Skimboarders at the Wedge Newport Beach

[SEA]

What a great day for skim boarding , these guys are definintley having FUN !!!

[Weasels wake]

Just small squatty Alaia surfboards, these guys are destined to become very hot surfers if they aren't already.
It's great to see an atypical vid of the Wedge for a change, great find, good music.

[PonoBill]

Wow. Amazing stuff. I like the idea of full suits--reduces the sand enema problem.

[Supmmm]

My head hurts watching that vid

[supthecreek]

So cool to watch them run off the beach into a 1 foot wave and rocket across the beach into an overhead crusher... super talented... kick flips at mach speed like it is nothing

[Admin]

these guys are destined to become very hot surfers if they aren't already.

Agreed. With a good deal of practice they might someday become hot surfers...and if they are persistent, keep training and developing their skills, then possibly with time and age they could be adequate SUPers.

[PonoBill]

A lot of age. they're moving around much too much to SUP surf with magnificent and majestic style like I do. You have to learn to stand still in one place, keep your knees straight, bend at the waist as if you were trying to fart, and then do very slow and carefully considered turns. These guys are a long way from that.

[Admin]

A lot of age. they're moving around much too much to SUP surf with magnificent and majestic style like I do. You have to learn to stand still in one place, keep your knees straight, bend at the waist as if you were trying to fart, and then do very slow and carefully considered turns. These guys are a long way from that.

Well put.

Commonly overheard in a pack of _____

Longboarders:  That was far out
Shortboarders: That was rad
Skimmers:  That was dope
SUPers: That was him

[SUP Leave]

From ages 18 to 25 I was really into Skimboarding. It is a pretty exciting sport, and I still contend that a skimboard is one of the best wave tools available. The rails are scary sharp, i.e. if you dropped one on your foot, it will cut it. So that motion of dropping a board while running full speed and getting it on plane makes the learning curve extra steep. I have dropped it on my foot plenty of times, and kicked it with my shin more than that.

The process of learning to plane out on one of these boards is hard. It weeds out the wheat from the chaff (or chafed) very quickly. That rail shape, and flat bottom combined with the pumpkin-seed shape of the board allows for the entire thing to function as a fin so extremely tight turns can be made once a wave is reached.

This sport cannot be done well by anyone that weights over 200#, I weighed about 205# when I was into it which limited me to certain conditions: waves that were at least knee-high and breaking onto dry sand. It is truly a rush to catch a wave after planing out to it, and then re-directing that energy into the wave and back to the beach. The ability to spin, Ollie, shuv-it these boards, or rail over into a turn is really fun.

Obviously, as a beginner you end up falling on to dry sand a lot, the injuries from this can be pretty bad. One of my buddies, broke his arm the day before his college baseball team took a tour of Europe. He was a pitcher, he went on tour but only got to be a pinch runner.

I have kept one of my skimboards, they are a lot of fun to use behind a boat. Because they are so flat and smooth you can get pulled behind almost any watercraft and the pressure on your joints is minimal, no fins or fat rails to drag a long. You can spin, or cut, or ride backwards lots of fun stuff.

We used to have a beach here in WA that set up perfectly all summer long on SW swells. It was protected from N wind, and we had about 4 years of really fun times. It was my crew's little secret. A storm blew it out. Since then the best skimming beaches I have been to were in Cabo, then Big Beach in Maui, and Kaanapali point gets really good sometimes.

[UKRiverSurfers]

Pure class!

[Bulky]

Could watch that all day.  From the shore, I might add.  Pretty amazing skill as well as the ability to spot a pretty cool ride in that freakish break.

The guy around 10:50--had to watch that a few times as I still can't believe he made it out of there standing.