Surfski Knowledge Base

surfskierx <brandon@…>
11/17/06 #2074

Going out on Wednesday was, for me, an experimental session. A guaranteed learning experience from the second the boat touches the water. Heather, Don and I met at about 11:30 at Marine Park, and watched in awe as 4-5' surf wrapped beautifully around Post Point and broke on the same beach that Ski-to-Sea ends on. (See the new photo of Heather calling for a windspeed update with breaking surf behind her.) We joked about just going body surfing right there. The red buoy just outside the park was disappearing now and then, getting knocked over sideways and swallowed in deep troughs. Liquid smoke cut off visibility a few miles out, and gusts had us staggering to keep our footing right there on the beach.

We hiked up to the train trestle and got an even better look at just how huge it was. The term “fully developed seas” was a perfectly fitting label for the ocean-like swells that battered the coastal sandstone and stacked on top of each other creating occasional avalanches of whitewater. It was, by sight and measure, very much like a hurricane.

We drove to the Co-op for lunch, expecting at least some let-up of the conditions while we ate hot soup and salad, and when we got back to Marine Park it did seem that it had calmed down a bit. By then we were soaked from the rain and, still in our street clothes, shivering with cold. It was decision time and no one was wavering: we were going.

We decided it would be easier to avoid the surf and land at Fairhaven Boatworks, so we dropped a shuttle vehicle there the drove to Larrabee. The gate was closed and locked, but we found parking and hiked our boats to the launch. Drysuits on, leashes lashed, rain sheeting down, we laid out the strategy. We agreed that all three of us were safety boaters for each other, and that we'd not lose sight of each other; Heather warned that the water's off Governor's could be totally off the chain, so she was going to stay as close to the wall as possible (a classic Chalupsky technique) and then eddy out behind the point to re-group. (We could see on the drive in that behind Gov's it was glassy). The plan laid out, we were off.

When we got outside into the wind, it was clear that debris-dodging would be a huge part of the paddle. Logs and eelgrass patches were scattered everywhere. We paddled sideways to the waves to get out beyond the rock island just outside the park (which was exploding with swells) then made the turn. In the short distance between the park and Gov's the swell size grew, as though stacking up off the point. I was 100 yards or more off the wall, waiting to see how chaotic the water would get. Don was a bit further out from me. And Heather was practically right up against the wall… I couldn't believe how close. Looking in at her (brief split-second glances in between strokes and braces) it didn't look like the place to be, but she was just cruising. We'd been on the water maybe five minutes, and were all grouped closely as planned. Then I looked back over my shoulder for Don, and he was gone. I figured he was just in a trough – plenty big to hide an entire paddler and 'ski – and that I'd see him during the next look, but after three looks I couldn't spot him, and wondered if he'd swam.

Heather rounded Gov's Point and peeled into the eddy, and as I paddled towards her I looked back once more and there was Don, a full 100 yards behind. When he pulled into the eddy he told how his rudder had latched onto a mound of eelgrass. He backed up into the swells and lost most of it, but another back-up in the eddy shed another good sized clump. The vertical-aspect surf rudder would be key in the giant swells, but was showing its weakness too.

Freight train swells roared by 100 yards outside the eddy, and we all paddled straight out and got in the thick of it. Don went out furthest, I was in the center and Heather was furthest in. The swells, driven by winds we would learn were gusting into the low 70 mph range, were moving too fast for me to catch.

I was struggling and not relaxed – exactly the opposite of how I'd like to be feeling on a downwind run. When troughs began to form in front of me, I'd turn on the power only to end up sinking into the peak of the wave, the V-10 filling with water, then I'd wallow weighted-down until I could get the speed back up. Rather than establishing a pattern of powering for a ride then resting on the face, my pattern seemed to be to bog out on a peak, or broach left or right, brace-paddle until the bow was pointing downwind again, then repeat. It was exhausting and slow.

To the left and right, and increasingly further out in front of me, were Don and Heather. I couldn't look away long enough to see if they were catching the big swells (6-8'), but Don, who was pretty close off my left side, was taking a lot of breaks from paddling to wait for me to catch up, and I imagine Heather, who was further in, was too.

In the spirit of the veritable broken clock being right at least twice a day, I eventually hit the right combination of catching a perfect bit of chop to gain speed and position to get on a full-sized swell. A brace sometime during the ride changed my paddle's usual 45-degree feather to something over 100 degrees, and when I took a forward stroke again it was as if I had a left-hand paddle. I dropped my legs over the sides and grabbed the ferule in my left hand, the right blade in my right hand, and tried to re-tighten it. It wouldn't budge. My nerves tightened.

I've not had the best of luck with the “friction fit” system on my paddle. For the longest time, it was “seized” into place and I couldn't loosen it even with a wrench. Then I heat-gunned it or something and worked it loose, was able to tweak the length or feather, but then couldn't get it to re-tighten enough. At W.O.W. last weekend I easily loosened it to shorten it for one of the test-paddlers. She held it for five seconds, then asked me to give it a bit more feather, and with all my strength I couldn't re-loosen the ferule. Using one of the supplied wrenches and squeezing until my hand turned white, I got it loose. And on and on.

