- Back in the 1960s the first surfers in Australia were all professional sportsman. The wooden boards they used weighed around 40kg. You can imagine that walking up to the beach with a board that weighs that much isn’t something anyone could do!
- Nowadays, boards weigh around 5kg and some professionals even have boards that don’t weigh much more than 2kg.
- Because the boards are so light they tend to break very easily. Top surfers will take around 10 boards to a game and just work through them in one day.
My first surf
I signed up for a two-hour lesson with Go Ride A Wave and learned the basics on the beach. When I got the hang of these, I hit the water and tried it for real.
The first waves wiped me out when I tried to jump up and stand. The next few I had fun just riding them, sitting on my knees, At this point my surf teacher helped me; holding onto the nose of my board and, whenever the time was right, he would signal me to start the drill I’d learned on the beach.
Thanks to him, I stood up my board a few times and got the confidence to try it without him!
Not every attempt resulted into actually catching the wave, but I’ve stood up a few times. I must say that standing up didn’t look as cool as I hoped it would, but we can work on that next time.
Riding the few waves that I managed to catch was so much fun that I totally understand why people get into the water for hours, just for the thrill of catching that one perfect wave.
To truly understand that feeling, I will definitely need some more practice, but after this weekend in Torquay, I decided that I will definitely come back for some more lessons and surf fun.
- Go Ride a Wave offers multiple passes if you would like to come back for another lesson. Alternatively, you can just rent a board and go by yourself.
