In this episode we hang out with veteran surf instructor Paco Vega and discuss how to transition from riding a longboard to riding a shortboard. It’s a great show, check it out!
For more info, check out the Witch’s Rock Surf Camp blog: How To Transition From A Longboard To A Shortboard
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Pura vida and thanks for listening,
Joe Walsh
Music
Artist: Empire Of The Sun
Song: Walking On A Dream
Audio transcription:
Joe Walsh:
Hey, how’s it going. This is Joe Walsh from Tamarindo, Costa Rica and you’re listening to the Get Out and Surf podcast. This is episode number three and we’ve got Paco Vega, a very well known local surfer here in Tamarindo and professional surf instructor at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp.
Today, we’re talking about longboarding and shortboarding, and transitioning between the two. A lot of people have a really hard time transitioning from a longboard down to a shortboard, so we talk about what it takes to get you there. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the podcast.
Sitting here with special guest Patrick McNulty, COO of Witch’s Rock Surf Camp.
Patrick McNulty:
How we doing?
Joe Walsh:
We’re doing good, doing good.
Patrick McNulty:
Good, good. It’s all good here in the hood.
Joe Walsh:
It definitely is. Also sitting on my other side I’ve got Brian Vega, a.k.a. Paco.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s up, guys?
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, welcome to the show man.
Paco Vega:
Pura vida, pura vida.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, so, we were talking about, as we always do, surfing and all the different size surfboards that we ride and got onto some pretty interesting talk. I don’t know, I kinda want to start with you Paco, when did you start surfing?
Paco Vega:
Oh, man, that was when I was about 16 or 17 years old.
Joe Walsh:
Alright and you’re 30-
Paco Vega:
I’m 37 now.
Joe Walsh:
Okay, so about 20 years ago.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, something like that, I don’t remember.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, okay, so well. I know you grew up here in the neighborhood.
Paco Vega:
Yes.
Joe Walsh:
What was the first board? What did you learn on?
Paco Vega:
Man, that was funny because I met some friends from Texas and then they were playing with boogie boards in the beach. And we were playing with the boogie boards and then after a few months, his dad has a board so we took his board and yeah, that was my first experience with a surf board.
Joe Walsh:
This is when you were a teenager.
Paco Vega:
Oh, man, yeah. A few years ago.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah and what size board was that that you first learned on?
Paco Vega:
Okay, the big board was like 8’6″, 8’4″, I don’t remember, but, it was like a big board for me.
Joe Walsh:
Yes and where’d you surf? Where’d you learn how to surf?
Paco Vega:
Okay, so, here in Tamarindo, we call Lincoln, that was like in front of the Witch’s Rock. That was like back in the days we used to call Lincoln, in front of Witch’s Rock and we were surfing Pico Pequeño at the time and then after that when I was feeling like comfortable I was walking all the way to Playa Grande.
Joe Walsh:
With the longboard.
Paco Vega:
Big board in my head.
Joe Walsh:
You were taking the boat across or you were paddling?
Paco Vega:
No way, man, we were walking on across the river paddling, swimming, whatever. But, you know crocodilos friendly.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah and not much has changed.
Paco Vega:
No.
Joe Walsh:
I paddled across that estuary this morning.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, we did that today all against what we tell everyone else they should be doing by taking a boat and we paddled across.
Joe Walsh:
Well, I think surfing’s an extreme sport and there’s that fine line where your chances of getting attacked by a shark or a crocodile are about equal so if you just paddle across that- I look at it as that turbulent line of whitewash when the waves are kind of coming in to the estuary and then you got the water flowing out that- you know, there’s a lot of stuff passing through but that’s not really a, I don’t know, maybe I made that up in my head but that’s the story I’m going with. That’s why I do it.
Patrick McNulty:
Well all of you people listening out there, I want you to take the boat because that’s the safest way and we don’t wanna be responsible for any crocodile attacks here in Tamarindo.
Joe Walsh:
That’s true but if you do paddle across, you should punch paddle.
Paco Vega:
Yeah and then if you guys paddle you will be tired at the time they got to casitas so yeah, you should get the boat.