Now here I was half way through the biggest day on the Bay in my career, and I'm wrestling my paddle without a wrench, 70 mph gusts blasting, 6-8' swells roller-coastering by, oh yeah… and I'm “running safety” for the other two paddlers, as per our reciprocal agreement. Yeah right! I could see Heather looking back at me knowing that something was wrong, and eventually her and Don both turned around and paddled back to see what was up.

I set the feather back to 45 and gave it one last Herculean twist. With my hands back at their paddling position on the shaft, I could still twist the halves but it was as tight as I could get it, so we set off again.

After that, knowing my paddle was a time bomb, my confidence sank further. Despite being dressed to swim – full drysuit and plenty of base layers – and despite being leashed to the boat, I felt totally exposed. A wing paddle at risk of instantly changing its feather in storm conditions is like sinking a running chainsaw into a log you know to be spiked. You hope you're ready when it suddenly kicks.

The swell size built steadily as we progressed toward the wall, and again the chop-to-swell acceleration found me dropping in from the lip into a massive trough, with Don just to my left watching and screaming out “Yeahh!” The bow pearled in and I started swinging to the right, just as the crest of this wave or another wave coming from the side crashed into me, and along with bracing into it I dropped my legs and hit the breaks. The feather hadn't moved a degree.

By the time we reached Post Point, the swell size dropped to a fraction of what we'd been in. As we reached the dry dock, wind speed was reaching a new high for the afternoon and, buffeted off the docked Coast Guard ship, nearly knocked us over sideways. We beat into the wind on flat water until we reached the boat launch, where Dean and Devin, Dale M., Larry B., Mike G., Greg D. and channel 4 news welcomed us in.

Within a half hour of getting off the water, gusts again had reached 80 mph.

Experiments beget learning, and this experimental session taught me some valuable lessons. Storm paddling has always been fun for me, but I did not have fun on this session. Heather and Don paddled relaxed and were having fun. I was gripped.

After Molokai, I had taken a long-awaited break from paddling and had only been in a surfski twice in the past month – both in the week preceding this day. Not enough time, especially after spending the second half of the summer racing an OC-1 instead of a ski, to be “tuned up.”

On the second of these two paddles, Heather and I had headed out to Eliza Island and back and, in the 2-3' sloppy conditions, I had become frustrated with the V-10's tendency to fill with water to the gunwales and stay that way. It might just be me, but it's not a problem I had with my Mako. It makes the boat extremely sluggish – not a favorable condition in any conditions, much less a hurricane. Also regarding the boat, for big surf I should've rigged a big surf rudder. Rudder response was too often non-existent, sort of like being on a skateboard with immovable trucks. You better start the ride going in the exact direction you want, `cause there's no turning once you get going.

Finally, the lesson of the two-piece wing paddle. First of all, I'm becoming less and less a fan of “friction-fit” paddling components. Friction-fit paddle shafts twist; friction-fit foot pedal straps slip; hand-tightened, friction-fit knobs loosen and allow slippage, or don't get tightened enough to start with. Yes, extreme loads are rare, but on big days and during hard racing, when failure is most costly, is when it's most likely to happen. Give me splines, notches, square pegs that lock into square holes. Good old-fashioned mechanical, immovable connections between parts. Or a one-piece.

The post-Molokai rest has been healing and energizing, as rests are. But I'm ready to get back to paddling. There are undoubtedly more big storms marching their way towards Bellingham Bay at this minute, with the whole winter in front of us. And if I'm not out, you're welcome to borrow my paddle anytime, as long as you like a 45-degree feather, 216 cm. That's how it got epoxied together.

Reivers Dustin
11/18/06 #2075

Excellent post. Seaworthy is one of those concepts that trump understatement. It takes incredibly high equipment integrity to really meet the requirement. I've heard the expression, “the sea eats everything.”

Regards your paddle troubles: Both Ryler's and my own Epic started having similar symptoms. I managed to get Mark w/ Epic to look at them and he had some advice.

1) These joints must be kept clean. Sand, debris, or any lubrication is big trouble.

2) They are not maintenance free. They need a check-out every few years.

3) If they are clean and serviced they work well.

Mark did some re-texturing on these paddles and I was amazed at the improvement. I was lucky, and should have passed this information on before now. Get your slip-joint paddles checked out if they act funny in any way.

rd

Dale McKinnon
11/18/06 #2077

Actually, that was a remarkable paddle. Although not a record wind, it was an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. But your estimation of the wave height is modest. I saw, and venture to guess you went through, several ten-footers. An awesome effort…

–

God grant me the Senility,
To Forget the People I have never liked,
The Good Fortune to run into the ones I do,
And the Eyesight to tell the Difference.
John Aitken

mike Gregory <falloff999@…>
11/18/06 #2076

Brandon,

Thanks for the great post about your recent “experimental” paddle. A learning experience, indeed.

Epic does now market a bigger redesigned V10 rudder. I think using it would make a big difference for you.

One piece paddles rule in really rough conditions, Ask Joost, he'll tell ya about it.

As for Don - dude was born in a Typhoon. Sire was King Neptune, Mother a Mermaid. Has gills hidden under his neoprene and webbing between fingers and toes. He only paddles flatwater when he can't find a storm.

Best Regards, Mike.