Someone give me the wave riding/reading masterclass

Hey guys,
As I've been paddling away on the Swordfish S for the last month or two, I've finally gotten fast enough / stable enough that I'm finally able to catch and surf a lot of sets now. I have what i consider a moderate understanding of wave physics, boat physics, and wave reading from personal interest and a few years racing Canadian canoes. 
That said, to read every set  of waves perfectly clearly takes thousands of hours of experience. I can link a couple sets together pretty consistently, but then I often paddle into the flat water between sets and stall. 

To the Wave Gods among us (or just those who care to chime in) can you please explain, show, or link the logic and application of how to link together multiple sets (as in more than 2), and also just wave riding theory in general?


Specifically, when it comes to surfing sets, Bathemetry states that waves  come in sets of 6 'on a conveyor belt', where the lead wave stalls until it to falls to the back of the set, the next wave overtakes it, stalls, etc, until you reach the back of the set when the trailing wave slingshots to the front. 

One mistake I made early in my swell riding is I would see the set coming and turn around in anticipation. This would lead to me outrunning the set and stalling prematurely. I learned that I should only start to turn around after the first 2-4 waves have passed me and hop on the 5th or 6th wave of the set, which works 2 fold - one, I start from the middle/end of the set so I dont outrun it right away, and two - the trailing 6th slingshot wave comes along quickly relative to joining a set, so you're fresh to sprint on the fastest wave and make up some serious ground. Once on the slingshot wave, you can overtake the remaining waves in the set if you do it right.  
This is where I need some advice - when the set starts to run out, I look to the sides to see if I can find an intersecting wave set to jump on. I've noticed if you continue straight forward the set is dead and wont produce much surfing until you languish around in the set until the slingshot wave catches you again. So does best practice match my observation, that you surf a set mostly straight-on until its close to dying, then start tracking right or left to catch an adjacent set? 

Also I notice when we have intersecting swell at like a 10-40° angle, I surf a set for a shorter time, but link seperate sets into one fast zig-zag. So I still hop on the 5th or 6th wave of the initial set, but then I just start looking for a hole to either side of me and just stick with the 'hunt for the hole' wherever that may be. I have pretty good luck with this, but again, eventually stall out. What's the best method to link waves at accute intersecting angles for several waves in a row?

Last request - there was a video on facebook where someone animated over a GoPro video showing waves and holes forming in slow mo, explaining the thought process behind the paddler's moves, then showing the video in real time. I lost the link but love the video. If you know what I'm talking about, can you please link it here?

Thanks!

I cannot give a masterclass because my downwind skills are intermediate at best. That said, I think you are overthinking this. I don't think it is helpful to try to understand the waves on the level that you are asking about. It is more important to focus on the waves immediately around you. Sometimes the waves are big, sometimes they are small, sometimes they are clean, sometimes they are messy. But all that you can do is respond to the waves immediately around you with a few simple rules - catch the small waves that are slow enough to catch, surf high on the wave, stop and start paddling sooner than you think you need to, etc. Even if you did have an understanding of the overall complex behavior of the waves, things in front of you change too fast to make much use of that knowledge.  Your understanding of wave patterns might tell you that you need to get on that wave just ahead and to the right, but just as you are getting up the steam to get there the waves can change and you have to roll with it and go left instead of right. I hope that is helpful. I am not a great downwind paddler, but I have struggled at it long enough to know that it is these simple basic strategies that are the most important.   

McImes, the good news is that the masterclass is free, and anyone can sign up.  The bad news is that you need to enroll for your whole life, and the further along you progress, you actually don't feel any closer to being finished....

Jesting aside, I agree with Zach in that it's best to tune into what's immediately happening in front of your bow, especially in the early stages of learning.  As you improve, and your responses to what's happening right near the boat become automatic, you can open up your conscious horizon a bit, and look around a bit further out in front to take advantage of patterns that require bigger inputs to dial into.

It sounds  like you're doing out and backs fairly close to shore dealing with sets of groundswell?  If so that's pretty different conditions than most people are getting out in on their downwind runs, and I can't offer much specific advice for your environment.  Be wary of putting too much faith in that bathymetry theory, I have certainly been caught inside and snuffed out by the 8th or 10th wave at places like Black's or Laniakea, ha ha, I wish those sets had read up on the matter and learned they are supposed to group up in sixes!

So much of downwind is unconscious pattern recognition, I think it's hard for experts to remember what it  was like being a noob, and so advice is handed down like Deano's "just put the nose in the hole" which is both correct, and also a vast oversimplification.

