Speed lines

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Sick analysis Frog

Since I've started riding an asymmetric fish I have a much better appreciation and feel for the effortless speed line. Such a pure way to surf if the waves allow.

Well written Frog. I can picture the whole scenario.

Personally, I'm a massive fan of the high line trim. If you break surfing down to pure feel- not much comes close.

Good topic, Frog. And some sharp observations.

Going fast as fuck on a sizey wave has to be the best thing. It's what I've been trying to do all summer on my latest obsession.

Taking high lines are a thing of joy. Placing the rail up into the upper curve near the top - you'll make any section. I'm an anachronism and ride with the older style and flow of the single style boards, but it works - agree frog on the longer rail for this style (match rail lengths to wave size/shape). This way, you don't have to pump at all, just read and position. Can be complete joy with the subtle shift of the hips getting the board up there, and then mowing down distance at speed. Can be done on a 1 1/2ft wave on a log with equally good feeling, like a 6ft wave is happening in minature!

High lining seems to work well down this way.

Edit: any video of Terry Fitz shows this approach.

Great topic, I feel getting onto a single-fin or twinny where you need to use the power source of the wave helps you really find that sweet spot re high-lining.

The feeling of absolutely flying and holding your line through that top bit of the wave to then fade down to the beach once the wave backs off is incredible.

I find the tricky bit sometimes is taking off right up in that high-line pocket from the get go, I always like to drop down and bottom turn but doing that in some circumstances sees you not making it around the section. Just have to mentally remind yourself sometimes on those faster, hollower days.

Here's an image of me at North Steyne in that beautiful power source of the wave..

Great colours in that pic too Craig :)

Nice wave for the spot! I've seen the Lynch vs Blair footage, it must have it's day.

Just out of interest, when I did an advanced riding course some years ago it was taught that the middle part of the wave is the power zone. I've never intellectually come to terms with the fact the hi-line is where flight begins. I'll go with the feeling and go that bit higher.

One of my favourite waves (and a very unfashionable one - not exactly the hell barrel) is Impossibles, exactly because you can do the most incredible speed runs on good day.

At 6ft+ it's sublime pelican-like swooping with limited input.

Nice trim Craig. Eyes on the prize down the line for the goodness yet to come.

Come and visit once the sand has sorted itself out again here.

I have found that it's way easier (for me anyway) on a quad to access that top part of the wave, and I think that's why quads are faster because you drop from a higher part of the wave. Just don't like quads for the rest of the wave.

Perhaps if there was a button on the deck you could press with your toes that would jettison one of the rear quad fins, you could surf the rest of the wave as a 'thruster'

sort of

Speaking of speed lines, I just read a Matt Warsaw article about Paul Witzig's films in an old Surfers Journal (it's excellent, btw: "I've probably seen Witzig's movies a dozen times each over the years, and with every viewing my take on the early shortboard surfing lifts up an inch or two, flutters a bit, and settles down in a slightly different place than it was an hour or two before." ) Vol 20.4

Anyhoo, there's this outrageously good little Wayne Lynch speed sequence. Holy heck!

Lynch is a demi-god and he’s still underrated.

Was he the messiah? Probably not, but he personified everything that a true surfer used to strive to be, a long haired drop out druggie who lived, ate and breathed surfing. Classic style and backhand reo ahead of his time. They really were the good old days. RIP surfing.

Talking just about his surfing - the smooth flow in tune with the wave, his innovative use of different parts of the wave, his style.
We all know he was miles ahead of pretty much everyone else in his generation, but I still think he’s underrated.
I’d much prefer to watch footage of Lynch than MP.

I'd like to think this is true, but unless Wayne himself confirms it, I'm only reaching. I was 17, so 40 odd years ago, but I reckon I watched Wayne at Cathedral rock during the famous swell that hit Bells in 1981. Riding a long red single fin, taking off on the biggest beasts and hooking power turns under the lip (not speed trimming). I also think I surfed perfect Lorne at six foot later that day. Anyhoo, that's my Wayne Lynch story or perhaps it's a made up memory - I'll hang on to it and hope it's true. A surfing legend. No doubt.

Paddling into a 6ft bomb like a maniacal grom at Bells bowl, thinking the bloke on the inside was way too deep behind the section and then the next second this bloke comes around the bottom ripping up the face and cuts harder spraying me like a firehose :-)
Found out later it was Wayne Lynch.

