Surfski Knowledge Base

Commonly used for “hello” and “goodbye” in Hawaii but traditionally also used to convey more. “Talofa” in Samoan is a similar word of greeting that also has a much richer context of community and affection. “Mahalo” is Hawaiian for “thank you”, but similarly to aloha in greater context is also used to express deep appreciation, respect, and gratitude. But the wiki is not going to do justice to the rich cultural context of these terms. If you are curious, please look further into the meanings of these terms and the cultural heritages of traditional paddling communities.

• Fijian-English Dictionary
• Hawaiian-English Dictionary
• Samoan-English Dictionary
• Tahitian-English Dictionary

Australian slang for “afternoon”

This is a subset of common boat terms that may be more likely to be heard in reference to surfskis (particularly from paddlers with experience with other types of boats)

• bow - front end, stern - rear end
• port - left, starboard - right
• aft - the area towards the stern of the boat.
• fore, forward - the area towards the bow.
• heel - lateral or transverse tilt
• transverse - at right angles to the boat's fore to aft center line
• waterline - the intersection of a boat's hull and the water's surface, or where the boat sits in the water.
• keel - the lowest point of the boat's hull, the keel typically provides stability and prevents sideways drift of the boat in the water; most surfskis are rounded transversely, so they really do not have a defined keel on the bottom in which case the term simply refers to the bottom centerline running fore to aft.
• beam - the width of the boat, measured at its widest point; generally, the larger the beam, the more stable the boat.
• draft - the distance between the waterline and the keel (bottom centerline) of a boat or lowest fixed piece of running gear which in the case of surfskis and OCs can be the bottom of a long surfing rudder. Thus draft is the minimum depth of water necessary to allow a boat to float freely.

An indigenous Australian term for offshore areas with reefs or shallows that can cause ocean swell to jack up into large breaking waves. The term may be used to refer to the waves caused by the shallows or refer to the reefs themselves. More about waves...

using one of your paddle blades in a “fixed” position to press against the water for stability and support

• See Brace in Stroke Technique.

when a sailboat turns sharply (slews) back into the wind because the rudder cannot compensate for the forces bearing on the boat's direction it is “broaching”. The same term is used in downwind paddling, when your boat turns sideways (usually at speed, on a wave) though you are trying to steer it forward with the wave. Broaching tendency is elevated by a difference in speed between your boat and the waves, either by going faster or by going slower than the waves you are surfing. Causes:

• Boat speed exceeding wave speed (as when you accelerate down the front of a steep wave), turning too far, and less rudder surface area in the water (using a smaller rudder and/or because your rudder is lifting above the water) all contribute to a greater tendency to broach.
• Diving into the wave in front of you at an angle
• Paddling at a low speed and being overtaken by a steep or breaking wave (such as slowing down too much in a surf landing zone). See also Weathercocking (if boat weight balance is driving you offline you will be more susceptible to broaches, probably in particular with lower boat speed relative to wind and waves)

Notice with some recommendations for how to avoid broaching there may be too much emphasis on either the too slow or too fast circumstances when experience will teach you how to recognize the difference and take a different approach depending on circumstance. You can often overcome an impending broach by bringing you surfski closer to the speed of your waves, by steering closer to the direction your wave is going, and by getting more rudder in the water (by getting past a wave crest or leaning back and putting more weight on the rear of you boat). If you need to speed up, leaning forward may help if you are on the front of a wave. Leaning back will usually tend to slow you down somewhat and can also help reduce bow burying into the wave in front of you (which reduces the likelihood of a wave burying broach and can reduce loss of speed by getting over the wave in front more quickly). Applying pressure with a brace can both tend to slow you down and help turning toward the side you are bracing on.

You may want to spend some time around the locals before you adopt these expressions. They can be in or out of favor or have different meanings depending on your location or the context for using these terms.

• Bro - often used in a negative context these days. Coming from surfing culture. Endless variations - “broheim”, “broski”, “Charles Brokowski”, “brofessor”, “brotato chip”, etc.
• Bra, Brah - Hawaiian - may be somewhat out of date now
• Brada - Hawaiian
• Bru, Bruh - South African
• Bruz can be okay or negative in Australia
• Buraz Serbian
• Less Common - Breh, Bruv, etc. etc.

Latin American Spanish term for a small canoe. In Puerto Rico “cayuco” is an idiomatic term for a difficult situation: “Esto està cayuco” = “this is a big mess”. A popular annual multi-day race in Panama is the Ocean to Ocean Cayuco Race through the Panama Canal (crocodiles are a protected species in the Panama Canal).

Australian slang used to describe something as “great”. That was a cracker downwinder, mate. ³⁾ “Corker” and “Ripper” can be used similarly.

