LEARNING THE FUN AND EASY WAY TO SURF AND KITESURF
Yesterday I missed most of the good wind. But I got the dregs in the evening and had a bit of fun trying a new hybrid strapless surfboard. JJ got it on film just before the wind died completely and I ended up sinking as the sun set over the sea. Another beautiful evening on the beach.
rider: Stuart Barnes
camera: JJ Barker
Along the Garden Route in South Africa we are blessed with an abundance of beautiful beaches, lakes, rivers and lagoons. The water temperatures are generally warm to moderate throughout the year, making them ideal for open water swimming.
I have done a fair bit of kitesurf teaching and a few downwind sessions across Swartvlei lake near Sedgefield. It has quite a few shallow water sand banks around the edges and some really deep sections in the midst. It’s a vast and beautiful dark water lake that flows into a nearby lagoon and is fed by a few rivers. As a result it is moderately tidal with slightly lower salinity than the sea.
For some time I had been thinking about swimming a route across the lake and recently I got around to it. I arranged a pick up from one side and set off from the other. The first few hundred metres involved a bit of wading as it was simply too shallow to swim. The water felt a little colder than usual but OK to start with. As I got going I was hit with mild ice-cream headaches and had to keep lifting my head. “This is going to be painful,” I thought to myself! Fortunately the headaches were minor and subsided quickly as I adjusted to the water and warmed up while swimming in my wetsuit.
Swimming across a lake offers a great sense of freedom. I had not been swimming that much since the last Summer so it took a while to get a comfortable stroke and rhythm going. Regular surfing means that my swim fitness is reasonable as the paddling technique is very similar and not much kicking is required for distance swimming. I find that it is best to breathe every third stroke to alternate the head movements when swimming longer distances. This helps to balance the body and maintaining direction. The longer time afforded to exhalation is also calming and good for a nice gliding stroke.
Although I had heard from a kayaker friend that this route was 3km, I was not quite convinced of the distance and suspected that it might be less. The last time I had done much distance of continuous swimming was probably the Midmar Mile in my school days. I found it quite difficult to estimate the time that it would take so I decided to radically overestimate it and prepare to swim for about 2 hours. Psychologically I find that it is always better to exaggerate things like this. I do this on distance walking and hiking too. I keeps one prepared and delays any destructive distractions like thinking “am I nearly there yet?” This allows you to focus more on the breath and stroke and enjoying gliding in the present moment.
I ended up finishing in about 50 minutes, feeling quite refreshed but a little cold after leaving the water. I could comfortably have gone on for another hour or so. Looking at the route on a map it does appear to be roughly 3km.
Through the experience I learnt a couple of things that will be helpful in future:
1. Swim with the sun behind you if at all possible. I started in the afternoon and swam into the setting sun. The glare on the water was sometimes quite intense when looking at the destination. A morning start or swimming the other way would have been a better idea.
2. Picking a good, high landmark is really important. Swimming puts your head and body much lower in the water than surfing, kitesurfing and most other surface water sports. Having crossed this route before with kites and paddling on surf boards during lessons, I did not know how tricky it would be to quickly and accurately spot the destination when swimming. As a result I went a bit off course at one point and had to pause for long moments with head raised to confirm the route.
It was an enjoyable swim and it feels good to have completed it. I am keen to do more open water swimming and would like to try the Island Lake and Knysna Lagoon some time soon. This kind of swimming is great for all round confidence and fitness and improves comfort and relaxation during surfing and kitesurfing. There will always be times when conditions get a bit tricky, a leash snaps while surfing or a kite goes down and won’t relaunch. Swimming confidence make these events simple equipment failures rather than nerve wracking or scary disasters. Occasional equipment issues are just another opportunity to enjoy swimming.
If anyone is keen to join or meet for a fun training or social swim, do get in touch by email.
Here’s a new’ish painting inspired by Shaun Payne in Indo, his father’s awesome surf coaching and the nice people at the beach resort.
It is oil on canvas with wild garlic and rosemary olive oil with marker pen and is small to medium size.
Thank You
After hitting a peak fitness level and taking some time off to rest I’m now back into my regular training again.
I took about two weeks break from all my sea sports and even from swimming.
I just did light gym and stretching.
The last couple of days I did a mix of training: swimming, surf paddling, running, cycling with some short and light kitesurfing and surfing sessions.
This felt good – mostly taking it at about 10 – 50% and relaxing into a moderate endurance groove.
Yesterday I stepped up the endurance a bit as an experiment. I did lots of little sessions with lots of resting and eating between. The total training time probably worked out to about 6 hours but most of this was little more than walking exertion. It felt good. But by the end of the day I really felt nicely tired and needed to eat quite a lot.
I slept really well in the night.
This morning I feel a fair bit of that lactic acid fatigue. After training most days for two years it takes quite a lot to get this feeling so it feels like an achievement. I quite like this kind of mild pain as I feel that I have earned it and that I am improving. After a few slow days I’ll be able to take it further and this feels inspiring.
