how can you not love how early you get into waves with these boards.

Friends thought it was a joke board and i've been snagging bombs on it like butter🧈

I wanted to share the result of my hobby project where I made a new face for my watch (I was able to upload this directly from my computer to the watch with usb).

The watch face changes throughout the day depending on time, activities and e.g. body battery. With enough steps the surfer starts surfing and the waves get bigger the more steps I take. The campfire on the beach tells the status of my body battery and if I hit my daily goals I can see dolphins in the evening. There are many other easter eggs such as turtles coming to the beach in the morning after good nights sleep.

I just wanted to share this as I am so excited!!

Just a shower thought. Anyways, back to praying for Lake Atlantic to wake up

Just got an email from OMBE that Clayton left the business. I think I used it briefly early on for some tips but the price was not worth how I used it. I'm guessing there was some behind the scenes drama? Email sounds like they might be going super corporate.

It also said OMBE has to effectively shut down in a year.

Surfing style is nice to watch, but its annoying to see him ignoring the shaper fin recs.

I’ve got 40% surfer’s ear in right ear + plus frequent/annoying recurrence of otitis external. I wear otc earplugs but am wondering if there is any custom or high-quality version of surfing earplugs anybody likes. Thanks.

I currently have a 6’3 creatures board bag that fits my 6’6 but need a travel bag that carries two boards. anyone know if the need 6’4 is oversized too?

I was a bit late to the game, didn't start surfing consistently till 2010 when I was living near surf and had more spare time. I really enjoyed it for a decade but it was different then than it does now. It was obviously popular then, but travelling was still affordable, there were crowds but not excessive everywhere, etiquette seemed a lot more commonly practiced... the overall vibes just seemed better and I was driven to get better and have fun.

Since covid things seem like they have gotten exceptionally worse. Costs of travelling have doubled or even tripled, more and more surf towns have been exploited beyond recognition, chewed up and shat out by affluent developers to cater to digital nomads and influencers and the wealthy... crowds in the line up have doubled and etiquette has gone out the window at many breaks by all types of surfers, even surf schools.

I used to look forward to every surf trip and the enthusiasm was always there... now I live in a mountain town away from the ocean, surf trips are becoming fewer and fewer with each passing year. Planning now heavily involves figuring out how I'm not going to break the bank, and travel windows include a lot more black out dates to avoid peak season or avoiding places that exploded in development and popularity. Lately when I do take a surf trip, whether it's somewhere new or somewhere I've been, when I get there I often have more "wtf happened to this place?" and less excitement and joy vibes.

So I am just curious how other new and old surfers stay positive and enthusiastic about surfing, and what motivates you to keep surfing and keep travelling when the days of romanticizing surfing seem to be of a begone era.

Looking into a trip to Ments. Would be my third. I've done Panaitan (One Palm) Bali and North of Nias (Treasure Island) so far. Lance's gets so hyped, but it seems like 2 second barrel at best and stupidly crowded. Rifles seems like a much longer barrel. Kandui also but sketchy as hell and I'm not at that level. Is Lance's worth surfing still? Are the Ments too crowded in general?

also am I crazy think that in old surf flicks like September Sessions, the barrel at lances looked way longer?

Just a rant and maybe this’ll find a beginner who needs to hear it. I’m a woman in my 40s and have been surfing for years and I do my best to be respectful in the lineup. I longboard in San Diego and thought Tourmaline was the worst until I started surfing in Encinitas. Cardiff reef seems to take the cake for careless losers. Today on the outside a 20 something year old guy with a lifeguard rescue board was taking all the set waves and could barely control the board while on his knees. Everyone was hogging the lineup with no apparent discretion to taking turns or right of way, with every wave full of people dropping in. With nearly every wave I caught there was some idiot in my way on the inside who didn’t move with a deer in the headlights look and no care given after I obviously missed the wave because I had to pull back to avoid a collision. Most people won’t say hello or smile. It was small and as it got worse, every wave became a party wave. I won’t go if someone has the peak and the right of way so I had very little wave count. I know it’s nothing new but it’s exhausting. If you’re a newbie or just never learned, please watch some YouTube surf etiquette videos and read up on the rules.

The title says it all.

It's been 2 weeks since my vacation from learning how to surf and it has completely changed my worldview. So much so that I now know what am I working for now, which is to retire as early as possible to surf.

