Why Care About Pro Surfing/Watch the JBay Open

Whether it's in between sets or on a ride back to the train station, oftentimes I end up explaining the history and nature of professional surfing to my students. It's definitely an earful. I also have it marked out on my "surf prescription" sheets to "watch pro contests". I want to write a little more here about why I think watching pro contests can be good for your surfing. 

Surfing is a young professional sport and its structure, like its playing field — the ocean — is nowhere near as stable as that of other professional sports. The first surf contest was held in Manly Beach, Australia in 1964, and was held by what was then known as the International Surfing Association (ISA). The ISA is still around, but it is not surfing's governing professional body any longer. You can read a great history of professional surfing on their site: https://www.isasurf.org/isa-info/history-of-the-isa/. The ISA does hold competitions and crowns world champions but these are not the recognized world champs of what is now known as the governing body of professional surfing, the World Surf League (WSL, @WSL), formerly the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals). The goal of the ISA is to "develop surfing globally", including surf school accreditation (shaky at best) and lobbying to get surfing into the olympics (not worthwhile if you ask me). Thus they have their hands in a number of pies that the WSL does not concern itself with.

The WSL currently consists of an elite mens tour (known as the 'CT or 'Championship Tour'), an elite womens tour (also called the 'CT), a big wave world tour, and a qualification series for the mens and womens tours (both known as the 'QS or 'World Qualifying Series'). The WSL is funded by a gazillionaire named Dirk Ziff and has strong corporate backing from Samsung (read: when you watch pro surfing events live on the internet you will see a lot of Samsung commercials). Formerly the big named surf lifestyle brands — Quik, Billabong, Ripcurl, et. al. — were asked to pony up to provide the infrastructure and prize money for all events. This kind of backing has not gone away entirely, e.g., the Hurley Pro at Lower Trestles, Ripcurl Pro at Bells, Quik Pro at Snapper Rocks. The difference now, however, is that the tour is not 100% reliant on endemic brands. 

I could go on and on about the crazy history of pro surfing and could even explore the sustainability (or lack thereof) of the way it is structured, but for now I am going to leave it at that and say a bit more about watching pro events. First of all, the gateway to watching all pro surfing events is through the WSL's website and social media outlets. This is a blatant plug for following @WSL and getting the app for your phone, signing up to receive alerts via text and email, and playing both the WSL (tab is on their site) and Surfer Magazine's versions of Fantasy Surfing. You can even join our club (same on both sites): search "clubs" and find 'Conatussurfclub' and ask to join (password is: morewavesmorejoy)!!! 

There are about 12 contests a year. The men start the year with three contests Australia, travel to various other global locales, and end it in Hawaii, with the always (well mostly always) exciting Pipe Masters held at the world famous Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu. The women's year resembles the mens but is not identical to it — they start the year with the same three events  in Australia, and follow it up by going to Rio and Fiji with the guys, but by July the tours depart from one another, with the women also finishing up in Hawaii except at the famed righthand point break of Honolua Bay in Maui. (The inequality in between the mens and womens tours in prize money, attention, and overall infrastructure is something that is currently being debated and addressed on a variety of fronts — it is necessarily connected to the ways in which men and women are differently marketed and understood as participating in surfing culture). 

Each event, whether for men or for women, has a "waiting period" of around two weeks. The events are held at places during a time of year when there is normally a good chance for great waves. Part of the fun, drama, and pedagogy of following pro surfing is to pay attention to the event forecasts. Will they get swell? Will the swell coincide with clean winds? Are the tides cooperating? You can check the forecasts for those surf spots the same way that you can check them for our spots here in NY/NJ — they're all readily available on Swell.info, Surfline.com, and Magicseaweed.com (and if you don't have these apps on your phone you need to get them now). 

