Paddle Surf Quotes

So I'm biding my time, like a surfer waiting for a wave. I'm pretty good at surfing, as it happens, and I know the wave will come. When the moment is right, I'll get Demeter's attention. She'll look at my stuff, everything will click, and I'll start riding my life. Not paddling, paddling, paddling, like I am right now.

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 the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying.

It was something they'd done a thousand times before. If Jamie went surfing with a mate and paddled in first, he always took time for that final wave. And there was something so familiar in the ritual that for a moment he felt like everything was right. He felt forgiven.

Thich Nhat Hanh. a venerated Vietnamese Buddhist, speaks of a solution that is so utterly simple it seems profane. Be, body and mind, exactly where you are. That is, practice a mindfulness that makes you aware of each moment. Think to yourself, "I am breathing" when you're breathing; "I am anxious" when you're anxious; even, "I am washing the dishes" when you're washing the dishes. To be totally into this moment is the goal of mindfulness. Right now is precious and shall never pass this way again. A wave is a precious moment, amplified: a dynamic natural sculpture that shall never pass this way again. Out interaction with waves - to be fully in the moment, without relationship troubles, bills, or worries - is what frees us. Each moment that we are fully with waves is evidence of our ability to live in the here and now. There is nothing else in the universe when you're making that elegant bottom turn. Here. Now. Simple, but so elusive. A wave demands your attention. It is very difficult to be somewhere else, in your mind, when there is such a gorgeous creation of nature moving your way. Just being close to a wave brings us closer to being mindful. To surf them is the training ground for mindfulness. The ocean can seem chaotic, like the world we live in. But somehow we're forced to slice through the noise - to paddle around and through the adversities of life and get directly to the joy. This is what we need for liberation.

I knew this was the best therapy for him. Surfing at Boulders was downright dangerous, but Steve reveled in the challenge. He surfed with Wes, his best mate in the world. I sat on a rocky point with my eye glued to the camera so I wouldn’t miss a single wave. While Bindi gathered shells and played on the beach under her nanny’s watchful eye, I admired Steve with his long arms and broad shoulders, powerfully paddling onto wave after wave. Not even the Pacific Ocean with its most powerful sets could slow him down. He caught the most amazing barrels I have ever seen, and carved up the waves with such ferocity that I didn’t want the camera to miss a single moment. On the beach in Samoa, while Bindi helped her dad wax his board, I caught a glimpse of joy in eyes that had been so sad.

Surfing is a physically demanding sport and nothing can prepare you better to hit the waves than an extremely strong, flexible, and stable core. The better developed your core, the better you will be able to rotate your hips for a bottom turn/snap/cutback, handle a big wave, duckdive, and paddle out in the line-up. In almost every surfing movement, your abdominals are directly or indirectly worked. If you are a fan of pro surfing, I’m sure you have witnessed the chiselled midsection of all pro surfers.

As negotiations seemed to be grinding to a halt, we were all feeling frustrated. Steve looked around at John, Judi, and the others. He could see that everybody had gotten a bit stretched on all our various projects. He decided we needed a break. He didn’t lead us into the bush this time. Instead, Steve said a magic word. “Samoa.” “Sea snakes?” I asked. “Surfing,” he said. He planned a ten-day shoot for a surfing documentary. Steve loved surfing almost as much as he loved wildlife. The pounding his body had taken playing rugby, wrestling crocs, and doing heavy construction at the zoo had left him with problem knees and a bad shoulder. He felt his time tackling some of the biggest surf might be nearing an end. In Samoa, Steve didn’t spend just a few hours out in the waves. He would be out there twelve to fourteen hours a day. I didn’t surf, but I was awestruck at Steve’s ability to stare down the face of a wave that was as high as a building. He had endurance beyond any surfer I had ever seen. Steve had a support boat nearby, so he could swim over, get hydrated, or grab a protein bar. But that was it. He didn’t stop for lunch. He would eat breakfast, surf all day, and then eat a big dinner. I knew this was the best therapy for him. Surfing at Boulders was downright dangerous, but Steve reveled in the challenge. He surfed with Wes, his best mate in the world. I sat on a rocky point with my eye glued to the camera so I wouldn’t miss a single wave. While Bindi gathered shells and played on the beach under her nanny’s watchful eye, I admired Steve with his long arms and broad shoulders, powerfully paddling onto wave after wave. Not even the Pacific Ocean with its most powerful sets could slow him down. He caught the most amazing barrels I have ever seen, and carved up the waves with such ferocity that I didn’t want the camera to miss a single moment. On the beach in Samoa, while Bindi helped her dad wax his board, I caught a glimpse of joy in eyes that had been so sad.