Joe Walsh:
So, okay, you started surfing on a longboard at 8’6″, which is basically a longboard.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Walsh:
I mean, technically they say maybe a 9’0″ is a technically the start of a longboard but I think anything over 8 foot, like, 8’6″ you’re close enough, you can walk the board. So, I mean, you’re a ripper surfer, Paco, and you rip on a longboard and you really rip on a shortboard so-
Paco Vega:
Thanks, thanks, pura ella.
Joe Walsh:
You’re welcome, you deserve it. You’re a great surfer, man, and how did you get into shortboarding? I mean, we wanna hear the whole story.
Paco Vega:
Okay, yeah, I don’t know, I mean, I was paddling every single wave, I was catching every single wave and it was challenging so I will say yeah like why not the smaller board. Because I-
Joe Walsh:
How long were you riding on the 8’6″?
Paco Vega:
Man, I think it was like after like two years. I was feeling comfortable with a big board, catching everything, snaking people, you know.
Joe Walsh:
Getting a little too many waves.
Paco Vega:
Right, right, too many but it was fun. It was challenging so I was trying to go smaller and smaller.
Joe Walsh:
And what did you size down to after that, do you remember?
Paco Vega:
Okay, I think from the 8 I was going to a 7’4″ and then I was going to 6’6″.
Joe Walsh:
Okay, wow, so a couple big jumps maybe almost a foot off the length of the board each time.
Paco Vega:
True, yes.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah and so, today, when there’s some swelling around your shortboard, what are you riding?
Paco Vega:
My regular shortboard for a good waves, I have a 5’8″. It’s a Rusty, it’s really good, small tail, good rocker so just in case it gets steep.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, but you’re also, I see you’re out there cruising a longboard. Do you have a favorite size longboard?
Paco Vega:
Yes, yeah I have a 9’6″ Maxi Waxi model from Robert August and then when it gets too small and I have to work out a little bit I use the 5’6″, something floaty, fat, and a big tail.
Patrick McNulty:
So, Paco, what was the biggest challenge going from a longboard to a shortboard, what did you see was the most difficult thing?
Paco Vega:
Yeah, okay, definitely the timing. Yeah, timing. I was so used to the big board, catching everything, and then when I start going smaller, it was harder to catch every single wave so I say I have to paddle and then I saw my friends kicking, I say okay, now I have to kick. So, yeah, it was a lot of work, but.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, so there’s a lot of difference between how you turn a longboard and how you turn a shortboard. What I found the most difficult transitioning was everything goes really quick on a shortboard, every little move that you make, just, you take off. So all you have to do is twist your hips and you’re turning, in a longboard you gotta jam your turn. So that transition from doing hard turns to just standing up and leaning real quick on a shortboard was tough.
Joe Walsh:
Well, so Pat, maybe you can give us a little bit of insight into your surfing history. How long ago did you start surfing?
Patrick McNulty:
Started surfing in 1965, so I guess, what is that? 54 years I’ve been surfing.
Joe Walsh:
Wow, okay. So you definitely started riding a longboard, I think that’s-
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, I started out on a 9’6″ Pop Out longbaord with the big fin that looked like a keel.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, it pretty much was.
Patrick McNulty:
Thought that was the greatest thing in the world and I watched the whole transition, I lived the whole transition from the old, loggy longboards to going to what they call the high performance board back then and then around 1967-68, which today I look at ’em and they were progressive for the time but they’re not really progressive compared to what we see now.
Joe Walsh:
Still a pretty big longboard.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, it’s still a big, heavy longboard. And then we went from that to step down, what they called a shortboard then was an 8 foot or a 7’8″ and so we did that and from that transition it started to take off in the early 70s shorter and shorter. But, basically in the beginning, all’s they did was take a longboard blank and make a shortboard out of it with a single fin and I transitioned all the way down in my career to a 6’0″. And back in 1990, the resurgence came from longboarding, they had really changed the way the make longbaords, they were lighter, more maneuverable and the things that I saw people like Bonga Perkins and Dino Miranda doing on a longboard was just unbelievable and I had to do it again so I went back to longboarding and that’s pretty much where I am now.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, there’s really something to be said about ripping that hard on a longboard.
