Surf Launches

I stumbled into this vid of some guys in South Africa in some funky conditions, doing pretty much everything right, and still getting nailed.




So what says the peanut gallery? What'd you do different? What can you learn? About the only thing I think I saw them do "wrong" was going out in those conditions in the first place. They handled up though!

Note: I'm actually asking for y'all to criticize somebody who is not here. Please try to limit your comments to their technique and not the content of their character.

Hmmm..What would i have done differently...

Trout fishing...

couch fishing...

Those guys look like they are having a blast! They are not going out to try and get out of the break. They are playing in the surf, no gear.
Take a look at the hulls. They look more like a sea kayak than a traditional SOT.
If the dude who go out really wanted to clear the impact zone he needed to paddle like hell when he had the opening.
That last set was at least twice as big as the rest of the waves he encountered. He definitely know his shit and those kayaks handle very well in the surf. I wonder how stable they are....

Makes me want to empty my boat on a "bad" and play in the surf 

Thigh straps and a good breakfast of Wheaties and Red Bull! If there is that much whitewash, you are NOT going to paddle out through it without la ton of luck.

That's a lot of work just to get your a** handed to you.   

A great effort, love those boats.

I recognize that video.  I think it was posted up here a couple of years ago.  The event was a kayak fishing contest in Sooth Eafrica.  There was a lot more carnage, including pitch poleing and beach rolls as I recall.

I couldn't find any serious flaws in their approach or technique other than their selection of launch site.

-Spot-

 

I recognize it. too.

Gnarly conditions, with a short period and it looks like it's high tide, so there's not much room before it drops off.

Seems like just mounting up was a PITA.

I'd probably keep paddle in hand, get on board immediately (or get beaten black and blue ), square up to the waves, and paddle like hell!

Saw a picture of guy rowing through a break recently; made me think I need to build a self-bailing rowboat. This guy caught some air! He's planning on rowing from Scotland to Iceland! Website here- http://www.olypen.com/cduff/

That is pretty fantastic!
I couple of the guys I rowed with at UW did an Atlantic crossing. Pretty incredible.

I would want to be trolling the entire time 

Yeah, I remember seeing this as well.

I could be wrong on this one, but it looks like they aren't wearing PFD's.  Either they are wearing those low-profile water sport PFD's like people use for wakeboarding and jet skiing under their dry tops, or nothing.  That and a helmet are two things I would do differently, but that's from a gear perspective.

As far as technique goes, I think they really know what they're doing .  With a surf zone that long, I look at it as two distinct regions.  The big region with all the spillers is the first, and the region where all the waves are actually closing out would be the second.  Getting through the first is the easy part.  You can simply just pop right over the spillers and you don't wait to time it.  The tough part IMO is hanging right outside the interface of the two regions.  This is where the timing comes in.  The only problem is that at this point, if the spiller zone is long enough, you could find yourself very, very tired.  That's why I don't think that guy had any way of making it.  Even though we saw a lull in the breakers and were thinking, "GO, GO, GO!!", he might have been thinking, "omfg, so tired... can't paddle... fast... enough...." Plus, when you have breakers that big, there is a lot of movement of water between breaks, which makes it even harder to control yourself.  Yup, only a serious amount of conditioning for sustained sprints could prepare you for that. 

One more thing.  It would be very easy to get separated from your kayak in surf that big, which scares the crap out of me.  At first, I couldn't figure out how that guy didn't get separated from his yak when that big breaker came in and he disappeared.  I think what he must have done was decided to bail, grab the end of his yak and sort of swam through the wave.  Then got back on, pointed the other direction and surfed that one in(which was epic bawls btw ).

Those guys look like they are having a blast! They are not going out to try and get out of the break. They are playing in the surf, no gear.
Take a look at the hulls. They look more like a sea kayak than a traditional SOT.
If the dude who go out really wanted to clear the impact zone he needed to paddle like hell when he had the opening.
That last set was at least twice as big as the rest of the waves he encountered. He definitely know his shit and those kayaks handle very well in the surf. I wonder how stable they are....

Makes me want to empty my boat on a "bad" and play in the surf 

1st, I am hatin on those boats, as they are giving me a bad case of gottahavits. I checked the website and those "fishing ski's" are pretty sweet. Long enuf, deep seat (low cg), a bit of a rocker and vee on the bottom, and cavernous storage. Dass Hot!

http://www.pinnacleski.co.za/

2nd I don't know it they were just playin or not as the boats are designed to swallow all of your gear.

and 3, that last guy looked like he was digging deep for at least 3 minutes solid.   You young studly guys can play that shiz, but I'm with CBY watching Roland Martin and drinking some X's. That had me hurting just looking at it.
(That did look like fun though)

[Naaaah, notsomuch]

So what happened at the very end when he got slammed in the soup?  Was he just beat and didn't have any more? I know I was and I was not there. Or did he catch a rock or something?

If it's that fun going out, just think of the great times you'd have coming in! I love when he goes airborne.

If it's that fun going out, just think of the great times you'd have coming in! I love when he goes airborne.

Coming back in looked like it might be the easiest part... all you needed to do to get back in was to keep trying to go OUT!


Fishin-T

They could have used a helicopter.  Looks like a blast though... minus the chance of death.