I learned early on in SEAL training the value of teamwork, the need to rely on someone else to help you through the difficult tasks. For those of us who were “tadpoles” hoping to become Navy frogmen, a ten-foot rubber raft was used to teach us this vital lesson. Everywhere we went during the first phase of SEAL training we were required to carry the raft. We placed it on our heads as we ran from the barracks, across the highway, to the chow hall. We carried it in a low-slung position as we ran up and down the Coronado sand dunes. We paddled the boat endlessly from north to south along the coastline and through the pounding surf, seven men, all working together to get the rubber boat to its final destination. But we learned something else on our journey with the raft. Occasionally, one of the boat crew members was sick or injured, unable to give it 100 percent. I often found myself exhausted from the training day, or down with a cold or the flu. On those days, the other members picked up the slack. They paddled harder. They dug deeper. They gave me their rations for extra strength. And when the time came, later in training, I returned the favor. The small rubber boat made us realize that no man could make it through training alone. No SEAL could make it through combat alone and by extension you needed people in your life to help you through the difficult times.

Laird had already gotten his board out of his inventory and tossed off his robe, revealing his surf trunks below it. “Let’s paddle out. Last one to get pitted is a rotten egg.

Surfing was like a drug. He huffed at that thought and paddled harder. Almost there. Nope. Not a drug—it was like sex. You spent a lot of time working up to doing it, it was mind-blowingly awesome for a few moments, then it was over and you wanted to do it again. And again. Always good. Even if it wasn’t perfect. Still good.

She had since grown used to some of the insular codes and cryptic slang of surfers, even the grunts and roars and horrible snarls, but she still didn’t understand why, after spending hours studying the waves from shore, we often announced our intention to paddle out by saying things like, “Let’s get it over with.” She could see the reluctance—clammy wetsuit, icy water, rough, lousy surf. She just couldn’t see the grim compunction. Once,

Life is like surfing. I have to be brave and full of courage to be the best I can be on this adventure of life. It takes courage to paddle out to backline. Sometimes we have to fight for life. An illness may strike. Like me with chronic fatigue syndrome. We have to fight back. We cannot give up. Surfing is an adventure, each time I go out into the ocean. Let us be brave and full of courage and achieve great things.

Slow Adventure In Chile, adventure is what happens on the way to having an adventure. Pedal the chunky gravel of the Carretera Austral and end up sharing ferries with SUVs and oxcarts, taking a wrong turn and finding heaven in an anonymous orchard. Plans may be made, but try being just as open to experience. Set out to find sweeping desert solitude, climb craggy Andean summits or wander the sacred forests of poet Pablo Neruda. Surf, paddle or sail your way up or down the seemingly endless coast.

I got it today looking out there. It's not just about the wave itself, it's about the process of being available. I watched how you paddle, the wave comes, you miss it or someone else gets it, so you paddle back again. There's a lot of waiting, for the thrill of catching a wave. It's also about being outside, you're just a speck. The kind of humility of the experience of being in nature.

Another taboo in surfing is the shame of paddling in from a surf without catching a wave in; it's almost like a sin, or a sign of defeat. But maybe it didn't always have to be that way. I appreciated his openness, as if all I needed was permission to listen to myself and do what my body needed that day. I felt that maybe the point of it all, of anything, is to experience a deeper sense of connection, in whatever form it comes.

Peter announced that Paul do Mar was not a surf spot, that it was just a picturesque, kamikaze close-out. I disagreed. I found it a mesmerizing wave. But absurdly dangerous. Besides the raw power, there was the shoreline. The rocks were round, mostly, but the shorebreak borderland you had to cross to enter the water was simply too wide, particularly when the surf was big. Even after timing it carefully, waiting for a lull, letting a shorebreak wave expend itself, then running recklessly with your board over wet boulders, you sometimes didn’t make it to water deep enough to paddle on before the next wave slammed you, banging you backward across the rocks—board, body, dignity all battered, sometimes severely. This was not a normal ocean problem. It felt like bad arithmetic—the time and distance did not, for some Madeira-only reason, compute. I had never seen a surf spot with an entrance so daunting. And the exit, getting back onto dry land, could be even worse. The wave we were there to ride was at most only thirty yards offshore, but I sometimes resorted to a very long paddle, around a seawall at the far east end of the village, rather than face that shorebreak.

Not long after, Adam left for vacation in Hanalei Bay, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Hanalei Bay is a surfing mecca that maintains an eclectic vibe. The celebrities and CEOs who visit try to tread lightly. One morning, two start-up employees who worked at tech companies back on the mainland were paddling out to sea when they spotted Adam in the water nearby. He was flat on his board, holding on to a pair of ropes attached to the back of two surfboards, from which two local guides were pulling him out to the waves. It was the surfing equivalent of a cross-country skier holding on to someone else’s pole—or the start-up equivalent, his fellow surfers noted, of propelling yourself with a $100 billion venture capital cannon. Back in the Hamptons, Adam kept a motorized surfboard. A few days later, Adam was