Patrick McNulty:
Longboarding is a little bit more difficult, even if it’s a high performance sport, it’s difficult to do some of the maneuvers that guys can do on shortboards and it’s a lot more difficult to get in the tube on a longboard ’cause you got all kinds of volume and if you don’t time it right, you’re either gonna be too far down the wave, too far down on the bottom of the wave, or you’re gonna be too far up and you’re gonna go over the falls because it’s no the same maneuverability. But, one reason that I went back is because I love nose riding and I grew up in the era of watching the greatest nose riders in the world, people like David Nuuhiwa, I idolized that kid. Well, he’s not a kid anymore, he was actually my age at the time, but, guys like that and I always loved it. I like to maneuver my board but I also like to get up there and hang five and hang ten and I know Paco’s been working on his nose riding and he’s gotten really good, he’s cross-stepping away.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, I started out learning a longboard, or at least I really started to learn. I think I started maybe on a 6’6″ shortboard but after not even a year, the first summer in San Diego when the waves just were tiny and there was a million people out there, I was like not getting any waves. I realized everybody who’s getting the waves were on these longboards so I cruised down to Mission Beach and picked up this used South Coast 9’0″ shaped Prodanovich, Robin Prodanovich. And that summer, that was before my senior year of high school, caught a billion waves, literally I think I caught a billion waves or close. Yeah, and started getting a lot better a lot quicker ’cause your wave count goes up, you’re on a longboard and you can catch so many more waves.
There was thick crowds in San Diego in the summer but I was still getting a lot of waves because I had the big board. Then the fall came and the waves got bigger and it got more challenging but it stuck with me, like you’re saying, Pat, you get a lot of volume with that bigger board. It’s harder to put it in a critical spot on the wave and I definitely took a few spills, got stitches a couple times trying to pull into barrels on a longboard but I stuck with it and I mean, I surfed only a longboard, I’d say, for maybe ten years. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, maybe 15 years ago or so that I started riding shortboards, or shorter boards, and it was a challenge coming from a longboard.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, so, Paco, who do you watch when you longboard? And I know that you’ve been really working on your nose riding and it really shows, so, you must have some people that you’ve been watching on film and stuff like that.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, well, this was like maybe three years ago, when I start getting lazy with the shortboard. I was getting tired and say okay, why not longboard. I saw a couple videos from Robert and then Wingnut and you know Joel Toward, man, this guys they’re amazing, classics. I like classics. Like Brazilian, like cut backs and off the leaps and all stop, but I like that classic. So, yeah, I’ve been working on classic moves and it’s great. Big boards, heavy boards, I love heavy boards.
Most of the people like light boards, but, for me, I prefer heavy.
Joe Walsh:
You know, I like a full board, too. And if you’re gonna longboard, longboard, right? If you wanna make big turns, get on a board that you can really turn.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, see, I’m the opposite. I grew up with the long, heavy boards and the going down the lineman and when I used to surf for the Surfboards Hawaii team, we used to compete a lot and guys were hotdogging those boards and I always liked watching the big, hardcore bottom turns and the big, hardcore cut backs it’s just, to me it was a thing of beauty. So, I like a high performance board, I like a board that I can throw around and I’ve been down the heavy board road, I grew up with it, and what I love is to be able to maneuver my board as close to being like a shortboard as possible. Hitting the lip, getting big air, coming off the lip and barely making the drop is what I really like and I also really like the fact that we have leashes now ’cause I did an awful lot of swimming when I was a kid in cold water so I think it’s one of the greatest inventions that we ever had. And I know you guys go the old school style with no leashes but I like it when you have to swim.
Joe Walsh:
I had to swim today.
Patrick McNulty:
I saw that.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, but that’s because I was surfing switch stance and I pulled into a barrel. [crosstalk 00:13:49] And then I fell, of course, and then I had to swim.
Paco Vega:
True, yeah, I push myself when every time what I lose my board, I go on the shore, pick my board and I do ten push-ups and go back because you don’t want to lose your board, you have to be good.
