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. 

Fantastic Surfing Story in the New Yorker

Stoked to open this week's New Yorker and find a story by William Finnegan about surfing on the South Shore of Oahu in the 1960s.  Finnegan accurately portrays an organic experience of being new to a break and figuring it out. He watches the other surfers in the water and stays away from the main peak until he has built up his abilities and has made friends with some of the local Hawaiians. He also writes a succinct paragraph on wave dynamics that I could not have written better myself. I did a little googling and found out that Finnegan is on staff at the New Yorker, and that he surfs on Long Island when he's in town. Finnegan is on the move a lot covering issues of social unrest. This focus on the social is apparent in his sensitive illustration of race relations in mid-century Hawaii. The fact that someone like Finnegan lives and surfs here is a testament to the depth of the New York surfing community. 

2015 Surf Lessons and Coaching Packages Update

I am excited to announce new lessons and packages for the 2015 surf season! The same beginner packages are still available, but now include video sessions and Skype consultations, as I believe that to be a key pedagogical tool for better surfing. I have also added one hour consultations for advanced intermediates and new coaching packages. Also in the works is a fall surfing weekend in Montauk and winter surf retreats in Costa Rica. I am also working on building a larger quiver of surfboards so that clients will be able to purchase the board that they learned on and get right to surfing without the hassle of hunting down a board in New York. Still communicating with local shapers to make this real, but it's in the works! For full details about lessons and packages please go to the lessons page. For interest/inquiry about the Montauk/Costa Rica retreats simply keep following us here and on Instagram (@conatussurfclub) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/conatussurfclub) for updates and details.