Snowboarding year round as a job has been a pretty surreal and rewarding experience. The amount of powder days are well beyond count at this stage and I never get tired of watching my riders stomp a new trick or getting themselves on a podium. But a few years ago I wanted to switch from snow to surf and did not find it so easy…
My home resorts are Lake Louise in Canada which runs from early November to early May and Turoa in New Zealand which runs from early July to late October, both being some of the longer snow seasons in their respective parts of the world. One of the perks outside of all the ride time and free lift passes is the large quantity of time in-between seasons. I usually stack up between 8 and 10 weeks of holiday a year (take that real world jobs!). With all that freedom the question is what to do with your time and I decided that the obvious option would be surfing. My logic was after snowboarding, surfing would probably be pretty easy but unfortunately that was not the case for me. After making lots of mistakes along the way TTR came to the rescue and sorted out my surfing, hopefully by reading this you can step up your surfing game way faster then I did.
Getting Wet
You would think that growing up on Canada’s east coast would mean there are at least some surf options but being born in Newfoundland didn’t really open up many opportunities to spend time in the ocean. The province is hit pretty hard by the Labrador current which comes down from the Artic and brings a large quantity of ice bergs along the way, you can probably guess what that does to water temperatures. As a child if I got in the ocean once in the summer that was a good effort so up until 22 I had never even seen a surf board in person.
I was in Australia in 2008 after finishing up a snow season when I finally got to give surfing a crack for the first time. I spent a few weeks living in a camper and was the proud owner of my first surf board. I was however still pretty young, dumb and broke which were definitely hindering my learning curve. I told myself that coming off 5 back to back winters that my snowboarding was pretty ace and that would transfer over to surfing well. It was sort of true when I could actually stand up on a wave but getting to that point was pretty rare. Without any guidance or lessons I spent the majority of my time flopping around in front of waves or feeling like a here in whitewash, it was a constant battle against the ocean.
Getting Slightly Better
One of the challenges at this stage was getting the time in the water to work on my surfing, the next trips happened in 2013 and 2014 when I spent a month each time in Nicaragua between the winters. 2013 was pretty ace as I was travelling with a girl who was super motivated to improve on her surfing, lots of time in the water was helping but we had rented a spot on an isolated beach and had access to only one beach that was not super consistent. 2014 I learned from the previous years mistakes and stayed in a variety of different spots and tried some different beaches, the downfall of my surfing this time was the company I kept. A large group of us from Banff went on the trip together and putting us in a country where beer is cheap was a bad call as we like to have a good time. I was also the only one who had surfed before so that made it a bit hard to get everyone out of the bar and into the waves.
By now I probably had about a month and a half of surfing in and I was still pretty shit.
Getting outside help
It finally dawned on me that I had been working for a company that runs surf tours all across the world and they probably had the tools to pull me out of the surfing rut. I signed on to a month in Bali in 2016 with a sick crew under the guidance of Chris and Max who made a perfect balance of trip leaders, Chris was super analytical and technical, pulling out lots of video analysis to real give me an advantage as a visual learner while Max was the master of stoke passing on the excitement for 5:30am surfs. Add in the fact that everyone on the trip was more concerned with surfing than sinking Bin Tang’s and we had a great vide. Having the guys know where, when and how to score the best waves was the ticket to overcoming the biggest challenge I had face, actually being in the right spot to ride faces. Two coaching sessions a day for 4 weeks across 3 islands was a total game changer. I was able to quickly shake off the cobwebs since not being in the water for almost 2 years and rode the biggest and longest waves of my surf life. I left the trip with a new passion for surfing and a better understanding of the ocean and how not to get destroyed by it. Hands down doing a trip like this is well worth the investment.
Moving Forward
Since Bali I have done two more surf trips with my partner Abi, who also came to Bali as pretty much a non surfer and left with the stoke for the sport. We did Some time on the gold coast/Byron Bay in Australia where she grew up and thanks to the insight from the boys in Bali were actually able to surf semi effectively despite the flat spell we were experiencing. It was so refreshing to be back in the water after only 5 months away and knowing that we could read charts, the tide and judge a lineup to know where to be and when to score some unbroken waves.
The next trip was May/June in the Philippines, we had our usual time off and decided to go see what it was like on the island of Siargao where TTR is running a trip in August this year. Again we were able to roll into the line up with confidence and get ourselves some waves. We had enough confidence in our skills to assess different breaks and decide what we wanted to surf depending on the tides. We didn’t bring our boards but hooked up with the crew at fat lips surf shop for rentals, having access to their entire fleet was pretty fun as we could try out all kinds of different boards but in the end we spent the most time on boards very similar to the ones we bought in Bali with the help of Chris. We did notice that without the full crew it was easier to lose your motivation on a longer trip with just two people, the $3 liters of rum probably didn’t help either.
What’s Next?
While doing the trip with TTR in Bali gave us a lot of skills to improve our surfing on our own trips its nothing compared to being back with some expert coaches and a likeminded crew. We’re heading to Sri Lanka in October and couldn’t be more excited, warm weather, cheap curries and some mellow breaks, sounds like the ideal way to break up the harsh reality of snowboarding all day every day.
Learn From My Mistakes:
- Take a lesson when starting out, its totally worth the money.
- Don’t expect other board riding skills to transfer, half the battle is knowing the ocean and where to be in the break.
- Stick with longer boards when learning, rushing to get on a short board is going to make your life harder.
- Have someone that knows where to go and how to read the charts and waves
- Choose you friends wisely, get a crew that motivated for early mornings and less drinking.
- Keep it consistent, get into the water often to keep your skills sharp.
- Give the crew at TTR a buzz, it’s the easiest way to take your surfing to the next level.
-Andrew