Joe Walsh:
And if you don’t where a leash, you’re not gonna be such a wave hog. You’re gonna be more thoughtful in the wave selection and then when you’re on the wave, at least for me. Try to walking on a longboard with a leash can be tough, you’re tripping over yourself. I think what I’m hearing, and this is true in the surfing world, is there’s a million different styles of surfer. We can all approach a wave differently and we use different boards for different waves and different styles of surfing. In general, though, for those listening that don’t have much experience with a longboard or a shortboard, when we talk about classic longboarding, or just longboarding in general, it usually means longer turns, carved out turns; gliding through sections on the wave, cruising to the nose of the board, getting more speed when you’re up there. The shortboard, by comparison, maybe you take off later on a wave or you’re able to get in a steeper part of a wave and get barrel definitely a lot easier but really it’s that top to bottom surfing that you can be going up one second and a millisecond later you’re facing d-
Paco Vega:
Yeah, everything moves so fast in the shortboard.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, it really does.
Patrick McNulty:
You know, what I notice is that growing up in the sport, shortboarding has really been influenced by skateboarding and the moves that I see happening on shortboards now are the moves that you see in a bowl or at a skate park and I never, and it thrills me to watch it, I never thought that it would evolve the way it has evovled and seeing these kids just ripping a wave apart, reckless abandon, dropping in in the tube, coming up and smacking the lip and then just riding with a reckless abandon, it’s just awesome. And the moves that you see, the floaters and all that stuff, it looks an awful lot like what happens in a skate park. Really does.
Paco Vega:
True.
Joe Walsh:
So, let’s just say that you started surfing maybe a couple years ago, like, Paco, you did when you started, and you were only riding the longboard and you wanna start expanding your surfing, you wanna ride shorter boards, you wanna ride boards because the waves are bigger or more critical or because you wanna do sharper turns, or you wanna get more barrels; for whatever reason you’re expanding your surfing horizon. Paco, as a surf instructor at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, you probably encounter this daily from so many clients.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, every weekend, I mean, every week that we have people, or new groups, the first question is yeah, Paco, I wanna go smaller.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, they wanna size down. I think probably most surfers wanna expand the number of types of sizes of boards they can ride and definitely when you’re a learning surfer or what we call an intermediate where you’re catching waves proficiently but you’re still riding a bigger board and you’re in that phase of downsizing to a smaller board. So, what are some of the things you tell these people, you tell a surfer that’s trying to downsize, transition from a longboard to a shortboard, what do you tell ’em?
Paco Vega:
Okay, well, the first thing is I always say, okay, if you catch eight wave out of ten, that’s a good point, that’s a good sign you can move smaller.
Joe Walsh:
So meaning if you’re surfing on your longboard and for every ten waves that come in that you go for, if you can successfully catch and stand up and ride eight of ’em, then you’re ready to start downsizing to a smaller board.
Paco Vega:
Exactly, yes.
Joe Walsh:
And if you’re only catching maybe four or five out of ten then you should-
Paco Vega:
Keep working, keep working on your timing, same, everything, paddle, wave selection.
Joe Walsh:
Makes a lot of sense. Okay. So, when you’re trying to size down from a bigger board to a smaller board or maybe you just ride a new board you’ve never ridden before, you wanna wait until there’s some decent surf.
Paco Vega:
Right, yeah, you don’t wanna go on a small day because you will be frustrated.
Joe Walsh:
Exactly. So, if you’re trying to ride a shortboard and you go out when it’s knee-high and you’re super excited like I did as a kid the day after Christmas, and then you just sink, then you should probably just wait. Grab the longboard, wait for the swell to pick up, wait until the conditions improve to try surfing that new board.
Paco Vega:
Right, yeah. Best thing is to wait for good conditions, but sometimes when you have a brand new board, never happens. You have the smallest waves and then you have a brand new board.
Joe Walsh:
It’s hard to be patient and wait.
Paco Vega:
And you have like a nice fins, a good board, you wax the board, and it’s flat. So, yeah, that’s when you paddle out and you get stronger with your paddle.
Joe Walsh:
So a couple of great pointers so far, the first one is making sure that you’re actually ready; can you catch a green wave consistently, can you angle the board at take-off, can you ride the wave down the line? If you can catch eight out of ten waves successfully, then you’re ready to size down. And definitely waiting for the conditions to get good because trying to surf a smaller board, that has less volume, is not gonna float you as easily, it’s gonna be more tough, you’re gonna have to paddle harder, it’s gonna naturally be harder to catch a wave, so if you paddle out on a day where there’s hardly any waves to surf, it’s gonna be even harder.
