NOV 18, 22 .. MORE ABOUT SURFING IN NAZARÉ, PORTUGAL

I have to giggle to myself just thinking about all of this High Tech stuff that seems to have engulfed me. For instance, among MANY other things he has schooled me in, Michael down in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, taught me how to “drag and drop” things from the internet onto one’s desktop. Once I get something onto my desktop, then I can put it to use.

So I looked up a saying that I wanted to use to start this post and Voila !! I found it along with the below visual portrait of the saying.

” And how on this good earth does this apply to this post Captain ? “

None of us can go back to yesterday. I could go back to yesterday’s post and add some additional information BUT NO ONE is going to go back to see-if-I’ve-added anything ! 

So instead of adding some additional information to yesterday’s post, I am doing it here today.

Just in case (I know, and I fully understand that very few people look at dotnet each and every day) you did not see yesterday’s post, the below link will take you to it ..

https://babakaps.net/?p=48569

And, for this post to make one whit of sense, you really need to’ve read yesterday’s post.

Otherwise you won’t know who Frank 99501 is and why we are looking at surfing photographs (shown again below) taken at Nazaré, Portugal.

In Franks long text to me yesterday, Frank included a link to You Tube. I was able to bring up, and view, the You Tube link on my smart phone, but I could not successfully copy it and insert it into yesterday’s post. I tried and it just would not take you to the video Frank sent me. 

So ? I went to You Tube on my own and was able (I think, we’ve tested the two below links) to bring up some You Tube Videos. Just be patient and allow the advertising to run its course. Then you’ll see some surfing !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJc4Ir78KdE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74pnrYPozcU

See ? IF I’d just gone back and added the above links to yesterday’s post no one would go back to check it out and they’d be lost forever.

IF by chance the above links won’t work for you, then just go to You Tube, enter the words : “surfing in Nazare Portugal” and this will bring up many videos of the surfing scene in Nazaré. 

– – – – – – – –

In a text to him this morning, I asked Frank IF he himself was a former surfer. Patti and I were absolutely fascinated with his below text. Since the two of us were so intrigued with his text, maybe, just maybe, one of you will also find it interesting. Talk about High Tech surfing chat !

Yes, I got my first surfboard when I was 10 years old and I surfed nearly daily until I was 24 years old. Then I moved to Alaska and took a break from surfing until 2012, when I was 63 years old and took a long vacation in Costa Rica.

I hadn’t forgotten in Costa Rica how to surf, but my back problems prevented me from getting up past my knees. I had fusion surgery in 2017 and 2020 to stabilize my back, and I have been trying again every winter since 2019. Now my knees have made it impossible to even kneel. I plan to resume trying to surf in April 2023 once my left knee has been fixed. It’s tough to have a 22 year old mind trapped in a 74 year old body.

I have no interest at this time in riding any waves bigger than 4 feet. I enjoy watching the crazies ride giant waves, but even in my younger years I didn’t like anything bigger than about 10-feet. Big waves are too scary and I have never been enough of an athlete to enjoy dangerously large waves. 

On big waves all I did was race to stay in green water ahead of the curl. 

Even so, I got bounced around enough times that I mainly rode such waves because the other surfers in the lineup (mostly my high-school classmates who were not all “buddies”) would have razzed me if I wimped out. Being older now has released me from the requirement to do someting fool hardy to avoid ridicule – that proves that there is at least a little good in everything.

Back in the day, I rode a custom-made 9 ft 10 inch Hansen surfboard designed for 6-10 foot waves. Later I switched to an 8 ft 2 inch “hot-dogger” surfboard as the trend toward shorter, more maneuverable boards began. “Hot dogging” was developed by really good surfers for surfing contests, to show off on small waves. I never had the athleticism for that, but the short, quick-turning boards still allowed me to play better with little waves.

Surfers now ride tiny 5 ft 6 inch or 6 ft surfboards that are so maneuverable that the board turns if you just look over your shoulder. They require balance, nerve reaction times, and long toes to grip the board – all attributes I didn’t and don’t have. I don’t even enjoy watching people hot-dog and shred waves – I like to watch the classic form still used on medium big waves.

Big waves are serious stuff though : no one plays with them. If you’re paddling, you take off at the peak, take the drop, make a big bottom turn, and climb up the surface of the green water just ahead of the curl until the slope you are riding on has a 45-50 degree angle from flat water. You point a little bit downhill and use gravity and trim to increase your speed to match the rate of collapse of the curl. If you get going too fast and get ahead of the curl, you adjust your weight toward the tail and turn up the face a little bit to slow down and let the curl catch up with you. You then point downhill and move your weight forward again, to pick up speed until you match the speed of the curl. If the wave is breaking with a tube, the ultimate thrill is to tuck back into the tube until you are completely hidden behind the waterfall. Then you race to get out of the tube before it collapses.

On waves the size of Nazaré, Maverick’s (California), Jaws (Hawaii), Log Cabins (also Hawaii) and a few other places around the world the rules change again. A jet-ski tows you until you are moving slightly faster than the deep-water wave, then you race down the mountain as it encounters the shallow bottom and begins to break. The goal is to flee the maelstrom developing right behind and above you before it tries to kill you. There’s no hot-dogging at Nazaré.

Waves in the open ocean travel at about 30mph. The little 3 or 5-foot swell you see on a boat in the open ocean is only about 1 / 10 of the actual size of the wave. When the deep water wave hits a reef or shallow spot, 2 things happen. (1) the whole wave is suddenly thrown up higher because the bottom suddenly got higher (gravity compresses the height of the wave, though, to 40-50% of its open ocean size) and (2) the bottom of the wave drags on the bottom of the ocean, which slows it down. The bottom of the wave may now be moving only 25mph, while the top is still barreling along at 30mph. That changes the shape of the wave, instead of the perhaps 10 degree slope of the swell in the open ocean, it quickly climbs to vertical. Gravity takes over again, the wave cannot stand past vertical, so the top collapses. Since the top is moving faster than the bottom, the wave appears to “throw” the curl forward. This leaves a hollow space between the body of the wave and the collapsing “curl” of the wave. That is what we call a “tube” (or if the wave is big enough, we call it a “barrel”). A wave that produces a tube is called “hollow”. A giant wave that produces a tube is called “deadly”.

Now you know everything you ever wanted to know about my surfing background, and much, much more! There are many other nuances I could describe, but these are the basics.

– – – – – – – –

Like I wrote above, Patti and I were absolutely fascinated with Frank’s text this morning. And since the two of us were so intrigued with his text, maybe, just maybe, one of you will also find it interesting. 

Will there be more surfing yet to come ? Does The Shadow Know ? We certainly don’t know.

Smiling .. Cap and Patti

• ← NOV 17, 22 .. HOW ABOUT SOME SURFING IN PORTUGAL ?
• NOV 19, 22 .. FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH →