Beginner in Sendai, Japan

I’ve been following these forums for many weeks and picking up tips here and there from you all. I’ve been a kind of perpetual novice. 15 years ago I ordered a custom-made surfski from Brian’s Kayaks in Paarden Eiland. It was wide and short and I brought it to Tokyo and had fun paddling the Arakawa and Edogawa rivers but when I took it into the sea it didn’t handle the waves well due to its over-the-stern rudder and it was also blown about in a high wind. 11 years ago we moved to Sendai and I used it a bit when the sea was flat but not much.
In 2010 we returned to SA and stayed in Fish Hoek and Rocklands and saw the whole population on the water and zipping by on Miller’s Runs when it was too windy even to braai. I went to the Paddling Centre and asked the kind staff there including Dawid Mocke all sorts of stupid questions and ended up ordering a Horizon from Custom Kayaks. Two weeks after arriving back in Sendai we were hit by the tsunami (we escaped to high ground but our car was washed away) and the importer who was going to import it for me went out of business as Japanese stayed away from water sports as a sort of voluntary self-restraint. Mark Lewin put in a lot of work trying to export it for me and it eventually arrived in April this year. I love my Horizon: it is seaworthy, stable and fast (for me).
I am still a beginner but determined to become intermediate and have spent about 80 hrs on it so far. In the summer here we typically have a low swell and an afternoon sea-breeze blowing onshore. So most days I go out for a hour or two, going 1-2 km upwind and then turning round and trying hard to catch waves on the way back. To begin with it was mostly ‘wobble and wallow’ but now I can catch small waves occasionally but not a run. I really need more speed. I always paddle by myself so I’m limited in the conditions I can go out in. I would probably learn faster if I went out in rougher weather or had someone to push my limits. The surfers look at me with shock: not just because I’m a gaijin but because I’m paddling a craft they have never seen before, so I’m pretty sure there arent others around here.
For me the challenges are now,
1) To get my leg drive coordinated and working consistently. It makes all the difference (like swinging an axe standing compared to sitting) but when I’m unsteady I tend to go back to my bad habits and freeze my butt in the seat.
2) To cope with my tendency to broach. This happens a lot. I just paddle flat out but it doesn’t always work. It invariably happens to me when coming in through the surf and when an ocean wave breaks behind me so I need to get it right.
3) The last few days I have had the weird sensation that I am unbalanced, that my left stroke is OK style-wise but my right one is too wide and short, so I’m trying to lengthen it and keep my hands high.
Anyway that is a long enough intro. Any advice would be appreciated!

hi Rod,

what an amazing story! I had to look up the meaning of a few terms that you use too... but I am reading that you are a very determined chap too! what do you do for a living and what made you move to Japan and more importantly stay there after the Tsunami!

I am like you in some ways, that is I mostly paddle on my own. I find that paddling is a group is only good for is you need to be motivated by others or you have a competitive urge : I am none of those.

you are right in that leg drive is crucial to your stability, synchronizing it with the catch is what prevents you from wobbling at every catch. YOu need to also keep your elbow locked at the start of the catch up until about knee level, that's when the exit kicks in and you need to then bend the elbow. I would focus on this in your next paddle in flat water first as you don't want waves or swell to distract you initially until you master this simple technoique.

Your next area of focus is the hip, shoulder rotation

Then the horizontal punch... it sounds like a lot but if you focus on one thing at a time, it is not hard to master and very soon you will be out seeking waves and big swell.

As for catching runs, you need to accelerate as soon as the stern starts to lift and the bow digs in, keep an eye for "the holes" as Dean Gardiner refers to them (!). Once you have speed, you will literally see holes and its is just a matter of joining the holes... again exact words used by Deano! Usually you need to catch the wave.swell at a slight angle to accelerate faster and reduce broaching but you can learn and practice this over time. start by joining 2 holes first! Once you master, you might find that you may want a longer craft too... Deano said that 21 foot is the optimum length for ocean and downwind paddling. I've owned crafts of 5m80, 6m40 and now 6m40 and I must admit that in big conditions (2+m swell + chop + 20+knots winds), you want to be in a big heavy craft, rather than a super light craft. That's one of the reasons I prefer a vacuum bagged glass over a carbon craft anytime. I am under 75kg and find carbon crafts too boyant and bouncy...