Enjoy the African Summer 🙂
I’ve taken a few weeks break from kiting. I took some time to surf full time around JBay in South Africa. There is something magical about this area. This history, the people, the culture, the vibe. I love it. I did score some dream sessions and had a couple of magic dolphin rainy sunrise dawny experiences with a good friend from my local break.
I got some really good new surf gear after riding really old knackered stuff for some years and this felt pretty good too. Then I over did things and surfed myself out a bit. After this I took two weeks off and didn’t surf at all. I just chilled out, played some music, did a little painting and some light gym and talked a hell of a lot of crap. I had lost a bit of weight following the overtraining and the crash following it. So I made sure that I got enough to eat and I’ve mostly got the weight back to what it was before. Now I feel pretty good again.
A couple of days ago I went for a walk with my mother and her dog near my parents home. There was a light breeze blowing and I had a new super cheap one line kite from a little toy shop to try. It was fun but proved really tricky. One line kiting is a real art. It’s like a zen thing. It reminds me of my childhood flying kites on beach holidays with cousins and friends. The last time I flew a one line kite was with a friend in Finland quite a few years back. He’s a bit older than me and has a kind of real Finnish man thing about him – extreme but strong and calm. I was just getting into kitesurfing and found his zen meditation approach to kite flying really refreshing compared to a lot of the power crazy jumpy kids and typical blokes that usually seem to be attracted to the sport.
Rock on Ilka. Maybe we fly a kite somewhere again some time soon’ish.
Have fun
This is a painting I made in high school, way back – must have been about 15 or so years ago. It is acrylic on calico stretched over cardboard and is quite small. This painting is in the Alexander Shafinsky Collection, a London based Russian collection.
Since I like making pictures like this and I need money (being a starving artist) I’ve decided to start taking commissions. If you would like a surf and/ or other related painting, big or small, mural or miniature, seascape, sea sport thing, etc, feel free to get in touch. I’m always happy to talk about art and sport and love making pictures.
Thank You
I’ve mentioned my recurring rib injury before. It bothered me a lot last year. This was my first year since childhood of surfing daily again. I never had this issue as a kid. I think it had a lot to do with my body aging badly due to being very inactive for many years.
Now it’s fine. I take some quite heavy wipeouts both surfing and kitesurfing and it feels fine so far (of course there are other things that hurt but hopefully I’ll figure out how to deal with these things over time). I noticed while talking to quite a few friends that quite a few of them are suffering from the same thing – both surfers and kitesurfers. Ages range from 20’s to 40’s. When I talked to a GP a while ago he said there was not much that could be done and that it would recover naturally. I think that this is pretty much true but I do believe there are some things that can be done. I’ve tried them and they worked for me.
I think that it’s irrelevant whether it is broken or not as it cannot really be be immobilised anyway. But the pain can be quite severe and will likely do this job for you if you’re not stupid enough to take pain killers.
Anyway, this is the cure that worked for me:
1. Rest
2. Chill out and have fun doing something that is not painful. Maybe bowling or darts or ping pong or drinking tea could be good. This will help you forget about it which is absolutely crucial.
after the pain has subsided a bit…
3. Stretch. Long stretches up towards the sky are good. Torso rotations are also excellent. General yoga is great. (I’ll post more about stretches soon)
4. Swim. Swimming fixes everything. All strokes are good but freestyle is particularly good. Try doing long slow strokes, stretching forwards as much as possible and gliding a lot. Bodysurfing is also excellent. I’ve written more about swimming before here.
I’ll post some more of my thoughts on prevention soon.
If you have a rib injury, I hope this helps you get back out there soon.
Thank you
 
Today I had a really nice long chilled kiting session with a friend. It was flat water for a change. Usually I’m too lazy to venture into flat water as the beach is closer to where I live most of the time. When I got there I was so lazy I didn’t even feel like going out. But the conditions with the tide and wind were close to perfect – nice and gusty, on and off with quite a fair bit of chop. Unfortunately there was no current and only one or two poles and hidden hazards. Last time I kited there I hit a submerged bridge at low speed as the wind was dying and I was negotiating a route in near a messed up fence with lots of trash around it. Today I managed to avoid this dark corner and it looked cleaner. Or maybe that’s because I was looking more at the sky and the horizon.
My main goal for the session was to relax. But I also experimented with going as slow and as fast as possible. Slow is definitely harder. I usually use a green kite but my kite buddy had a blue one in the same style that was partially rigged already. He wasn’t using it so I just went with that. I try not to look much at the kite or even think about it but the blue against the sky has a very different feel. And it’s definitely the fastest I’ve ever been so it has to be the colour. I only really need one kite so I’m thinking of getting a few different colours in the same style. Or maybe I’ll just paint mine when if I get sick of it.
Here’s a very interesting history of Flexifoil. There are some great classic old pics and crazy experiments and stories. It’s quite amazing how humble fun things like this evolved into massive sports like paragliding and kitesurfing.
SOGA - Yoga for Surfers 
