Wave Selection

I like waves

 

I'm the best at everything and I don't need help with nothing. Plus I have never cried and I bench 480.

 

Board selection has a lot to do with wave selection. The right board can help you be in the right part of the wave for sure.

 

Oh yeah??!!?? But...have you ever surfed Belmar at 23 feet??

 

No, working up the courage to paddle out there. Plus I'm saving my money for a gold chain I can wear over my wetsuite so I'll get respect.

 

I wear a bow tie over my wetsuit, to match my preppie board shorts, also worn over the wetsuit.
A real "dandy"........

 

I think wave selections really coincides with experience. And sand reconne, of coarse...

its more of an automatic thing after time - you start lining your self up and only going on waves that you know will peel/break correctly.

I think choosing the right spot has a lot to do with wave selection. if I check a spot and it's not breaking right- I will go to another spot. I don't just paddle out at the same spot every time 'cause that's where I surf'. I do a quick look and find the best spot around.

I actually think there is some sand reconne involved- watching certain jetties over one and seeing how they break during different swells and seasons. You can pretty much know which spots will have good waves for certain swells.
That way when you paddle out- you know 80% of the waves will be good...

Unless you surf Belmar- the wave are always 100% of the time perfect.

#sandreconne

 

Good plan. You know you'll never get a wave at Belmar without a gold chain and if you don't pull up in a camero. Some guys have been rocking the gold wristlet too...

 

sand reconne of coarse

That's freakin' poetry right there, brother...

 

I catch all the waves I can all the time.

When it's firing I'm more selective but you can get to a point when you're over thinking it and you find yourself just sitting in the water. Not a bad thing per say. Also depends on the # of urfers at the break.

 

Agree. Big days wave selection is *everything*. On days of no consequence, I'll catch anything that comes my way. How many times have you passed on the first wave of a set that was perfect, only to find walled-up closeouts behind it? A bird in hand...

On normal days (head high or less), if I have not caught a wave in about 10 min, then I'll go on anything, close-out, late drop, whatever, keeps the blood and the jive flowing. The whole point of paddling out is to surf, not bob around on your board like some touron.

 

Do you think that has anything to with the interaction between swell and beach direction? For a beach facing directly east, a swell coming from the northeast will have punchier rights and visa versa. Is that something anyone considers? One of my favorite beach breaks faces E-NE so a typical east swell will normally have slightly punchier lefts. Maybe it's in my head but I remember reading this particular snippet of information on a swell predicting forume full of doctors. Maybe you guys have heard of it?

 

[video=youtube_share;ZFtyh-5LPxw]http://youtu.be/ZFtyh-5LPxw[/video]

 

Truthfully I'm not good enough to be that selective. If taking a nice one relatively uncontested means taking the next few on the head well...sign me up. Better than sitting too much which I have a bad habit of doing on bigger days.

 

I find i have to pick and choose my battles. I can only get tossed a few times before I stiffen up, so on big days I only go for the perfect waves. On belly high days, Im constantly in/out/in/out. If I wait around too long for the perfect wave, I get weird. I start talking and singing to myself, and I get frustrated. I pretty much go full Tom Hanks castaway in 8 minutes.

The key is to wait for a sweet mushy shoulder, and make sure another person is on the wave already. Give him a thumbs up, then hop the shoulder, crouch really low and act like you're pitted, shout "woot", ride it until you're knee deep, then get arrested for sodomy in Michigan.