Take care and have fun out there. I hope that you have a leg leash, day flare and life vest on your craft!

Cheers, JDF

Rod, enjoyed the story...

Jean, enjoyed the advice...

Hi Rod,
Long way from Sendai, but if ever you`re visiting Okinawa, give me a shout and I`ll take you out for a paddle. Water is around 30C here now, so it`s actually a bit too hot to paddle far! (in darkest February the water might get down to 22C, but it still feels warm if the air is a chilly 16C!)
Happy Paddling,
Owen

Thanks JDF for the advice. There is a 100 m stretch behind the breakwater where I can practice my technique so i'm working on the leg drive. I'm also quite light (77kg). If I had anything longer or tippier I wouldnt be able to to balance it so I'l stick with my Horizon for the foreseeable future. Yes because I'm a lone paddler I'm pretty safety conscious and always have a pfd, flares, cellphone, leg leash, etc

Thanks Owen! Not many Welshmen in Japan (I went to uni in Swansea and was stroke for their rowing team). Never been to Okinawa but would love to go. The water here was 12ºC in early May and I would always use a shorty wetsuit but is now 24ºC and is really pleasant.

Don't panic. Everyone broaches occasionally coming through the surf. Paddle straight and fast, and even when you do everything right the surf will still bite you on the bum.

Secondly, surf ski's aren't really fast enough to catch pure swell. At a more elite level maybe.
You actually need to be out in 15knt winds to actually start catching runs. It sounds like you are trying to catch swell lines as opposed to wind chop. When you can catch the wind chop, that will give you the speed to link onto the swell.

Thirdly, stick with the Horizon. Damned fine beginner ski with more than enough speed to go downwind. I still take the wife's ski out sometimes and it barrels along downwind. My kids are going to learn in it and as I grow more grey hair it will become my favoured ski

Many thanks, Dicko. Yes I try to catch the wind chop and sometimes do but linking to the swell is beyond me at the moment. Dawid's book and video and JDF's post above all say that you should do this at an angle. Dawid says over he has the wind blowing over his shoulder. So is that 10º or so? At the moment I just go downwind directly flat out and hope for the best, no finesse nothing. The max wind speed I go out in is about 12 knots, anything more and going upwind and turning for me at my skill level is a bit hard. Is the reason for going downwind at an angle not to bury the nose of the ski?

hi Rod,

I onced tracked a big southerly from Manly predicted at extacly 5pm one summer and it peaked at over 25 knots and wind chop was almost 1m. I averaged 4kmph upwind for about 4 kmsbut the reward came when I turned at the Heads and instantly clocked 18kmph pretty much all the way back, it was the most exhilerating experience, I had a grin for the whole weekend. YOu should have seen the face of this guy running on the promenade with his ski looking at the waves, he went further than me. I could not even wash my ski on the stand as it was being blown away at ground level...

IN a couple of years you could aim for that too!

Cheers, JDF

Remembering that I am a very average paddler, but angling across waves increases the potential speed on that wave. The trouble is in lighter winds it is unlikely the chop will be big enough to actually get on runs let alone have enough energy to keep the boat running on an angle.

Where I paddle the wind needs to be 15 knts plus to start thinking about getting runs. Ideally 15-25knts is perfect.

Imagine you catch a wave and travel dead straight on that wave for 50 meters... you travel 50 metres in a given time. If you angle across the wave 20 metres, while the wave still travels 50 meters, in the same time you have covered more distance , ie a greater speed. This increase in speed allows you to accelerate on to the wave in front, etc etc etc.

