How to fall off a board safely?

[outcast]

Who falls??

laugh of the morning comes from the Pono Bill...

"....then see what's going to happen next....probably won't be good"

THAT is the voice of experience.

[oldfartsuperdad]

during the paddle out, at some point you will stare a wave in the face that is about to break on your head and too big to ride over.....seems obvious, but it takes a dive to the side into the face to avoid being hammered....not a good idea to try and dive forward over the front of the board, this is a good way to get your nose and teeth rearranged as the board levers back into you.  After the dive get prepared for a session of underwater surfing as the board will likely be on the wave dragging you....relax, take a deep breath, use your paddle to guide you and hope your ratty old leash holds one more time as the board finally pops off the wave.  Reel it in, get back on and repeat until tired....ride the foam back in and crack open a cold beer as consolation.

[blackeye]

I think for beginners or anyone in new conditions is to just bail. Bail as far away from the board as possible. Bail in style for bonus points.

I took a buddy out for a flatish water paddle. He doesn't like cold. He tried to stay on the board despite losing it. Cracked rib.

Now for style: I was just standing on my board, dead calm, watching my kids catch up. For some reason I have to start jogging backwards to stay upright. Jog in place as the board shoots out front at an accelerating rate. Ran out of runway.

[TallDude]

Away from the board, not head first, into the deepest water.

[supthecreek]

Pono's was a good read and accurate 

As I get older and my body can't take the hits like it use to, so I have been building survival skills to extend my surf life.

In all bails.... relax and enjoy it
tightening up leads to the injury you felt

I bail sooner than I used to, so I have more control over the situation
My feet tell me where my board goes
I try to always direct the board where I want it to go.
The act of keeping my feet on the board as I go down, controls my decent.

I have many goals as I bail
Protect myself and those around me
Protect my board
Protect my paddle

Sometime, shit just goes bad... with luck, you survive.

I don't take stupid chances and I don't let the wave swat me while I am near my board if I can help it.

Here are some pics to ponder...

[supthecreek]

.

[FRP]

Thanks for all of the useful advice and the photos from Creek are fantastic to help understand where and where not to come off a board. Great Qoute from Turtle. "When the wave brakes there.....don't be there....." . This really helps and found a recent photo from Tasmania comp that helps to illustrate.

Cheers


Bob

[SUP Leave]

When the waves break here don't be there, or you gonna get drilled. - Turtle

LOL!  I've always loved that one.

When we get south swells here, there can be somewhat notoriously long waits between sets. When the swell has long period and size, when the sets do come, they can be monsters, often close outs. I can't tell you how many times that line from Turtle has gone through my head on a south swell day, it happened just this morning and of course, there's Turtle, playing like a movie clip in my weird brain. 

People paddle out and not seeing any sets, sit on the inside to pick off the waist high background waves. A lot of these peeps have no clue why the rest of us are sitting outside another 100 yards. When a set comes, these bowling pins are lined up in exactly the wrong spot. On the plus side, they often get cleaned out on multiple wave sets so if you take wave 3 or 4, chances are you'll have wide open real estate. But we could use Turtle on the beach giving advice 

Having just come back from Maui with that nice run of south swells I can attest to this. Where we were the bigger waves would close out. If you caught one it would be a drop and look for the exit, or eject (I guess you could ride the wash and look for a section, but it never worked out for me). The medium size waves would give nice long walls. The problem of course is sitting inside to catch the medium waves then getting clipped by 5 waves when you are caught not paying attention. After a few days I figured out a rythm and only got clipped about once per session. My patience just would not allow me to sit outside for too long.

My biggest problem with falling, is I just can't resist the fast inside section. You see it coming, you know it is breaking in 12" of water, but it is just so fast and hollow you got to check it out. The trick is to be ready to shoot off the back of the board into a back flop, or dive headfirst through the wave a la STC. I learned the hard way when I first started SUS, I was tucked up near the nose of my board going right, cruising down the shorebreak section with a big smile on my face and got tossed like in the picture by FRP, except landed on my back on a gravel beach and my board caught me right where my jaw met my neck. Could have been devastating, but just ended up sore and bruised for a month. Since then I have always made sure that my eject button sent me out to sea, never toward the beach or board.

