RE: [Paddlewise] Surf advice - was ' How was 2004?'

Josh said:
>Peter, it depend on the type of beach you are surfing into.
>First, one should think twice about surfing a sea kayak in
>surf that high.  That is about the limit.

Steve wrote:
>I also try to use a low brace as much as possible and save
>the high brace for the really big and rough ones.

G'day,

You're right Josh. My aim is to land on beaches safely, though people tell
me its not easy to learn to do this without playing in the surf. It's quite
restrictive to limit oneself to one metre waves or to beaches without rocks
over here, where there are a fair number of surf beaches, so planning the
landing phase of a trip can be a fairly serious business.

One meter waves aren't really a problem for me unless they are dumping on
the beach and I suspect that two metre waves will be forever beyond my
capacity. But at the moment I can more or less guarantee to be trashed in
any wave over 1 metre. Either I don't lean far enough or more usually I
don't recover properly from the lean. At the moment I make my best endeavour
to come in slowly and backpaddling to ride on the back of larger waves. But
this is not always possible.

Steve, I like the idea of controlling which way to broach, which for me is
to the right so I can roll up with the wave. The idea of using a low brace
as much as possible is intriguing. Several paddlers I go out with have
dislocated their shoulders and they are mostly thin, low upper body strength
build like myself. Just when would you make the decision to move from a low
brace to a high brace? Is it the size of the wave or some other
characteristic such as the power of the wave? Some of the better surfers in
our club are able to readily distinguish between waves of the same size with
a lot of power from those without much power - I don't know how they are
able to tell the difference.

All the best, PeterO
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