island in the pacific.

Check it out!!

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Ventura California Waveski Competition Video

For the uninitiated in paddle surfing here is a video of some waveski surfing. Val posted this. It is not entirely indicative of the waveski performance alas, the paddlers are having difficulty making the power pocket in this wave. Some however do make it.

Waveskis are a different breed of paddle surfing. As a sit on top type of craft it is not entirely a true kayak as it lacks a cockpit, a coaming, and there fore you are exposed to the elements. It does however have significant advantages from a performance standpoint. A waveski is truly a sit on top surfboard you paddle. The waveski has a true surfboard shape, with shaped wells for the paddler to sit, and for the feet. The paddler uses a lap belt and foot straps to maintain contact with the board. As a result more a board like ride is possible. I have only tried one in the pool. They are typically made out of epoxy and foam, again like a surf board. This makes them crazy light and stiff.

Another advantage to the waveski design is that if you have a bad set and end up swimming, you can always climb back on and keep surfing. With a surf kayak, if you swim, that’s it, there is no getting back in you have to swim in and dump out. Friends from the message board have pointed out that the warmth of a surf kayak in winter is nice, but that winter surfing wetsuits also have their advantages. Another advantage is being able to get on in knee deep water so that you don’t chip, crack or ruin your fins. As any surf paddler will tell you can be a bit of a struggle from a rocky launch in a sit in kayak.

I would love to try an Island Waveski HP Longboard on a warm October day on Lake Michigan.