How DOES a baby dolphin kick a dork's butt on a surfboard?

 

Precisely how does a baby dolphin kick a dork's butt on a surfboard?

 Don Bradley 1-21-26

 

Baby dolphin in wave face after delivering an ass kicking to yours truly.

 

 You would be thinking it jumps up from the water and delivers a smack right to the backside of the hapless dork on his ride. Not so. They were far too sneaky for any obvious move like that.

 First, a surfboard has fins. One big one called a skeg and two to four outrider much smaller ones to give "bite" in the water. The skeg acts as both steerage and keel, giving the board movement through the water in any given direction. Without the skeg, you have slip and slide and you won't be on your feet very long. The skeg - it's shape, length, depth, and location is EVERYTHING. If you look at the pics of our boards laid out drying in the sun, you will see all manner of skeg lengths. The longer curved ones allow for nose riding and stability when you can lock into a wave wall, which is both rising at speed and pushing, with power. You steer with the balance of your body through your feet, onto the board.

The shorter the skeg, the slippier the tail and allows for more travel, up and down the wave face. Sunboard, mine, was medium length - it allowed some movement up and down the wave face including island pull outs, while allowing, given the frame of the wave, to hang 5.

Island Pullout. Quitting a wave by turning up and over the face, back to where you came. The dignified way of ending a ride.

 

Hang Ten baby. Skeg and outrider fins on Sunboard visible.

Matt's board with red skeg, was great for nose riding. Matt foreground.

 

Hanging 5 or 10 is obtained by locking a good track groove along one or the other side of the board into the wave face and then while this lock is engaged, walking out of balance to the nose of the board and sticking the toes of your feet over the edge. I must have hang'd five countless times. Hang ten...tough to do. Very tough. Right board, right wave, right angle to get that one. Because all your weight is now on the nose and the whole board is out of balance in the extreme. I have plenty  of pics of me going feet first into the washing machine, board shoved up my backside, going in with me, to dance in the blender of doom with glass and sometimes shoved into the depths where the sand is sometimes...anywhere. You never knew. Each wipe out was different and tailor made for your total and extreme embarrassment, if that kind of thing bothered your ego. The best surfers have no ego to embarrass. You only hope the time in that twisty, turney blender wouldn't be too very long. Or getting hit in the head by another surfboards edge or skeg (happened to me twice, ouch) or catching a board with a rider into your leg, hairline fracture (once), or some kook slamming into your head from behind because he hasn't learned to control his board yet (once) or or or.

What the baby dolphins did was, was to ride super secret alongside you and slap your skeg underneath, unseen. That's how they did it. And while you were gulping down salt water underneath, you saw them sliding up alongside you having a giggle. Yeah, dolphins laugh, even under water. You can hear it.

All in good fun, though.

That...that is how it was done.

 

Beaky visits in answer to a prayer. August 2013

Came and sat right next to me. Stayed there for hours, left when we left.

 

Double Dad buggles WAY outside.