[PonoBill]

Great when it works and you dive hard enough. On the outer reef waves, with a lot more juice for the same size wave, a half-hearted dive or just flopping off backward will put you over the falls. The worst part of going over the falls is not necessarily the first trip, it's the second one--it just takes all the hope and optimism right out of you. Kanaha mushburgers don't usually do that so it's easy to get in the bad habit of just leaning back into the face to bail. Worst I've ever been worked was a head high wave at Noriega's--went home and ordered two impact vests, the closest I've come to drowning other than a trapped leash was dredging head high surf at Lahina Breakwall. Pinned to the bottom. I finally pulled my knees under me, got my feet on the reef and thrust hard upward--and found myself standing in waist deep water with tourists getting pushed into reform at the surf schools fifty feet away. Waves breaking top to bottom always demand respect.

[nalu-sup]

I thought that I would revive an old thread with a cautionary tale about how to get badly hurt when bailing off the board. This happened during a SUP surf trip a couple of months ago. After a great ride on a well overhead wave, it was time to deal with the closeout. Since it was a large beach break with no channels, I had been kicking out over the top on the bigger waves in order to save a challenging paddle back out from the inside. On this particular wave, a friend was just inside of where I was planning to kick out, so if I missed it, my board and I would be pitched on top of him from a good height. I decided to just do a cutback towards shore away from him, and as soon as the board was aimed safely away, I shot the board well ahead of me and bailed off the back at about a 45 degree angle; deep enough of an angle to get me under the turbulence coming from behind, but not so deep as to hit the bottom. Unfortunately it was shallower than I expected, maybe five feet deep. My body angle was perfect for me not to hit the bottom, but as I was slicing along underwater the blade of my paddle hit the sand stopping it cold, while my face slammed into the handle with substantial speed. I have watched dozens of videos of top pros using this technique in closeout beach breaks, and at that moment, I thought that I was nailing the safest exit which had worked fine when needed over the past few days. The handle caught me right in the eye. It opened a laceration that extended along the bone under the eye all the way from my nose to the outside of the cheek. While I was still underwater, I thought that I had exploded my eye, but in fact the design of the orbit (eye socket) saved the eye itself. I had a "blowout fracture" where the thin bones that form the inner eye socket shatter out into the sinuses in a way that releases some of the pressure off the eye itself. I was stitched up on the outside by a local doc, had a CT Scan when I got home that confirmed the need for surgical repair of the orbit since the bone fragments and part of the tissue from inside the eye socket were trapped down in the in the sinuses by the sharp edges of the fracture lines. I now have a nice new titanium and plastic support piece sitting along the bottom of the eye socket where the bones were too shattered to repair. Side affects at this point are double vision when I look up,and some strange sensation that run all the way down to my upper teeth, but otherwise things are healing okay. Today was the first day back on the water six weeks later.
Bottom line; I still think that this is a reasonable way to bail out of an overhead closeout when it is too big to attempt to ride out the explosion behind you, and there is no channel to escape to. The lesson I am taking away is that it is critical to be aware of and control the paddle when underwater. I was holding it in just one hand and using the other hand to slow my penetration underwater; again, something that I have seen done by top pros in many videos.
I feel incredibly lucky to still have my eye, and hope that this saves others from a very nasty experience.

[supthecreek]

Geeeze Nalu... that sucks!
I hope you enjoy a full recovery of vision and comfort.

Great point about the paddle.... not only do we have a bigger board, but a paddle as well.

I do remember one good poke in the cheek bone by the handle... Don't remember the circumstances... but I got lucky. Heal well Nalu!

[WhatsSUP]

Damn Nalu-Surf!!!  Glad to hear your in full recover mode and back in the saddle....that must've been scary as heck! 

I have a HORRIBLE habit of jumping off in swallow water all the time!  I usually have time to do a quick sounding check with my paddle to gauge the depth in order to prepare for the amount of water I'm dealing with....but boy o boy have I been lucky the last couple of years!

 

[robcasey]

Fall flat (ideally backwards) like a pancake. I'm 6-4 and 230lbs, and don't touch the bottom in 2-3' of water using this. 

[PonoBill]

I've got two lightly blackened eyes from my recent board to the face. The cheekbone swelling is gone but it must have drained to under my eyes. Racoon. That was just a classic fuckup. I decided a little too late that the big closeout happening on both sides of me made this not the wave I was looking for. Should have just rode it out, but I tried to abort my drop and the lip got me. Rolled me and the board across the top of the wave--totally not a big deal and a good outcome, except my board hit me. I was guarding my face with my arm so it didn't get my eyes or nose, but it rang my bell hitting my cheekbone.