WORDS:
SIMON HAMMOND

PHOTOS:
KEIRAN HAMMOND
WWW.RAKKER.CO.UK

Keiran Hammond
Keiran Hammond runs a Creative Agency called Rakker, based in Cornwall, and is always interested in an outdoor sports project.

Simon Hammond
Simon Hammond is his Dad. He works as an international surf and sea kayak coach. Regularly runs sea kayak surf workshops from his base in Bude, Cornwall. Author of the book Surf Kayaking: The Essential Guide and former World Surf Kayaking Champion.

Feel the force (of the Beachward Rudder)

Wouldn’t it be brilliant if you could catch a wave and then, without any effort, simply surf straight towards the shore? Unfortunately, the wave has other ideas. Unless you freakishly manage to catch it at precisely 90 degrees, you’ll likely stay in a straight line for a moment, but you’ll always end up being turned one way or the other.

But you don’t have to accept this, and you don’t even have to remember your left from your right. Let the environment give you all the clues you need. As your craft starts to swing one way or the other, you will instantly have one side of your craft facing out to sea, and the other side of your craft facing the beach.

Place a deep and positive stern rudder on your Beachward Side, push outwards, and hey presto, you will straighten up!

‘Straightening up’ is essential if you want to maintain and control your ride towards the shore. Without some intervention from the paddler, a wave will always try to turn you sideways. If it’s a green, unbroken swell, then this will lead you to falling off the back of the wave, and if it’s a white water, broken wave, you’ll end up either skimming sideways to the shore or (what everyone fears the most) catching an edge and capsizing.

Sea kayakers can have a lot of fun in the surf. Sure, a Sea Kayak isn’t as manoeuvrable as a short boat, but it’s got great hull speed, and with an accurate take-off and quick ruddering, you can enjoy and control your ride to the shore.

Hull speed
The longer the craft, the higher its hull speed. So, if you put a sea kayak next to a short boat or a surfboard, then the sea kayak will always be capable of moving at a higher speed. In the surf, this means that a sea kayak can catch a wave much earlier than a short boater or a surfboarder. Catching a green wave when it is still a shallow swell gives the sea kayaker a huge advantage over other surfers, but on a crowded beach, it’s not something that should be overdone unless you want to be the most unpopular person in the sea.

However, in the right situation, an early take-off gives you a little more time to think before you need to act. Catching a wave as a green swell is also much smoother than catching a white-water wave with all of its turbulence. In a perfect world, a slow-moving, small green swell is ideal for a sea kayaker to develop their surfing skills.

Wave choice
Waves come in all sizes, and to be honest, a lot of those sizes are scary! And if you’re scared, you won’t be thinking. If you’re not able to think, you won’t be able to develop and refine a new skill.

So don’t practice in scary surf. If the surf is only very small, you might be able to practice on green swell from the start, but most of the time the surf is too big, and you’ll be much better off practising on small white-water broken waves, which have lost some of their energy. Additional benefits of riding small white-water waves are that you aren’t wasting loads of energy trying to paddle out through large breaking waves constantly, and if you do take a swim, you won’t be far from shore; in fact, you’ll probably be in standing depth.

Accurate take-off
There are two sorts of accuracy when it comes to taking off on a wave. The first is choosing the best stage of the wave’s evolution, and the second is your take-off angle.

A wave will go through a series of stages as it approaches shallow water. First, the swell becomes distinct but with a shallow slope. Next, the slope becomes steeper, and then it becomes so steep that the wave crest starts to break; the whole wave then crashes down on itself. Finally, the entire wave becomes a tumbling mass of white-water, getting smaller and calmer as it approaches the shoreline.

Ideally, choose a surf spot where these phases run through as slowly and predictably as possible. A shallow-sloping sandy beach will often create these conditions.

Try to be accurate with your observation, positioning and selection of which of these phases you choose to catch the wave. Try to catch a wave too early in this evolution, and the wave’s slope will be too little to push you along. Leave it too late and catch a wave as it breaks, and you’ll be out of control from the start. From experience, I would recommend catching either a sloping green face that is just steep enough to catch or play safe and catch the wave after it’s broken and has turned into a smaller, uniform white-water wave.

The second element of accuracy is the angle of your kayak as the wave catches you. We all know that you’ll need to paddle hard and fast to catch a wave, but often this is done too aggressively, causing the kayak to wiggle violently as you accelerate onto the wave. It is so critical that you are as close to 90 degrees as possible when the wave takes control that this wiggling can really mess things up at the very start of your ride.

My advice would be to accelerate hard in front of the wave to build up speed; four to six hard paddle strokes should be enough, then, as you start to feel the wave lifting your stern, focus more on calming down your paddle strokes to maintain a smooth 90-degree angle to the wave as you are caught. Your last paddle stroke is critical and should be all about maintaining a straight take-off rather than accelerating. The closer you can be to 90 degrees, the more time you will have to control your ride before the wave turns you to one side or the other.

Ruddering
This is simple and so effective, but you have to be quick in deciding which side to place your paddle. Whatever craft you are paddling, the wave will turn you to one side or the other. The longer your craft, the more force the wave will apply to turning you off course, and the tighter the angles you have to play with.

So, as soon as you feel your kayak turning to the side, get that beachward rudder locked in. It’s best if this rudder is deep with the paddle blade running parallel to the kayak. Once it’s placed, be confident, hold it deep and firm and push it forcibly away from the kayak. This action will then start to turn your kayak back towards the shore, straightening it up.

Ruddering on your beachward side doesn’t immediately feel safe or natural. If you’re anxious, you will tend to favour a rudder/support on your seaward side instead, which is another reason why you really need to develop this skill in small, relaxing conditions. Keep practising placing your rudder on the beachward side of your kayak until you’re doing it without thinking.

My top tip for this rudder position is to push the paddle blade deep while simultaneously leaning your head and upper body away from it. Pretend that there is something really smelly spread on your paddle shaft and that you are moving your head and nose as far away from it as possible because it smells so bad. At the same time, make your arms as long as possible, holding the paddle blade as deep under the surface as you can. As your head and body pull away from the paddle, you will also raise your beachward knee, stopping your kayak from catching an edge.

Now you might just do this so well that you overdo it, and instead of being straight, you end up turning your kayak back in the opposite direction. Don’t panic! Just remove your rudder from the water and chop it back in on the new beachward side. You can even play with a series of these ‘chop rudders’ with your kayak, following a series of tight wiggles towards the shore.

If you let your kayak turn too much before initiating your ruddering, the best you can do is to hold a diagonal angle with your most forceful beachward rudder. Don’t see this ‘stuck rudder’ as a failure, as it’s the basis of surfing across a wave face and the foundation skill of all surf kayaking.

When the wave wins
However, the wave will always win, and at some point, you will end up at an angle across the wave that is too much for any rudder to correct. With a little experience, you will start to feel when this moment is being approached.

The trick is to accept that the wave has won and to change your plan. Get your rudder out of the water and keep your craft as flat as possible, adopt a strong, forward-leaning body position and add a low brace on your seaward side.

Don’t just collapse into the wave; instead, keep the hull of your kayak as flat as possible, allowing it to skim towards the shore, whilst you keep your upper body upright and in balance. The seaward brace should be virtually non-existent or at most very soft; it’s there for psychological reasons much more than for physical support.

Enjoy the final stage of your ride as you skim smoothly, with firm body tension towards the shore.

So that’s all there is to it. You won’t get it all correct on your first wave, so be patient and enjoy the process. Choose a location with plenty of space and, ideally, a nice, slow-breaking wave. Start with small, weak waves and progress gently. Enjoy being part of the surfing community and have a great time.