Let's use the current event, the JBay Open (July 7-19), as a prime example of why it's beneficial to watch world tour events. First of all, JBay is one of the best righthand point breaks on the planet. I have not surfed there myself but I have consumed so much iconic surf media from there that I can practically see the long offshore lines, aloe plants, Occy's filthy backhand hacks throwing sheets of spray to the horizon, and Curren's fluid speed arcs etched on the backs of my eyelids. The forecast for this two week window is super dicey. Two whole weeks and not a ton of significant swell forecasted. But the show must go on. Commissioner Kieren Perrow (former world tour competitor and Pipe Masters champ) must assess the forecasts and conditions each morning and "make the call" of whether to run it or not. He meets with the surfer reps and they make a decision, which is broadcast on the Dawn Patrol morning show by a motley crew of "professional" surf broadcasters: Ross Williams, Martin Potter, Peter Mel, Strider Wasilewski, Todd Kline, Roseanne Hodge, Ronny Blakey, and Joe Turpel. For side entertainment you can always read the Twittersphere commentary on the commentary. Watching the morning show is a good way to catch up on action you missed and to hear what these surf nerds have to say about it. Or you can just go to the 'heat analyzer', an awesome feature that rolled out a few years ago that allows you to watch any previously surfed heat unfold as if it were live, or, if you get impatient (like me), you can just skip to the highest scoring rides by clicking on them in the timeline. 

KP (Kieren Perrow) and the crew have managed to eke out the first three rounds of competition in marginal (by JBay standards) surf. The first day was kind of onshore and junky. The second day was the best day by far, with clean 4 foot waves (still not as big as we like to see it) and offshore winds, and the third day was lully with bad winds in the morning heats and cleaner winds but dying swell for the last throes of Round 3. I caught a little of the Rd 1 action, almost all of the Rd 2 action, and just watched the highlights of Rd 3 on heat analyzer. JBay is 6 hours ahead of us, so you either have to not go to bed to watch the whole thing or you can do what I do and go to bed early and wake up reasonably at 3 or 4a to catch the action. If you're in tune with the swell forecast you'll know which days to write off and sleep in. 

There's something to be learned in every condition that an event is held. For us jaded veterans, we don't really like to watch the junky stuff unless we really have to, but sometimes just seeing how hard those conditions can be for an elite level surfer is heartening. It's not like the glossy surf videos where the conditions and edits are always perfect and the pros never fall. And besides the forecasting this is the bottom line of why watching pro surfing is so good for your own surfing: it makes surfing more human. You see the rhythms of a place and the rhythms of surfers rise and fall. You get to watch Kelly Slater dig rail. You might even find yourself asking yourself why one fellow looks so inferior to the other fellows. Well, why? Try to break it down. What are the in rhythm surfers doing right? Why are they getting scores in the excellent range? Being able to answer these questions will not only up your surf IQ but it will be secretly working on your own wave judgment and surfing habitus. 

The heat of the contest (for me) so far was the Rd 2 heat of Joel Parkinson (Aus) v. Ricardo Christie (NZ). Besides the fact that the waves were on fire, these two went toe to toe with some brilliant, smooth, on-rail power surfing, which is the stuff I can relate to and therefore really like to watch. Parko ended up winning the affair 18.84 to Christie's 18.13. Had Ricardo been in any other heat, his total would have smoked the whole field. As it is, he got a dreaded 25th place. Parkinson, however, did not survive the junk surf of the next day, and was defeated by a hot rookie goofy footed Brazilian named Wiggolly Dantas. Parko, by all means one of, if not the most, stylish surfers on the tour, has drawn a 13th place. So there you go, in rhythm one heat, and off the next. 

Another great thing about a spot like Jbay is that you can see a marked difference between when there are sets coming and when there are not. This also helps wave judging abilities. You can see the lines bending in around the back and even hear the whistles and hoots from the fans and competitors watching live. Which wave will the surfer with priority take? Will he risk giving the first wave away or will he wait for the second or even third wave of the set? These are the kinds of things that you are doing every time you go surfing. How many times do you paddle for the first wave, miss it, and turn around to see two beauties about to come and land on your head? Watching the pros play the patience game is a great way to up yours. On the flip side, what do good surfers do in slow heats when the sets do not come that often? How do they find those gems that just line up just enough? A good example of this are Mick Fanning and Gabriel Medina's Rd 3 clashes against CJ Hobgood and Matt Wilkinson respectively. Mick and Gabriel not only found the sneaky "growers" but they also used their super powers — lightning fast whips for Mick and lofty impossible airs for Gabe — to maximize what little the wave had to offer. As many journalists and commentators mentioned, Mick and Gabe made the waves look better than they were. And that's a big part of why they're world champs. 

