Ride what your most comfortable on.

Here's a good story. Most of my friends have heard me tell it. Probably too much actually. So I'm in Samoa with my friend Tim. We had been surfing salani rights for the first two days of our stay there at salani. There was this whole mythical build up of the left that all the boatmen had built up during those first days. Basically it was all this talk of how heavy it is and so on and so forth. On the afternoon of the third day tim and I convince this little brittish dude who was our boatman to take us over to "the left".

OK they were right. It was heavy. Not really beacuse of size, although it was probably 10ft faces but more because of heavy offshores, very shallow reef and a west swell direction that was very unpredictable. I was on a 6'6" which looking back on I needed to get into the wave but didnt need once I was up. Tim was on a 5'11" I think. I got maybe 4 waves that session, all just heart throbbing drops and fast down the line get in get barrelled get out waves. Problem was I was so sketched that I didnt even want the barrel...just the get in get out. Tim got a few, and had the same expericence if I remember correctly.

The next morning we went back for more with the boatman who was a goofy foot and loved the left. It was smaller, but on the boat ride out we were asking him what the best board to ride would be. I think his name was John. John then gave his answer which is probably some of the best advice I've ever had in my entire surfing life. He said, "Ride what your most comfortable on.". Very simple but so true. We then pull up to the left and he pulls out this 6'5" single wing swallow tail. It had to have been a full 2 5/8 thick and maybe even 20" wide. Totally beat board. He told us how it was the only board he had left. He had broken them all. But he was very comfortable on it.

Now tim and I had not seen John surf yet so we were pretty weary that this dude could even get up. John waxes up and paddles out and litterally took us to school on what most good surfers would consider an over sized fish. He got so many deep barrels its was rediculous. He did a few turns that were good considering his board, but his tube riding was flawless.

My take away was that this dude backed what he said. There are a ton of really good surfers in the world that we will never hear anything about. John was just one, but they exisist. Full on expat guys that could compete at least on the qs level maybe ct and you'll never hear anything about them. sSo the next time your curious about what board to ride on a certain day...big or small, "Ride what your most comfortable on."

ps. this pic is salani left taken by the same photog that was there when we were. PSS. That first day I sured it I was paddling back out after one of my waves and a set came in that looked identical to teahpoo. No lie. I later read in an article that Sean Moody compared the place to chopes but actually said he thought it was heavier because it was less predictable.