RE/ > this breaker was so big he >was held in the foam and being tumbled forward down the face until he was >getting really desperate for air. Maybe his PFD was holding him there. Maybe >it wasn't. It wouldn't have mattered anyhow because he had no idea which way >was up or down, Having spent 11 of my formative years surfing the North Shore of Oahu, I'd put my money on "...was...". My recollection is that you need to go deep to avoid the soup: a very turbulant mixture of water and air that isn't dense enough to float anything, but which has enough energy to make you the rough equivalent of a tadpole in a washing machine. The only two tickets out of that stuff are time and sinking into the "real" water beneath it. Once you're in it , all you can do is relax as much as possible to conserve air and wait it out - hoping to sink deep enough to get out of it a little sooner. The sink-ier you are, the sooner it's over. Floatation keeps you in the stuff longer. I base that on experiences I had trying to ride it out with my arms and legs wrapped around my board. Also, it seems pretty clear to me that with floatation you have little or no chance of avoiding going over the falls if you're positioned in that unhappy spot. ----------------------- Pete Cresswell *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Aug 24 2000 - 18:14:19 PDT
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