Mick Fanning in Rd 3 at the 2015 JBay Open. Photo taken from Surfline.com. 

Lastly, and I've touched on this already, but you get to see the surfers actually paddle for waves and stand up on them. Granted their pop-ups are faster than 99% of the surfing population, but nevertheless, you get to see this crucial part of wave riding that, aside from going surfing, you just do not have that much access to. You will see them paddle for waves that they miss as well, and also waves that are too heavy to be makable (and ooh la la you get to see a wipeout!). 

If I haven't convinced you yet, you'll just have to see for yourself. There are 5 more rounds to run at the JBay Open (Rds, 4, 5, Qtrs, Semis, Final), which will probably take almost two days of competition. There could be a bump there tomorrow, but the waves look to be be biggest on the very last day of the waiting period. It's high anxiety to wait that long. What will KP do? Who will end up the master of all conditions at Jbay? Who will have a shocker? And most of all what will you learn or notice that you had never noticed before tuning into this event? (Also important to be critical — how do you think these events could be organized better? There's still a lot of talk about this and pro surfing definitely does not seem to be 'settled' just yet.) 

A Gift from the Sea

"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh 

After having recently moved apartments and shuffled my things I came across this book, A Gift from the Sea: An Answer to the Conflicts in Our Lives (1955) by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a former New Jersey native and the wife of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh (and an aviator in her own right). Lindbergh, while talking about how to find the right kind of shell or channelled welk, succinctly nails what the sea teaches. In this way waiting for a shell is no different than waiting for a wave—both are gifts from the sea. 

I have struggled with patience over the years. In fact when I first started teaching surfing about 15 years ago I would often not show up or cancel lessons if the waves were too good. I just was not ready to focus on someone else and to have the patience to aid them in their ocean journey. But then I grew and learned more about teaching and learning and waiting and watching. I started slowing down to speed up.

In surf lessons I spend most of my time focusing on my students and I ride the occasional wave to demonstrate proper technique and as a means to get back to the student to help him or her navigate the white wash on the their way back outside (past the breaking waves). I catch 3-5 waves per 2 hour lesson. When I go surfing on my own greed and impatience often get the better of me and I try to catch 3-5 waves per 15-20 minute periods. But I have noticed that when I just slow down and apply the waiting game I have honed in lessons, along with some strategic paddling, I often find myself in the right spot(s) for a few fun waves. And it only takes one of these to make a whole session, day, or even week or month or year or life.  

Patience takes many forms. Sometimes it's all about just taking the time to be silly and do things like ride waves on your bum! Here I am riding in to meet a student during a lesson at Long Beach. Photo: Julien Roubinet 

I often teach that maximum lineup mobility and paddling power ensure that one is in position to receive aquatic gifts more than others who do nothing but wait, and this is still true, but is incomplete. Such mobility must be coupled with the ability to wait for the ocean to give you a gift and then to recognize it as such when it comes. This essentially amounts to the never-perfected skill of wave judgment, which is terribly hard when you're starting out, and remains not entirely master-able even when you've achieved expert status. 

But what experts have learned, and why they catch such great waves, is that the more patient you can be with yourself and with the ocean, the faster you're actually going to improve, the more joy you're going to get out of every session. This is because this patience is, like Lindbergh suggests, 'open'—it is a letting oneself be open to both one's powerlessness and to one's hidden powers as these reveal themselves in the process of practicing surfing. 

Frothing, Forecasts, and Fool's Gold

It's been a record June for Conatus Surf Club. I want to start this post off by thanking everyone that has taken lessons with me and also give a huge shout out to those of you who have recommended your friends. 

The waves have been consistently in the 1-3 foot range. A few days have been better than others, but I've seen a lot of the same crumbly small waves that are great for beginning, and well, pretty terrible for people who prefer bigger, cleaner, juicier surf. I cannot lie, I love the bigger, cleaner, juicier stuff just as much as anyone else who has been surfing for 20+ years, and unless it's over waist high or I have a lesson I won't drive out to the beach. Instead I'll swim laps at the pool and work on my dissertation. Regardless, I'm in the water 5-7 days a week, and usually 1-4 of those days I end up driving to the beach. But how do I decide? 

