I have never really thought of myself as a potential surfer. I have trouble standing up on a paddleboard! But after spending a couple of weeks watching the beautiful surf and dozens of surfers, boogie boarders, and others frolicking in the waves off St. Clair beach in Dunedin, NZ, I knew I wanted to give it a try.
The surf school in St. Clair is delightful. It’s run by local surfers out of a van crammed with board and wetsuits, named for the Esplanade overlooking the beach. Their overall vibe was approachable and low key : while they have a fancy lesson-booking website, it turned out that the best way to track them down was to drop by the van when it was open. An open van was also a sure sign that the conditions were right for novice surfers – their whole team were also reassuringly safety-conscious. I joined a novice group lesson – myself, and two other women who had completed one or two previous lessons.
The lesson itself was surprisingly simple, as was the concept of surfing : slide down the wave on your board, then stand up. Apparently the forward motion of the board, and the fins underneath, help to make it more stable than balancing on a stationary paddle board – but on the other hand, you’re doing it in some pretty dynamic water!
After putting on a wetsuit and being assigned a giant “beginner board” that was surprisingly light, we received some initial instruction on the beach about safety and etiquette from our instructor Fin (I’ll spell it that way in honour of his claim to have be named after the fins on the bottom of the surfboard)! He then took us right out into what he called the “white water” – the area that’s about waist-deep and well inside where the big waves were breaking (and they were big! the swell was forecast to be 1.5-2m high that day).
We’d then practice turning and flopping onto our surfboards in the gap between swells, and Fin would guide our boards and launch us down the front of a wave. Our job was to first lift our upper bodies (“like a seal!”), then kneel, and then try to stand, before we either reached shore or (more likely) tipped over and fell off. Retrieve board, wade back out, repeat. The surfboard itself is attached to your ankle by a long stretchy lanyard, so it can move away from you when you fall, but doesn’t go very far.
Thanks to Fin’s guidance I got pretty good at looking for suitable waves, and the feeling of catching one – balancing while shifting weight to stay on the front of the wave. I definitely never managed to get beyond kneeling on my board, but I did keep trying. I was definitely inspired by my more talented and experienced classmate, who was actually standing up on her board and riding it in to shore. She made the impossible idea of standing up seem … possible! But mostly I was just really enjoying play in the waves and doing that on a big surfboard was super fun. It was also much less scary than I expected – even if I tumbled off my board in a wave, all I had to do was stand up on the bottom to have my head above water.
The 90 minute lesson time flew past, but I was also exhausted by the end. It turns out that guiding a large surfboard through breaking waves, flopping on it, paddling with your arms to get up to speed and then hauling yourself up onto your knees and balancing is a pretty good workout! I’m very grateful to Sam who was watching my efforts from the Esplanade, and managed to catch a short video of one of my efforts. You can even see an encouraging cheer from Fin at the end :
So while I’m not sure I’ll ever reach the level of skill required to actually stand up on a surfboard, I am sure that I’ll keep trying and practicing on the rare occasions I come across a surf beach. Maybe I’ll give paddleboarding another whirl in the meantime!
Sarah Pie is more desk jockey than surfer dude these days, but really enjoyed getting out on her bike in the beautiful NZ summer weather.