. He couldn’t keep the paddle ruddering, and the raft immediately turned sideways, sending sailors away from the wave and digging the front tube low into the water. The crashing whitewater lifted the other side and threw it over the top, capsizing them. Everyone on the lead raft saw the second raft go over. Winkleman cranked on the paddle, turning his raft sideways on the now-benign wave. He yelled, “Paddle forward!” The men were dazed, watching for bobbing heads, but snapped into action, digging their paddles in and pulling themselves from the wave that was giving them a free ride into the beach. The second raft was still upside down and was surfing in on the now-broken wave. Heads popped up behind the raft. Men who’d been thrown and were still in the impact zone of oncoming waves were thrashing their arms, struggling to stay on the surface. The next wave crashed over them, driving them deeper into the sharp reef. The capsized raft tumbled toward the first and Tarkington yelled, “Grab it!” Two men jumped onto the bottom and tried to turn it right-side up while it was surfing in. Winkleman steered, and the exhausted men paddled back toward the breakers. More heads were popping up, some bleeding from fresh wounds. They stood in the shallows and struggled forward, but the incessant breakers knocked them down and they’d come up spluttering, sporting more wounds. Some weren’t able to stand, their life-jackets floating them, and they tumbled with the broken waves, like so much driftwood. The men on the raft hauled them in and soon were too full, forcing the uninjured back into the water to help whomever they could find toward the beach. Finally, both boats, and everyone who’d been on them, sprawled on the beach. One sailor, who’d been unconscious from the initial air attack, was dead. They found him washed up on the beach, facedown and unresponsive. Everyone from the capsized raft was banged up to some degree. The cuts on their arms, legs, torsos and faces looked as though they’d been attacked by razor blades. The capsized raft had one sizable hole which had deflated one of the four compartmentalized chambers, leaving that segment flat and floppy. They found all the wooden paddles, but two were broken. The sun beat down upon them like an angry god. None of them wanted to move. Tarkington sat up after catching his breath. His tongue was thick with thirst and he was sure he wouldn’t

From the perspective of utter love for surfing, paddling was always okay, no matter how difficult, no matter how hopeless. Sure, it wasn’t always as fun as riding a wave. But it was part of it. They were the same - interdependent. No paddle, no surf. No samsara, no nirvana. And if paddling on a day like this could be enjoyable, i figured maybe all of life’s challenges could be - maybe even a real job. Maybe there was no rat race to escape...

and win the game. Each time we played, I was losing bad but ended up winning on my last turn. Playing the game suddenly gave me a new perspective on surfing. I realized focusing on the big picture was holding me back. I had to concentrate on what I was doing every second and keep in mind that as long as there was time on the clock, I still had a chance. I labored through a few heats before coming to the fourth round. My opponent was the brilliant tactician Barton Lynch. I was still struggling with the mental block I had when competing against Barton, but it was all about to change. At Reunion, the waves were easily double overhead. My objective was to focus on the moment, but at the moment I was losing. It was a long paddle back to the lineup, and I started paying attention to every stroke I took, every breath, and every movement. The title chase became secondary to the here and now. I broke everything down into baby steps—put one arm in front of the other to paddle and didn’t think about anything else. I caught a wave just before the buzzer, knowing I needed a strong ride. Rather than tightening up, I felt completely free.

We lost not a single animal that night. Every last duck, koala, and roo turned up fine, healthy, and accounted for. After three months, as Wes’s wounds healed up completely, Steve went to him with a proposition. “What do you reckon, Wes,” he said, “are you up for a board meeting?” They grabbed their surfboards, and we all headed to the Fiji Islands. Tavarua was an exclusive atoll, beautiful, with great surf. Steve and Wes also surfed Namotu and caught some unbelievable waves. One day the face of the waves coming in had to have been sixteen feet plus. Just paddling out to the break was epic. I didn’t realize how much effort it took until we had a guest with us, a young lady from Europe who was a mad keen surfer. Steve paddled out to catch some waves, and she paddled out after him. After several minutes, it became apparent that she was having trouble. We idled the boat closer and pulled her in. She collapsed in complete exhaustion. The current had been so strong that, even paddling as hard as she could, she was able only to hold her own in the water. I tried to photograph Steve from the boat. Peter, the captain, very obligingly ran up the side of the wave exactly at the break. I had a great side angle of Steve as he caught each wave. But the whole process scared me. The boat rose up, up, up on the massive swell. As the green water of the crest started to lip over the boat, we crashed over the top, smashed into the back of the wave, and slid down the other side. “It’s okay,” I yelled to Captain Peter. “What?” he shouted, unable to hear as the boat pounded through the swell. “What’s okay?” I gestured back toward the shore. “I don’t need such…incredibly…good…shots,” I stuttered. I just wasn’t confident enough to take photographs while surfing in a boat. I decided to be more of a beach bunny, filming beach breaks or shooting the surfing action from the safety and stability of the shoreline.