It sounds like you're already at the point where you are putting together long sequences, but then every now and then you totally lose your speed?  Maybe take a step back and try to maintain a lower intensity level and link up waves that are a bit smaller/slower than what you are capable of.  Then, if you find yourself heading into a dead end, look around and find something nearby that you can reach if you go max out for a short time.  Basically, try to use your energy reserves to prevent slowing down, rather than using them to pull onto something really fast.

If you want to maximize your average speed for a given run, you need to be going as hard as you can maintain for the whole run, all the while using that effort to stay moving on the fastest wave energy that your effort level allows you to catch and link.  So if you are making perfect decisions and have perfect boat control, you can link faster wave patterns.  An expert can go max sustainable effort the whole time because they aren't making mistakes.  As a beginner, you have to leave yourself a "cushion" of power reserve for when you make a mistake, so that you can power up and paddle over a wave or whatever to get back into the pattern.  

You mentioned that when you are falling out of a pattern you look to the sides for something else to get onto.  I would say this is a good move, and in general if you are not actively linking solid energy, it's best to have your boat at a pretty big angle to the fastest moving swells (you want them hitting you on the beam or quarter, not from straight behind) because when you aren't going fast enough to catch them, those bumps will just slow you down if they hit you from behind, versus if you quarter them or take them on the beam, they pass under without molesting your trim and flooding the cockpit, etc so it's easier to keep your speed up.  

Get in a double with an expert if can.  I haven't done this with a real master, but even going with my peers I have learned a lot in seeing how they deal with situations a bit differently than I would have.

Good luck, I look forward to the post-class debriefing when we are all 90 years old in wheelchairs!

"One wave at a time"

Rule 4 of the Mocke 5 rules of Downwind Paddling

Lots of good nuggets of wisdom in your post Patrick. Thanks!

Ditto, really good info Patrick. I know thinking about catching waves is much different than putting it into practice, but your post has a lot of good wisdom to remember on the water. Keep it coming!

My top takeaways are:

• Start chasing the waves immediately in front of me and expand my 'wave consciousnesses' as I start to link the nearby waves without much thought
• I think you're right about intensity, that is, I'm somewhat of a wave addict so its hard to resist catching the fastest ones and gassing out. I'll try and contain myself so I have some energy in reserve to maintain speed between sets
• Great point about going diagonal to the waves after you lose a set so they dont stall/swamp you. I will try this tonight, when I start to lose a wave and know the next one will swamp me, rudder hard and try to let the next one or 2 roll under me until I get my speed back up
• I agree that sets are not always 6 waves. sometimes its 1 rogue wave, sometimes its a set of 15 it seems like, but for the most part I think waves travel in sets of 6-10 pretty regularly around me based on observation. I was just caught inside last saturday and got clobbered by a nice 4-5 footer and almost lost my favorite hat! Luckily a quick remount and a little searching got it back. I knew I was in too close but the tide was high so the waves were breaking late and made for some epic rides. 

As for my waves, I occasionally surf near shore waves when shorebreak is the only swell available (as in within 200m of shore) but most typically I paddle due west into the wind and waves for about a mile. Once I'm about a mile out, I keep paddling but now am looking for a standout set to surf back to shore. I typically paddle another 1/4 to 1/2 mile waiting for the 10 to 20 minute standout set to come by. Once I see the outlier set I take it back to the breakwater and repeat a couple-few times. Not exactly a Molokai or Miller's downwind, but its the best I have available to me. 

We could always expand on that:

1. Nose in the hole
2. One at a time
3. Keep up the run rate
4. Little ones lead to big ones
5. There’s always one behind

A credo which pretty much covers most of the aspects of downwind.

Once on the slingshot wave, you can overtake the remaining waves in the set if you do it right.  

FYI, that's incorrect. The last wave peters out (becomes smaller), the small wave in front of "this first one" becomes bigger. It's because the group speed is higher than the individual wave speed. The highest amplitude wave would be in the middle of the set, according to the theory. But in reality the wave energy is not focused narrowly in one frequency, so it's not as clean as the theory makes it sound...

I like:

Basically, try to use your energy reserves to prevent slowing down, rather than using them to pull onto something really fast.

I'll have to try that, sounds really difficult, actually. It's just too ingrained to speed up and paddle hard when the wave comes and then relax when it has passed. (Or when you're lucky sitting on it.)