that's an unbelievably massive wave i'm not sure the depth at the trough below but that guy is clearly in a hazardous position i've been slammed and more or less "mandolined" at the bottom of a small wave being pushed into the sandy bottom with big wave on top of you is scary now imagine a reef/coral or nasty slag/rocks down there
Just diving under a wave is pretty intense. A big, 18 footer for me once or twice... maybe 6 times. Many more with 12's -14's. Can you imagine the weight of that wave.
Can you imagine the pressure.
That's when you become ONE with nature. And your ears will let you know.
There was a book written by Willard Bascom that I read as a kid. Waves and Beaches. In it among lots of other things that I learned about the fluid dynamics of the ocean was the mention that water pressure in a breaking wave has been measured in tons per square foot. I read that book over and over again as I got to experience what he was talking about while surfing and just being at the beach. It is never fun getting caught back in the tube and getting sucked completely over the falls and slamming on the bottom. That brief moment of weightlessness is brought to a sudden screeching halt with the impact. The rest is like being caught inside a giant washing machine that has no mercy. The only lucky thing about sand is it is not coral or rocks.
While everyone was talking about Marine Biology I was all about Marine Geology. I wanted to study beaches and erosion and other things as an excuse to travel the world and go surfing where ever there were rideable waves. My girlfriend who is now my wife, and I had it all figured out. We were going to get a boat ala Michner's Adventures in Paradise and sail around the South Pacific. I would be the marine geologist and she would be a school teacher. While it didn't exactly go that way, we still ended up together.
Bascom is credited with coming up with the idea of using neoprene for wetsuits and many other things. Remember Sealab down at Scripp's in La Jolla ? Astronaut Scott Carpenter and Ricky Grigg were both Aquanauts onboard. Grigg was my role model when it was all said and done. I was going to go to OCC, transfer down to UCSD and eventually over to Scripp's. Pretty lofty goals. Well, maybe not OCC, but the rest was. Then there was the war and lot's of other things, but as mentioned above, I still got the girl.
Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Feb 19, 2022 - 9:50pm
miamizsun wrote:
that's an unbelievably massive wave
i'm not sure the depth at the trough below but that guy is clearly in a hazardous position
i've been slammed and more or less "mandolined" at the bottom of a small wave
being pushed into the sandy bottom with big wave on top of you is scary
now imagine a reef/coral or nasty slag/rocks down there
Just diving under a wave is pretty intense.
A big, 18 footer for me once or twice... maybe 6 times. Many more with 12's -14's.
Can you imagine the weight of that wave.
Can you imagine the pressure.
That's when you become ONE with nature. And your ears will let you know.
that's an unbelievably massive wave i'm not sure the depth at the trough below but that guy is clearly in a hazardous position i've been slammed and more or less "mandolined" at the bottom of a small wave being pushed into the sandy bottom with big wave on top of you is scary now imagine a reef/coral or nasty slag/rocks down there
The first thought I had... those whose passions take them out before dawn have access to a private world others will never know they're missing. The first sunlit hour of the day (especially in the summer at 5am) can be magically peaceful.
I was not aware of dry suits being used in surfing. But I guess that my thoughts on dry suits for surfing is still correct, even though this article is on the old side.
You certainly could use a drysuit for surfing, however, drysuits that are available on the market today are not necessarily designed for surfing. Typical (loose fitting) dry suits are made for either cold-water kyaking or diving.
The disadvantage to a loose fitting drysuit is that they do not react well when moving fast while partially-submerged, as you are while surfing. They have a tendency to drag and hamper your ability to surf.
My farmer john has a zipper and gets layered with a thin neo top or better NRS Mystery skin underneath. But frankly, the conditions where it is a better choice than a drysuit for my kind of kayaking are rare, and it is mostly relegated to when I take other people out. Most of the whitewater kayakers I know wear dry tops or semi-dry tops, which aren't exactly svelte when they are surfing standing waves or punching through holes. They also have very good rolls and swimming is rare. But they aren't trying to get out through a break either. Sea kayakers straddle both worlds and even at the height of my skills my surf launching/landing sucked. Horses for courses.
Then there was the war and lot's of other things, but as mentioned above, I still got the girl.