I rely a lot upon websites like Surfline and Magic Seaweed and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association's (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoy number 44025 and their marine forecast link. And so do a lot of other surfers, which is why when the websites are calling for waves above 3 feet and coding them with 'green' and the words 'fair' or 'good' it creates a hype, especially here in New York where all information travels like wildfire. The truth of the matter is, the forecasts are not entirely reliable, nor are the realtime cameras. It's often either a lot smaller and junkier than predicted, which is a total bummer; or shockingly way better, either the conditions or the wave size or both, which is a total score. The only way to truly find out, is to go to the beach.

Of course driving to the beach every day in New York is (almost) totally unreasonable unless you move out there. What I want to suggest is that if you only have that one or two days to go, go anyway. Don't get stuck in the trap of only going when it reads 2-3+ and fair. Go those days too if you have time, of course, but don't become a 'surf snob' before you know how to surf. And let's be real, if you're just starting now, you need all the practice you can get. If you only wait for the days when the forecast reads 'good' you'll end up surfing like 10 times a year! 

So my friends, get your froth on and while you're at it start documenting your sessions. I love to take 'fool's gold' pics every session and text them to my friends. Sometimes they are real gold, and sometimes they're not. I mostly only take pictures of empty waves. If it's too crowded I usually hunt for a beach or peak where there are plenty of waves going unridden. On the small days the key to fool's gold pics to wait for the best sets and snap it at the right time--the wave is it at its most mind-surfable--just throwing over, the line of the shoulder well defined, no drops of water out of place. On the larger, more crowded days, the key is finding those waves that no one else is on. I call these #emptyinsidenuggets. These are medium sized waves that usually scoot past everyone because they're all out the back waiting for the most obvious and coveted set waves. I mean, don't get me wrong, the set of the day photographs well too--it's just more likely that someone will be on it, which diminishes the allure of an empty lineup. Doing this might also help you read waves. Where are the best peaks? Predominantly rights or lefts? Both? If it's crowded are there peaks or spots no one is surfing/waves no one is seeing? Use your camera like you would your surfboard. 

The point of all this is really to say that even if you cannot be on vacation all of the time, you can find moments of surf trip perfection right in your own backyard. Like anything good--anything worth striving for--this takes time and work, but the rewards are tremendous, worth more than gold.

Long Beach, New York. This day was pretty crowded but here an #emptyinsidenugget left slides by unridden. 

An A-frame peak in New Jersey. Just a 1.5 hour drive from New York. No one out. 

Rockaway. Was it good? Or is this fools gold? One thing is for sure, no one is out. 

The Dropped Back Knee -- Hallmark of Style

Today I want to talk about the importance of dropping your back knee when riding low and turning. Surfing is a very fluid and balanced sport but it is not symmetrical. We all have a stance preference -- either goofy or regular -- and therefore we all surf with only one of our feet forward. This is our front or guiding foot and it helps us go where we want to go but the truth of the matter is that your back foot is your workhorse and is what keeps you stable and directs your energy on the wave. A common error of beginning and intermediate (and some advanced) surfers is to lean too far forward/hard on the front foot (I myself am guilty at times and have worked hard to balance this out). It's natural to want to do this -- surfing is exciting and you want to get to the end of that wave or race towards that next section -- but like most things surf, the better thing to do is not that which is most intuitive (another example is taking off in the most critical part of the wave). I want to stress that it is not altogether bad to be a front footed surfer, but that all self professed "front footed surfers" still know how to drop their back knee and put weight on their back edge (I say edge, because this is true for both finless and finned surf craft) when crouching to get barreled or when sinking into a delicious (frontside or backside) roundhouse cutback. Dropping the back knee allows you to square your shoulders to the wave and opens up your range of movement and vision. And most of all it hides your rear end from the rest of our eyes! When the back knee bows out or when you bend forward at your waist you are exhibiting "poo stance", which beyond being aesthetically unpleasing is highly nonfunctional for everything except hanging on (which is also why it's knowns as "danger stance" or "cockroach stance"). Below I've posted more images sourced from the web of men and women who demonstrate perfect low back knee technique. As I always say at the end of every coaching session or lesson, it's really important to look at examples of great surfers and to try to visualize yourself applying their techniques. 

Carissa Moore is famous for her low back knee -- it's what gives her turns so much power and spray. 