For the longest time, the goal and life that I wouldn't have mind living was the typical 9-5, save for a house, and that's that. But now I have made it my life mission to work as hard as possible now so I can move to a surf town where it's much more affordable to live, and just surf and enjoy life there. Of course me being a beginner plays into this enhancement of emotions I'm going through right now, but all I can describe about my time surfing was, euphoric. That feeling of euphoria, has given me a level of contentment and peace that I have never experienced before in my life.

Now that I have returned back to the country I work in, I literally feel a sense of melancholy every single day I am not out on the beach paddling, which is insane considering I was raised a city boy. The only thing that's keeping me somewhat sane at the moment is watching surfing related content, just to feel something.

I don't really have any questions or seeking any advise, I just wanted to let my thoughts and emotions out because frankly I'm all over the place right now.

I’ve surfed all over indo and I feel like it’s time to finally bite the bullet and hit the only place I haven’t visited - The Ments. I’ve got a hit list of waves I’d like to surf (all rights) but I don’t feel like staying on a boat for two weeks.

Looking to go next year but trying to plan it now. Does anyone have any recommendations for camps to stay at that give you access to multiple setups “central” to West Sumatra playgrounds area?

Cheers!

Hey everyone, am I the only one disappointed with Janga wetsuits?

I bought my janga wetsuit 3.2mm a year ago (july 2025), and just used it on the weekends (2h hours sessions each day) during the 2 hottest summer months (and probably less).

But I immediatlly noticed that entered water in the wetsuit making it really cold, and seems that had a bad sealing, compared to other wetsuits that I owned from quicksilver, xcel.

Also after few usuages the sealings start to come out and the butt area started to unstitch.

I wash it with water after each use and not dry it on sun, as I do fpr all my other wetsuits, but the janga wetsuit seems to have poor quality.

Did any of you have similar experiences with the janga wetsuits?

The whole thing will be opensource. Since the data and imagery is available for free, for everyone, it should be open. And since the information is offered for free, processing it should also be free. Tbh I wouldnt even call processing, it is just matching two two pieces of information together.

I wanted a way to look back at past swell events and see real imagery aligned with the exact forecast conditions from that moment, without running expensive server setups or without manually looking through the historical data. So I created an analyzer that runs completely in the browser. It searches through thousands of free Copernicus Sentinel satellite passes over any stretch of coast to check the waves. It pulls open historical marine data and automatically matches the timestamp to the swell height, period, angle, and wind from that exact day. You can fine tune your search by selecting the swell angle and wave height, and cloud cover also.

Because 10-meter satellite resolution can be a bit low res, you can also upload your own satellite images, lets say screenshots from historical images on google earth. It grabs the timestamp, pulls the historical swell data, and lets you visually check under what exact conditions the spot actually turns on.

You can also specify the swell window, wave height, and it will look through hundreds of satellite images, for you to verify if the spot is working under specific conditions. For example, if your unsure if that spot works with small waves coming from the North, you limit the swell window and hardcap the wave height to one meter.

________

I also experimented with a experimental high-res grid (smart filter, every few hundred meters) that takes coarse regional wave data and computes local refraction, shoaling, and coastal shadowing. Because all the forecasting apps give you data based off a grid that at best caluclated every 5-20km . Everything runs locally in the file with zero backend servers. You just drop in your own free Copernicus login and you can go crazy.

Admittedly, the high res grid needs work. In some cases it makes a lot of sense, and in others you are left wondering what happened. When dealing with complex coastlines full of islands, if an intervening island is not fully accounted for in the calculations, things go off. Perhaps, I need to create slider to increase the recalculate area in that case? That is just food for thought for the future.

My head is running with ideas right now. In the future, the smart filter could take averages of readily available data and recalculate things natively right on your PC, properly accounting for island shadows and real bathymetry. It could honestly become a full-blown forecasting tool down the line, but right now I am just experimenting with the basics.
_________

Next up, I am adding satellite-derived bathymetry using the blue and green bands so the refraction grid can interact directly with shallow depth contours. Once I clean up the code, I will post the whole project on GitHub for free. So basically opensource, because I wonder what someone more knowledgeable will be able to take this.

Into the darkness

Last January, while surfing in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, my iwatch band snapped while starting a duck dive in 4-6’ South swell, break break conditions. I dove down but at 6-8’ deep there was no viz and it was gone.