If you are traveling in open water (paddling, foiling, kiting…) on wind driven waves (or a combination of swell and wind waves), you are downwinding ⁴⁾ , or going on a downwinder. Paddlers (OCs, SUPs, Surfskis) get added speed and propulsion by surfing on such waves. “Downwinding” can be done in the form of repeated laps or by paddling solely in one direction, but saying you are going on a “downwinder” typically implies going in one primary direction from point A to point B downwind the whole way, having setup a shuttle for pickup at the end point and retrieval of vehicles from the start point. The exhilaration of downwind paddling drives the growing popularity of surfskis more than any other single factor.

• Terms for downwind conditions: ^{5) 6)}
  • = BIG
    • Awesome, Nuclear, Epic, Puckery, Survival, Rock-a-Hula, Gorgelike (these terms usually just imply bigness while others like Ticklish and Manky also imply some size plus turbulence - also “Fiddly” whether just big or big and turbulent seems to imply nervousness inducing)
  • = MEDIUM - SMALL
    • SlightCaps, Bumps
  • = NOT SO GREAT
    • Lumpy, Micro Bumps
  • = NOTHING
    • Duck or Mosquito Farts, as Flat as (- “someone's beer?” - “LG's roof?” - fill in your own…), Pondwater
  • Applied Across the Range of Size Levels
    • Technical (waves from multiple directions), “Chunky Munky” - choppy, difficult, maybe also “technical”.
      • more about “technical” from the UK - “…was messy— purists would call it ‘technical’ - it sounds better, because it gives the impression that you know what you are doing. I call it survival!! Andy Nicholson from Hayling calls it ‘paddling at your limit’ T-bone calls it ‘fekking scary’”

Paddling either directly close behind another water craft (drafting) or alongside and trailing about 2/3 of the lead boat's bow (riding the lead boat's bow wake) reduces the effort required to maintain the same speed as paddling without any draft would require. The directly behind draft effect (water slipstream) for boats is strongest when closest. But care has to be taken to avoid annoying the lead paddler(s) or damaging your and their boats by bumping into them when too close. Drafting is generally not practical when downwinding behind other small paddled boats (it can work behind bigger boats), but serious racers will try to use it to get any ounce of assistance possible in other situations though drafting in choppy water requires a fair amount of skill both to stay close enough to get benefit and to be efficient enough to avoid using more energy than paddling solo would consume. See also WRS, Drafting technique

Eponyms - words created because of the close association between a person or place and the word. Examples: nicotine, boycott, diesel (after Rudolph Diesel, not Vin).

• “Lipp” - Named after Alan Lipp, a Lipp is a unit of measurement (aka a “Lipp Unit”) used for downwinding in which 1 Lipp = a 30 second ride/run/wave surf without paddling. One Lipp is considered outstanding and even 1/2 a Lipp is pretty good. 2 Lipps = 1 PHAT Lipp (aka 1 Tiptoe), the holy grail of downwind paddling..^{7) 8)}
• “Patling” is paddling with your legs out of the cockpit, feet in the water. Named after “Pat” who paddled 13 miles with his feet out across Lake Mille Lacs in Minnesota on a windy day.⁹⁾
• “Wilson” A Wilson is completing 10 Miller's runs in one day. Named after South African paddler Wayne 'Wild Dog' Wilson.

“feather” of your kayak paddle refers to the angle your blades are offset from one another. Feathering your blades may be helpful in paddling upwind - reducing the wind effect on the recovery side blade. When one blade is in the water, the one in the air (if feathered) slices through the wind rather than catching or having to push against it. Oscar Chalupsky (somewhat controversially) in recent years has recommended surfskiers adopt zero feather to simplify bracing and because feathering is not needed when paddling downwind. There is a fair amount of argument about 0 feather, but it has gained some adherents, including Boyan Zlatarev in Tarifa.¹⁰⁾

also known as wind fetch or fetch length is the length of water over which a given wind has blown without obstruction. A longer fetch along with stronger winds contributes to larger wave size. Some refer to “fetch width” which can contribute to waves coming from more directions although a number of geographical and weather factors can also contribute to multiple wave directions without necessarily having a large fetch width.

A Frother is someone who is fully amped or excited about something. Term comes from WA Australian surfers.

Reivers Dustin's adopted homeland. He uses his dual citizenship to compete for the Ducky¹¹⁾ in the Think International Challenge race series.

“Cool”, great, fantastic, etc. - from South Africa

Swedish for “Cock-a-doodle-do Surf Maneuvers” or daybreak downwinding/surfing.