Joel Parkinson is another master of the low back knee. You can see here in this backside tube that his knee is practically on his surfboard. You can see how this allows him to easily grab his rail to stabilize himself and look towards the exit of the tube. 

Another great example by Bianca Buitendag, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite women surfers to watch on the World Tour. 

And Tom Curren, the guy whose style everyone ought to take a cue from. 

What Does 'Conatus' Mean Again? Lesson 1

Salutations fellow seekers of aquatic joy! This week's post is about the word 'conatus'. I know that I have a blurb about this in the 'about' page, but I think it is worthwhile to give some more concrete historical and philosophical background. I will not be able to cover the entire history of the word or its philosophical use in this one post. I will just start with a few basics.

First of all, as mentioned, I take the term from the philosophy of Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. His family was of Portuguese Jewish decent. They were, however, "maranos", that is "crypto Jews" who professed to be Catholic during the Inquisition. Because of his radical ideas about the nature of God Spinoza himself was excommunicated from his Orthodox Jewish community and the Catholic Church (strangely enough the most extant version of the Ethics have recently been found in a Vatican vault). Knowing his ideas were potentially life threatening, Spinoza never accepted a job in an academic institution. Instead he preferred to work as a lens grinder in a optics shop. Thus he was deeply concerned with convex and concave surfaces, reflections, and helping people to see more clearly.

Spinoza wrote exclusively in Latin, the academic lingua franca of the Middle Ages and early modernity (Enlightenment). His three major works are the Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics), Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (Treatise of the Emendation of the Intellect), and the Tractatus Politicus (Political Treatise). The word 'conatus' features in all of these texts, but most prominently in the Ethics, which is a metaphysical treatise that is written in geometric order, using definitions, axioms, postulates, demonstrations, correlatives, and scholia. The Ethics is divided into five parts: I. De Deo (Of God); II. De Natura et Origine Mentis (Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind); III. De Origine et Natura Affectuum (Of the Origin and the Nature of the Affects); IV. De Servitute Humana Seu De Affectuum Viribus (Of Human Bondage, or The Powers of the Affects); V. De Potentia Intellectus Seu De Libertate Humana (Of the Power of the Intellect, or On Human Freedom). 

The verb 'conatur' and its corresponding noun 'conatus' is used heavily in the third section (Of the Origin and the Nature of the Affects). I will list some of the passages in Latin below and will provide their corresponding translations. I will not be able to fully explain how these postulates fold upon previous axioms and definitions and I will in most cases also leave out some of the very wordy demonstrations and correlatives. Again, this is just a brief journey to the tip of the iceberg. 

III.P7: Conatus, quo unaquaeque res in suo esse perserverare conatur, nihil est praeter ipsius rei actualem essentiam. 

The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing. 

Here 'conatus' is translated as 'striving' and 'conatur' as 'strives' or 'to strive'. This postulates that whatever it is within (and possibly without) us constitutes essentially what we are. What we are is something that "strives to persevere in its being". What Spinoza means by 'being' has to do with his definition of God and time, finitude and infinitude. It is important that he believes that being exists sub specie aeternitatis, under a type of eternity (definitely one of my favorite mantras to repeat when surfing). Our essence is both finite and infinite (finite from an infinite source) and we are constantly striving for the infinitude that essentially constitutes what we are.

III.P9.Schol.: Hic conatus cum ad mentem solam refertur, voluntas appellatur; sed cum ad mentem et corpus simul refertur, vocatur appetitus, qui proinde nihil aliud est, quam ipsa hominis essentia, ex cuius natura ea, quae ipsius conservationi inserviunt, necessario sequuntur; atque adeo homo ad eadem agendum determinatus est. Deinde inter appetitum et cupiditatem nulla est differentia, nisi quod cupiditas ad homines plerumque referatur, quatenus sui appetitus sunt conscii; et propterea sic definiri potest, nempe cupiditas est appetitus cum eiusdem conscientia. Constat itaque ex his omnibus, nihil nos conari, velle, appetere neque cupere, quia id bonum esse iudicamus; sed contra nos propterea aliquid bonum esse iudicare, quia id conamur, volumus, appetimus atque cupimus. 

