Just a quick rant... we get 1, maybe 2 (if you're lucky), "surfing only" beaches per town all friggin Summer. Is it really too much to ask for swimmers to move to the next jetty? Lifeguards blowing whistles like a freight trains with their cheeks puffed like Dizzy Gillespie and you stupidly point to yourself - in the middle of a pack 50 pointy, finned, speeding, uncontrolled surfboards - and say "whaaat me"? "Why do I have to get out?" 75% of the surfers are just starting and have ABSOLUTELY NO board control - and you think they're going to see your FLOATING HEAD - and NOT run it over? No lie, saw a 12 year old girl, no leash, lose her NSP 20 feet from shore and take out a 4 year old playing in the shore break WITH HIS DAD - and the Dad gets all bent at the little surfer girl, and then me for reminding him "it's a surfing only beach" all while his kid is screaming! I want to plant a huge 20 foot banner by the Lifeguard stand - SURFING ONLY BEACH. Probably still won't stop them. Idiots.
Brah, I will donate the fabric, thread, and posts for mass-production of these flags for beach commandeering.
Would it be a bad thing to go out with a softboard and mow the swimmers down, kinda as a warning? You can have fun, create a bit of mayhem, sleep soundly knowing you could have taken your sharp nosed four fin out but didn't, and you educated the masses. I say it is a win win.
So I paddle my longboard out in wind chop, find a little crappy peak, catch one ankle biter. No kidding - two minutes later there are two families directly in front of me "bodysurfing" and jumping the whitewater. Paddle to the side to the next crappy little peak and - you guessed it - they move in front of me again. I would not intentionally have a close call to make a statement, but it wouldn't have made a difference: the one time I misjudged my line and came within a few feet of a group, they thought it was cool and whooped it up. After playing this back and forth game for a couple of hours with several different groups of "swimmers" - I hear lots of yelling and pointing and see a young kid, maybe 13 or 14, floundering in the surf - trying to swim towards the beach, but getting pulled farther and farther away. I paddle for him, plop him on my board and bring him in. Explain about rip currents and tell him to swim parallel to the beach next time until he's not in the current, then work his was in. No one got in front of me - very few people got back in the water, actually - after that, so I had about another hour with just one other guy out - a little kid on a fish - chasing knee high wind chop; and I didn't hit anyone with my board. All in all, it worked out ok at that break. Unfortunately, this morning I get up and turn on the news and find out at a beach I had checked out before deciding on the one I went to, an older couple drowned under the same circumstances. My point is that people just don't know any better: many are either tourists with no ocean experience or overconfident locals who need to be educated. Flyers with basic safety info and etiquette at the lifeguard stands could help, but ironically, the people that drowned were on a lifeguarded beach, whereas the one I pulled out was not. At least you guys have surfing beaches, here its a free for all with swimmers, surfers, SUP'ers, kiteboarders, windsurfers and jetskiers all converging on the same spots (kiters and jetskiers are usually the worst about getting in the way and being generally unsafe). Downside is that if you hit one person with a surfboard you are likely to get the beach banned for surfing, so it's best to take a deep breath and keep moving away from the ones that invade your line. With that in mind I'm seriously considering a foam board for crappy days so swimmers who get in the way don't get hurt. Problem is, the one foamie I've tried is super flexible and won't turn at all. I wonder if the ones they sell at Costco are any better? How about those shorter fish shaped ones? Maybe being shorter makes them stiffer? Anyone ever tried them?
^^^^ Idk but some blackball beater boards are made by good bodyboard companies and come w/ stringers...Custom X makes one, JL designs...not sure if the Catch Surf boards have stringers, but you get my point.
