welshkate

This past weekend I needed to take a break from play boating and head back to my roots- surf kayaking. I headed south to Northern California for some wave action (wow-all 3 feet [max] of it). I was hyper-excited about this trip because I was there to work with Dick Wold. Not only is Dick is an excellent teacher, he also has some serious credentials- 18 years on the US kayak surf team; 5 times US champion and 1993 world champion…oh yeah and 6 times US waveski champion. I was extremely privileged to have the pleasure of surfing with him for 5 hours. Dick had some great advice for me about surfing- mainly to practice soup hops as these are key to all the surfing moves. I found an explanation of a soup hop on the internet- “get up on top of the foam by elevating the angle of the edge of the kayak nearest the foam side. Once on top of the foam you can, with the aid of your paddle … flat spin the kayak and go to other options”. Notice-elevate the angle nearest the foam….this is key to this move. It’s interesting, because for me this was counter intuitive. E.g. I finished a left bottom turn and the wave closed out, so I was riding the foam, and I wanted to get around the foam to the next breaking section. I dug in on my left edge to try to drive left. This is wrong. Had I raised the seaward edge, not the beachward edge, I would have climbed back up the pile. I tried soup hopping several times and discovered that it’s a really subtle change- too much edge saw me flipping over, too little and nothing seemed to happen. My HP boat is a little unforgiving with the edge thing too- I’m still getting used to concave edges. The soup-hop move is definitely something to work on and is a great tip for any newbie surfer.