South African English slang meaning “cool”, “sweet”, or “very excellent”. Derived from Afrikaans/Dutch where it means something more like “tasty” or “luscious”.

A typical or average Australian male. Ocker is also used as an adjective meaning characteristically Australian (also occa, okker) (Can be used to describe someone uncouth, etc., but we're sticking with the more positive definition here, mate, because the Aussie surfskiers we have met are a lekker bunch.)¹²⁾

South African term for “person”, “guy”, “bloke” - male or female

Term from surfing meaning a nosedive. Strictly speaking in surfing it refers to a nosedive into the wave you are on, which is rare with a surfski unless you are on steep waves such as shore break. Having a surfski nose submerge more commonly involves burying your bow into the base or back of the wave in front of you when you are downwinding. The degree that the nose gets buried can often be moderated by leaning your torso backward which will usually reduce how far your bow gets buried thereby reducing your speed loss and diminishing how long it takes for your bow to pop up on top of the water again. Extreme nosedives on steep waves can lead to “pitch poling” where the rear end flips over the front. This usually occurs only in the very steep waves found in shore break, boomers, or very big seas and lends itself to boat and boater injury.

Waves that bounce off steep/abrupt shorelines or barriers in the water and rebound causing waves traveling at a different angle than the prevailing waves. Rebound typically increases turbulence. Read more about Rebound on the Wave Basics page.

The path between two points on a surface that allows a constant bearing. On a curved surface like the earth it is not the shortest path, but it allows the simplest navigation. On a two dimensional surface it is also the shortest path. Wikipedia: “Over the Earth's surface at low latitudes or over short distances it can be used for plotting the course of a vehicle, aircraft or ship. Over longer distances and/or at higher latitudes the great circle route is significantly shorter than the rhumb line between the same two points.”

Term from surfing meaning “excitement”, “euphoria”, “thrill”, “exhilaration”, “delight”, etc. Also used as in “I'm stoked” meaning I'm “excited”, “euphoric”, “thrilled”, “ecstatic”, “exhilarated”, “pleased”, “delighted”, …

A tidal bore, or simply “bore”, happens when the leading edge of an incoming tide forms a wave (or series of waves) of water that travels up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay's current. Well known tidal bores around the world.

“Time on Water” as in, much of the way to get better in water sports is spending more TOW. Or with surfskis most of us can benefit from more “TIB” = time in the bucket.

“outblowing” - the Dutch cure for the winter blues which is basically spending time in the wind.

The Dutch practice of jogging or walking in the wind, especially in the winter, for the purpose of feeling invigorated while relieving stress and boosting one's general health. Combine this with the positive effects of being on or near water and downwinding would seem like a double benefit for paddlers in colder climes like Bellingham, WA.

repeatedly missing waves and sliding back down their backsides is called “wallowing”

Wallowing may be due to any or all of these:

• waves that are just going too fast - e.g. trying to catch swell when you should be catching slower moving wind waves first to get your speed up
• too much water in the foot/seat area (does your surfski drain as quickly as it should?)
• fatigue - take a break
• bad timing - usually accelerating too late “If you were waiting for the opportune moment, that was it.” Jack Sparrow - Pirates of the Caribbean

From labman.phys.utk.edu (Univ. of Tennessee)

“Water waves are surface waves, a mixture of longitudinal and transverse waves. Surface waves in oceanography are deformations of the sea surface. The deformations propagate with the wave speed, while the water molecules remain at the same positions on average. Energy, however, moves towards the shore (with the wave). Most ocean waves are produced by wind, and the energy from the wind offshore is carried by the waves towards the shore.”

Wave Basics

Effect on Steering

Wind Directions

“Wash Riding Scum” - derogatory racing term for paddlers who draft and either never take turns pulling from the front, or draft continually until race end then sprint to beat the boat(s) that carried them on their backs for the entire race. Attitudes about wash riding without turns in the lead can vary depending on local race tradition and the experience of the paddlers involved. Drafting is usually considered just fine and a part of racing skill in most locales although there are exceptions. And those who are learning or trying to improve by keeping in a slipstream that they can barely hang on to will typically be cut some slack (good racers generally have methods for dropping weak drafters if they wish). Others who hang back solely to try to sprint to wins are sometimes not considered so favorably - hence “WRS”. When dealing with this tactic, many consider such WRSers fair game for tactics such as scraping off at turns and obstacles.

South African English slang, “yebo” (pronounced “yeah-boh”) is an informal term that means “yes” or “I agree”. It's often used as an expressive form of affirmation, and can be used as a double positive, such as “Yebo yes!”

From urbandictionary.com: “A word used to show excitement, originally by surfers but now used by non-surfers….”