I grew up surfing Lake Michigan on a board that was way too small for a beginner on lake waves, and nearly gave up, thinking that I just wasn’t meant to be a surfer. I tried for years to get up on those waves on 3 different boards. They were all short boards, 5’8" - 6’8". Had I learned on a longboard or something more bouyant, I would have progressed faster.
I went to Europe in 1995 for a year and surfed all over on rented and borrowed equiptment, and realized that my problem was the lack of wave energy on the lake to push my small boards and my 168 pound frame. When I got into different waves and different situations, that taught me a lot about watching before going out, knowing where to paddle out, where to sit, what to take, what not to take… etc.
I took that learning experience back to the lake and had a little better experience on the Lake Waves, realizing what I needed to try and catch to push my short board and my 168 lb body.
In 1999, I moved to Mexico and surfed all over on the mainland, including spots like Barra de la Cruz and Puerto Escondido. There, I learned that knowing your surroundings, respecting the locals, board choice, and wave selection were key to survival. Trust me, the impact zone at Zicatela will kill you, if you don’t know what you are doing. I learned the hard way, but took my beatings and kept going back, learning from my mistakes and eventually learning how to ride waves of various types, sizes, and calibers.
I moved back to the lakes with a longboard, and picked up several other boards of various sizes around the Lake and surfed them mostly on the South End, and learned a lot about Lake Surfing and how important bouyancy is in fresh water vs. salt.
It wasn’t until I moved to California and was able to surf every day, several times a day, and built a collection of hundreds of surfboards that I realized my true potential as a surfer. I literally made a point to surf several different spots every day on different equiptment to know the waves of southern california and Baja and to know how each shape and fin configuration performes in various conditions, big or small, clean or blown out. I’ve been surfing like this for the past 7 years and it has really developed my surfing style, improved my skills, and has taken me to levels I never thought possible.
The biggest learning experience from all of this has come from shaping my own boards based on my experiences in various waves of various parts of the world, and on literally hundreds of boards of all different sizes, shapes, and fin configurations. I shaped what works for me, and shape for others what works for them.
The only way you can get to a level of surfing that you have set as a goal, is to get out as often as you can on as much equiptment as you can. Find what works for YOU and master that equiptment.
Another important part of the learning curve is learning to shape. Once you’ve ridden something that you created with your own hands, you’ll understand exactly what it’s all about!
Mahalo,