When this striving is related only to the mind, it is called will; but when it is related to the mind and body together, it is called appetite. This appetite, therefore, is nothing but the very essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote his preservation. And so man is determined to do those things. Between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of their appetite. So desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite. From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, desire it.  

All that is good in life, is good because we strive for it, not because it is worth striving for. The striving alone, the 'conatus', is what constitutes its goodness. That status of goodness is still under question. It turns out to be defined as an 'increase in joy', but you will have to wait until the next post for that to be explained. For now, I think I have at least given you some context as to the word 'conatus' and how it is roughly used in Spinoza's philosophy.

You will notice that I have bolded where it is used in the Latin passages. It is written differently in different places depending on whether it is used as a verb or a noun, and in Latin nouns and verbs take different endings depending on their status in the sentence. I want to point out here that learning surfing is very similar, and in fact quite related to, learning any other kind of grammar. I have written a paper about that that I will certainly share down the road. And I hope that from this (not so) little blog post you can start to see why I would want to associate my method of teaching surfing with the word 'conatus'.

To sum up, I like the concept of striving as constitutive both of what it is that we are and of our search for the good. I believe that this striving takes an almost infinite amount of forms (or modes in Spinoza's language), and the mode that I most relate to is that one that takes place in the ocean, somewhere between finitude and infinitude. 

New addition to the Conatus quiver, a Malwitz 9'0", sub specie aeternitatis. Photo: Julien Roubinet @julesrbt 

More Summer Surfing Reading

Happy first week of June everyone! I am trying to implement some new business ethics over here at Conatus Surf Club, starting with providing more content on this here blog. I have made a vow to myself to post once a week throughout the summer season. Today's post is a book review of Jaimal Yogis' fantastic book Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea (Wisdom Publications, 2009). 

This past December I received this book as a Christmas present from a family member. I have to admit that I have seen this book at surf shops and bookstores and simply wrote it off as another hokey surf book. But when it was gifted to me I promised to give it a read. I put down my preconceptions -- ugh, smug pseudo spiritualism and surfing -- long enough to get entirely drawn into Yogis' lucid prose. I ended up finishing the book in one sitting. 

While on point for any surfer, Yogis' tale will really sink in for anyone who has learned to surf at any age past puberty. Yogis succinctly describes the frustration, hang ups, misconceptions, missteps of a determined would-be surfer. He shows how at the end of the day the sheer determination to figure out how to slide on moving cylinders of water is enough to get one further along his/her path and how the pursuit is admirable in and of itself. 

I personally like this book because Yogis and I have a similar pedigree: we're both from central California, we were both punk ass kids, and we both have degrees in religious studies (the religious studies degree is of course a most uncanny link -- I mean there were only 8 religious studies majors in my graduating class at UC Berkeley -- Yogis went to UCSC). Having grown up in Monterey Bay, I can attest that Yogis' description of the kind of localism found there is on the money. It is hard to explain the California brand of surf localism in plausible terms, but Yogis deftly manages it. Thank goodness it isn't that bad on the east coast! 

For me the moment that really makes the whole book worth reading comes when Yogis describes what it is like to paddle out at Ocean Beach, San Francisco. For those that have not surfed there, Ocean Beach is one of the most difficult places in the world to paddle out. Even when it's 3-4 feet it can take 15-20 minutes to get out the back. One time after duck diving what felt like 100 waves in a row I remember saying to myself, "If I pop up from this duck dive and see another whitewater I am going to cry." Yogis had an almost identical moment at OB, which he describes as follows: 

". . . The more I thought about it, the more I realized every surfer has to like paddling, at least a little. This was because extremely little of each surf session is spend on actually standing up on your surfboard on a wave -- maybe one percent -- so if you're looking to have a good time it's essential to find a way to enjoy paddling, or at least good-naturedly bear it. And in that way, I thought, surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life. The extremely good stuff -- chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes -- fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan. The rest of life is paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying (176-7)." 

Yep, Yogis really nails it here. That one must learn to enjoy paddling is a truism that underwrites and undergirds all of my principles at Conatus Surf Club. One's ability to enjoy the work of surfing amounts to one's success as a surfer. In conclusion, Saltwater Buddha is a great summer read for any surfer. And I promise, it is not (too) hokey.