:: Home :: Surfing Equipment :: Learn to Surf :: Surf History :: Surfing Australia :: Surf Holidays :: Surfing Basics :: About Us ::

Learn to Surf

It seems that we spend our lives on the hunt. Watching for the next swell, hoping the wind will clean up, living by the rhythm of the coast. And when we look back, it's full and all, but it is punctuated with these moments of blissful belonging to a perfect fluid motion. In those precious fleeting seconds, we were surfers, and all the travel, all the hours spent looking out to sea, all the friendships found on cobble and sand have all been icing on the cake.

It's possible to learn to surf anywhere that waves break on a swimable shoreline, given the right equipment and conditions. Most of our local population lies around the straight of Georgia. We often see waves on it but you rarely see surfers on it. Waves are generated by wind moving across water. The water doesn't move with the wind so much as it transfers the energy of the wind dragging across it, into a series of waves. The further distance the wind drags across the water, called fetch, the more powerful and better organized the energy becomes. The waves spread out, and fall into groups that we call sets. There are dominant waves that we call set waves and less dominate waves that we call "your wave" with a smile and a nod. The distance between waves is measured in seconds and we call that the period. We see just the very top of waves. Most of the energy goes deep into the ocean. [graphic of sine waves overlaid on ocean cross section]

When waves are generated over thousands of km, we call that groundswell and we recognize it when the period between the peaks of the waves grows to about 12 seconds or more. In BC we get very little solid groundswell in the mid to high teens [what we hope for] but occasionally we get swells periods of 20 & 22 seconds. When you go through the spin cycle in an overhead long period wave, you become fully aware of the additional power. That should be a long way off for you at this point and we'll talk about picking suitable learning conditions a little later.