I think there is info out there that he did surf cathedral alone that day.

The bit I find hard to believe is Lorne being 6 foot and perfect.

icandig wrote:

I'd like to think this is true, but unless Wayne himself confirms it, I'm only reaching. I was 17, so 40 odd years ago, but I reckon I watched Wayne at Cathedral rock during the famous swell that hit Bells in 1981. Riding a long red single fin, taking off on the biggest beasts and hooking power turns under the lip (not speed trimming). I also think I surfed perfect Lorne at six foot later that day. Anyhoo, that's my Wayne Lynch story or perhaps it's a made up memory - I'll hang on to it and hope it's true. A surfing legend. No doubt.

1981 Lynch swings from the rafters of giant Cathedral With the world watching Simon Anderson as he staked his credibility on the unproven thruster in huge easter Bells, a quiet few had retreated down the Road to experience the reefs at a size rarely if ever surfed before. Prominent among these was Wayne Lynch; at that time able to lay claim to being the most gifted surfer on the face of the earth, and a man with an intimate understanding of the Road’s potential.

Lynch surfed Cathedral alone during the Sunday morning at about fifteen foot. It’s hard to visualize now; a lone, bearded prophet paddling over mountainous seas, a speck on the huge faces, while bemused daytrippers looked on from the safety of their VB Commodores. In the afternoon, a few of the touring Hawaiian pros, including Larry Bertlemann, joined him. Barry Langan, who took a drive along the coast to ‘pay homage’ to the swell, came across the scene in the afternoon. “The Hawaiians were freaked,” he recalls. “It was the length of the wall, as opposed to the very peaky waves they were used to back home. It was a westerly swell, peeling beautifully, but god it was a long face. And they couldn’t get their heads around how deep Lynch was taking off – he was linking it up all the way from Supertubes.”

WL, TF, MP, these were the guys I wanted to surf like when I was a grom (not KS who was the in thing at the time.) So much more style and fluidity, and yes the speed lines and the powerful waves down south lent to the kind of surfing that I saw the Aussie legends doing. Video footage was relatively hard to get so looking at individual photos of incredible turns was the go.

In this clip at about 1min you get to see TF and WL surfing together:

Thanks Udo (and Jack Serong). I'll hold onto that one as a true memory now.

lostdoggy wrote:

The bit I find hard to believe is Lorne being 6 foot and perfect.

I might have 'gilded the lilly' a little bit there....

udo wrote:

icandig wrote:

I'd like to think this is true, but unless Wayne himself confirms it, I'm only reaching. I was 17, so 40 odd years ago, but I reckon I watched Wayne at Cathedral rock during the famous swell that hit Bells in 1981. Riding a long red single fin, taking off on the biggest beasts and hooking power turns under the lip (not speed trimming). I also think I surfed perfect Lorne at six foot later that day. Anyhoo, that's my Wayne Lynch story or perhaps it's a made up memory - I'll hang on to it and hope it's true. A surfing legend. No doubt.

1981 Lynch swings from the rafters of giant Cathedral With the world watching Simon Anderson as he staked his credibility on the unproven thruster in huge easter Bells, a quiet few had retreated down the Road to experience the reefs at a size rarely if ever surfed before. Prominent among these was Wayne Lynch; at that time able to lay claim to being the most gifted surfer on the face of the earth, and a man with an intimate understanding of the Road’s potential.

Lynch surfed Cathedral alone during the Sunday morning at about fifteen foot. It’s hard to visualize now; a lone, bearded prophet paddling over mountainous seas, a speck on the huge faces, while bemused daytrippers looked on from the safety of their VB Commodores. In the afternoon, a few of the touring Hawaiian pros, including Larry Bertlemann, joined him. Barry Langan, who took a drive along the coast to ‘pay homage’ to the swell, came across the scene in the afternoon. “The Hawaiians were freaked,” he recalls. “It was the length of the wall, as opposed to the very peaky waves they were used to back home. It was a westerly swell, peeling beautifully, but god it was a long face. And they couldn’t get their heads around how deep Lynch was taking off – he was linking it up all the way from Supertubes.”

He got around.

On the morning of Big Saturday, the other Lynch, that being Barton, 17 at the time and on his first Bells trip, dropped into a big one at Bells not knowing his namesake was already on it. A photo exists, perhaps in Michael Gordon's book 'Bells' but it's not on the web.

Tamarin Bay.