When this works well this is surski perfection, a bit like tube riding for surfers or powder snow in skiing. This is what everyone tries to achieve. Watch videos of Dean Gardiner. He does it with ease.

Think of the front of your ski like an axe blade, if it goes straight down the wave and digs in it bites and slows, the wave at the rear can push the ski into a broach or swamp the bucket, either way a big loss in speed.
When the ski is at an angle to the wave and you lean the ski on an edge you will feel the ski accelerate and the front can actually start skipping on top of the water, also the rudder is more likely to stay submerged. It doesn't take to much to imagine that the water is pushing on a lot more surface area of the ski this way helping it to surf. For me this is much more noticeable in my sea kayaks, probably because I'm capable of going out in much bigger conditions than in my ski. If your wondering which way to lean the ski, think of the wave coming into the beach and lift your cheek and say to yourself, "fart at the beach".
My favourite sea kayak has very low volume in front and would bury in even small waves, I didn't like it for that reason only, for a few months, until I learnt to adapt my technique to angle on waves and edge, now its a rocket on a following sea, its really noticeable how it accelerates once I "fart at the beach".

Thanks Greg and Dicko, What you say makes perfect sense. Now I must just do it! And JDF, a couple years ?? I dont want to wait that long! How did you manage to turn across a 25knot wind? The only time we get winds like that here is in a typhoon and then the seas are enormous...

Make the side chop your friend.
When the wave swell and the wind swell are not aligned, they move through each other, so there is a hole that runs along the wave you are on, but more importantly, the one in front of you.

Time it to drop into that hole and you can jump through to the next one, repeat.
Time it right and you are downhill all the way.
Staying as high as possible on your current wave will also give you a better chance at seeing the waves as well as give you more acceleration to drop down into the holes as they develop.

Many thanks, RightArmBand. I have a long way to go before I can do that. As for 'side chop being my friend' we have a more complicated relationship: it tries to knock me off and I respond with controlled aggression...

I did not have to turn, all I did was stop paddling and brace, the wind and chop literally spun the craft in a matter of seconds and then a massive push and the sturn lifted and away I went like a rocket, I remember fondly the blinding spray in my eyes and teh deafening roar of gale force winds in my ears, it does rarely get better in paddling exhileration...!

I have done a lot of downwind paddling since I last wrote but it is very hit or miss with me as I don’t know what angle to paddle at. Sometimes I catch waves diagonally but not often. The ocean swell usually comes from the South and the wind from ESE or SE. You say at a ‘slight angle’ to the wind. If I have my back to an ESE wind, I’m pointing about WNW. So about what angle should I aim for?
I don’t know the wind speed as I have no means of measuring it, but after 3-4 hrs the wind waves reach about 70cm and are about a boat length apart. The swells are typically 1.5m and about 13 secs apart.
I don’t see ‘holes’ to steer for. All I see are wavetops advancing away from me so I try to catch up the closest one and if it is small sometimes I manage it and if I can keep myself steady it picks me up and I can go on to another one.
But anyway any advice about the angle would help a lot!

Rod,
Sounds like you need to get down here to Okinawa and I`ll take you for that paddle! Winter`s coming, but it`ll still be shorts and vests weather on the water here!
Owen

I would say the smaller the waves the smaller the angle, larger waves or swells if they are steep enough to ride, the larger the angle can be. There really is no correct angle, you need to feel which angle is right for the wave you are on to maintain or gain speed. Very small waves you might not angle at all and you can catch the waves at no angle and then move to an angle to perhaps steer more in the direction you favour, such as away from a head land etc. So catch the wave with it directly behind you then steer and lean to get moving at an angle for the earlier mentioned reasons. You are constantly moving, not just going in one direction, you adjust for the wave and feel where your ski runs the best. Keep at it, I'm no expert, its a case of building your experience the more you do it.

thanks Owen,That would be really cool. What are wind and waves like down there (when youre not having mega-typhoons)?

Thanks Greg this is really helpful. I've been making the angle too great I think