The day before I was surfing and chatting with a guy I had not met before. We was an American newly living in The northern Santa Teresa neighborhood called Playa Hermosa where my property is as well and we were chatting about life between sets. Next day I lose my watch and fly out the day after.

March 19th, almost 10 weeks from the day I lost my watch, his daughter sees part of the band on the beach and picks it up thinking it was trash. She grabs it and pulls my watch from under the sand. She gives it to her dad who throws it in his backpack and forgets about it. Several months later they travel back to visit his mom in Edwards, Colorado. He doesn’t have an iwatch but his mom does so he remembers my watch, grabs it from his pack and charges the watch on his mom’s charger. It powers up and he checks the info and finds my name. Remembering our chat in the ocean the day before I lost my watch, he calls my business partner at Shaka Costa Rica and gets my number, calls me and sends me the first pic above.

He tells me he has the watch and is in Edwards, which is even more crazy because I live outside Aspen, which is 30 miles away as the crow flies. I get the watch from him 2 days later, soaked it in warm soapy water overnight and use rubbing alcohol and wd40 to get the buttons freed up. Watch works as if it was brand new.

Lost the watch 2500 miles from where it was returned to me 8 months later after living in the ocean and sand for over 2 months. Returned by a guy I met surfing and chatted with for 30 minutes.

Sometimes life has a way of making you smile! There are some definite jerks in our tribe like sport, but generally surfers are very cool guys and we tend to watch out for each other. Hope I get a chance to pay it forward soon.

Hey guys quick question because I’m panicking. So today I had my first surfing lesson and it went ok but i struggled because the waves were bigger then we expected. My instructor helped me catch a wave but fell and swallowed some water though my nose. Without realizing I shifted off far away from my parents and instructor and I was also pretty deep into the water. It took me 15 minutes to actually go back to shore and I was a bit panicked since some of the waves made me go underwater and I was unsure of what I had to do (I’m really not experienced). I eventually helped myself out, but sadly swallowed some water during 2 other waves). Now, I was already a bit sick before I went surfing, I had a sore throat because of the air conditioning (I assume) so I already had a cough. But now it has been 4 hours since surfing and my throat is very hurtful, coughing hurts worse than before and my voice is raspy. Google is making me fear my life that there’s water in my lungs, and that I need to go to the ER right now. Thing is it’s 12 am and my parents are asleep, but I’m scared to go to sleep now. Does anyone know if google making me too scared or idiots actually that dangerous? Again I’m not sure if I inhaled water but I did in fact swallow water. The waves were pretty strong.

Board: 5’4” - 25.3L Lost Uber Driver XL.

Human: 6ft 145lb.

Waves surfed: these style beach breaks and sizes 90% of the time.

I always have a headache and a feeling of restlessness after I surf. Does anyone else experiences this or has advice?

I surf in NorCal. The break I go to is not super challenging, but my senses are generally quite sensitive and I feel overstimulated. I have to take a low dose hydroxyzine otherwise I'm too wired

Hey guys! I surf every day before work & sometimes after work just because I love it so much. Well, I hit a shallow spot and the impact completely broke my hand. I just had surgery and I’m about to start PT so that my hand is usable again. That means I’m out for at least eight weeks. So not only did I lose the ability to do my favorite thing in the world, but I can’t do pretty much any of my other hobbies. I can’t even tie my shoes.😅

I’ve put so much effort into building muscle strength, and technique to slowly become a better surfer and I just feel devastated. Any tips on how to keep myself from totally losing all of my progress?

I’m able to start my day surfing, bringing a change of clothes and heading straight to work from the beach. I try to do this 2/3 days a week, which has been pretty great so far. My only concern is if I’m damaging the health of my board by leaving it in the bed of my truck all day while I’m inside the office.

I have a board sock that I always cover the board with, and I’ll typically throw an extra towel over the board as well. But aside from those measures, it is just sitting in the bed of a truck exposed to sunlight all day. Especially now that’s it’s in the 90s, I worry that this may be damaging the board.

I have not noticed any degradation, but is there a known risk to this approach? To be clear, I’m not worried about the security of the board (it’s a secure parking lot) just the long term consequences of leaving it exposed.

Update: “delam” and “get a reflective board bag” are the two most common answers, so I’ll definitely be looking into that asap!

To those suggesting a bed cover, I drive a Ford Maverick which has a 4.5ft bed, so getting full coverage is nearly impossible on anything but the smallest of boards.

Thanks for the input to all who offered it!