Surfing

1. The Wrong Surfboard – I get a lot of students who call and tell me they ‘already have a surfboard’. Most of the time they’ll show up to their first surf lesson with a board that’s too small. A small board makes the most difficult part of surfing – the takeoff – even more so.

A good beginner surfboard does several things:

• It floats high and catches waves easily

• It’s wide, stable, and easy to get up on

• It offers a longer ride on smaller waves

Most of our adult beginner boards are ten-foot soft boards. Soft boards aren’t the status symbol that fiberglass is, but they’ll save you from injuries. And until you get up to turning and trimming across a wave, the performance difference is negligible. (The Banzai instructors sometimes have contests with them : ).

There’s also the issue of moving it around and fitting it in (or on) your car. You may do better to get your own wetsuit first, and rent or borrow a board that you’d soon outgrow anyway.

For beginning surfers, remember this: BIG board, SMALL wave. Not the other way around.                      – Jaz Kaner

Learning How to Surf – Going all the way (out)

Mistake #3. Going “All the Way Out Where the Other Surfers Are” This is an understandable mistake that a surfing beginner makes. You pull up at the beach, and go out where the surfers are, right? Not so fast, Scooter. If the waves are anywhere over chest high, the more experienced surfers will be on […]

Learning How to Surf – Location, location…

2. The Wrong Place – Surfing is like real estate: Location, location, location. The ideal beginner wave offers a long, gently rolling break that crumbles, not crashes. It’s what surfers call (with some disdain) a mushy wave. Better still if there’s a sand bottom – that may save you some paddling. Huntington Beach can be […]

Learning How to Surf – Biggest Mistakes Beginners Make

1. The Wrong Surfboard – I get a lot of students who call and tell me they ‘already have a surfboard’. Most of the time they’ll show up to their first surf lesson with a board that’s too small. A small board makes the most difficult part of surfing – the takeoff – even more […]

Patching Soft Surfboards with a Hot Glue Gun

Did you know you can patch your soft board with a hot glue gun? This also works on fiberglass boards, but for now I’m talking about soft boards, like the ever-popular Costco WaveStorm surfboards. They’re also known as ‘soft tops’ (or derisively as ‘nurf boards’ : ). This is also a good fix for boogieboards […]

Banzai Surf School

The Malibu Theme Park

Published in “Surfer Magazine”, November 1997   THE MALIBU THEME PARK By Jaz Kaner   Twenty yards out a dark fin broke the surface.  I couldn’t see what it was, but it was moving some water and heading right for me. Then it submerged. It was bad enough that I had to resort to night […]

Banzai Surf School

Surfer ‘Light Bulb’ jokes

Here’s the collector’s edition of…. “Jaz Kaner’s Lightbulb jokes for Surfers” (Originally published in Surfer Magazine, 2001) Q: How many surfers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Four. One climbs the ladder and the other three brag about all the great light bulbs they had yesterday.   Q: How many soul […]

Banzai Surf School

Surfing 101

If I had to distill years of teaching into a few seconds, those are the four biggest points. There are exceptions, and of course, there’s a ton of other safety issues, skills, and fine tuning that a good surf instructor will give you. Surfing can’t be learned from a book – there are too many variables.