Here’s another one from Bill at Ke Nalu, all about catching those first couple of waves:

Generally you’re standing pointed out at the waves, looking for one you like and the location of the peak. Once you find one, paddle towards the peak, and when the wave is still a pretty good distance away (unless you’ve become REALLY good at turning around) start your turn. Don’t panic and rush it, get the blade in up by the nose and push yourself around with steady, powerful sweeps. When you are pointed more or less at the beach, switch sides and start paddling. The reason for the switch is that you will almost always overdo the turn, even when you think you haven’t turned enough. You don’t want to switch just as the wave starts to lift the tail.

As the tail starts to lift, move your normal surfing rear foot a good step back, and give a good paddle thrust. As you start down the wave you’ll probably need to lean back on that back leg, or even hop back more to keep the nose up. You can dig the blade in behind you on the inside of the wave (away from the shoulder) to help keep the nose up and start your turn. Unlike conventional surfing, you want to get your bottom turn done as soon as possble. Unless you are a good surfer you’ll find it hard to swing the nose around quickly.

If you don’t catch the wave immediately, don’t just give up. You can paddle a lot faster with a standup paddle boards, and a few strong strokes can get you into a wave that either hasn’t stood up enough to give you good drive, or that’s a little past the center of gravity of your board. It’s worth a try. I’d say that thirty percent of the waves I catch and ride are ones that I wouldn’t get if I didn’t chase them down with hard paddling.

If the wave crumbles on you and you’re in the whitewater, you can often ride past it by letting the nose of the board slide back more straight in to the beach, and rest the blade on the whitewater to brace yourself. Once you’ve gotten past the crumbled section you can swing back and get up on the wave.

These are big boards, they move deliberately, like a big ship. The guys that are good toss them around pretty neatly, but at first you want to make your movements subtle and smooth.

How To | Ke Nalu