Paco Vega:
Right, right, right. Yeah, it’s tough. You get frustrated and then you overthinking and everything goes wrong; your pop-up, your timing, everything goes wrong. So best thing is wait for better conditions or just paddle around because you need to get stronger with your arms, especially in smaller board.
Joe Walsh:
Definitely agree with that. You said that you sized down from an 8’6″ to a 7’4″ to a 6’6″ or something like that. That’s a pretty big transition, that’s pretty quick. Do you recommend that sort of schedule for someone who’s looking to size down or do you recommend maybe only taking off a few inches at a time, what’s your approach?
Paco Vega:
Okay, well, it was different for me because I live here so I was-
Joe Walsh:
You’re naturally gifted at surfing is what you’re trying to say, so.
Paco Vega:
Also.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought, so the normal rules of surfing maybe don’t apply to Paco but for the average learning surfer that’s looking to downsize, let’s say if right now they’re riding a 9 foot longboard, what’s the next board you go on?
Paco Vega:
I think a 8, 8 something. Yeah, you wanna do at least seven to ten inches smaller. Try to work with volume. No, maybe depends on your weight.
Joe Walsh:
So maybe, if I rode 9’0″ and I was looking to size down, the first board might be like an 8’6″ or maybe an 8’2″ or maybe an 8’0″ if it had a bit of volume and still was similar to the longboard but you’re taking a foot off, that’s a big step.
Paco Vega:
That’s a good thing, maybe 8’6″ is good if you don’t surf every day. For me it was easy because I surfed three times a week because I was in school and I was working in the ranch and yeah, I was paddling a lot and it was easier for me but when you surf in the weekends, that’s a little bit different.
Joe Walsh:
Sure, so they can definitely take some time, you wanna take your time.
Paco Vega:
Right, yep.
Joe Walsh:
So, okay, maybe you get down to an 8’6″ or even down towards an 8’0″ and then maybe the next step is a 7’6″ or a 7’4″, and then maybe a 7’0″, something that starts to resemble less of a longboard and more of a fun shaped board. Maybe that’s your second or even third board that you size down to, but I know in my experience, I took about six to eight boards to successfully size down from a 9 foot longboard to a 6’0″ fish or one of these alternative boards, some of these boards I’m riding these days. Over a half a dozen boards, is that average or am I-?
Paco Vega:
No, no, that’s normal. I think that’s normal because you need to do small transitions, you don’t wanna do from 9 to 7 ’cause it’s gonna hurt, especially your shoulders.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, sure. Okay, so that’s a good thing to know so if you’re wanting to transition down from a longboard to a shortboard, you really wanna take your time. You can’t just do it in one fell swoop, you need to little by little taking a little bit smaller board or a little less volume. Get used to that, get to the point where you’re catching eight out of ten waves on that board and then do it again.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, I think that the other rule is to be patient with yourself because there is a learning curve when you go from a longboard to a shorter baord. If you feel like you have no confidence, go off by yourself. If you feel like somebody’s gonna be watching you and it make you self conscious, go off by yourself and practice.
Joe Walsh:
Well, that’s all really great advice and I definitely think that the listeners to the podcast are gonna walk away with some actionable suggestions that they can do right now to start sizing down from a longboard to a shortboard. What about the rarer cases that someone only rides a shortboard that maybe has never ridden a longboard that doesn’t have any experience in transitioning the other way? Is there any advice you can give someone like that?
Paco Vega:
Well, listen, this is really hard. For me it was really hard because in the beginning, I was falling on the sides in the big board because I’m used to ride a small boards like my 5’6″.
Joe Walsh:
Sure, so you try to turn and maybe your body turns and the board goes straight and you just fall in the water.
Paco Vega:
Obviously, I was turning right and my board was going left so that was the hardest part.
Joe Walsh:
So what kind of advice can you give someone that’s doing the same thing; that’s been riding shortboards, wants to get into that classic longboarding. The first thing that I could suggest is get at least a 9 foot board.
Paco Vega:
Right, yeah I think 9 is-
Joe Walsh:
You know, not too big, not too small, you can walk to the nose on it, you can surf it proper. So maybe start with a 9’0″.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, you can surf with a 9’0″ and it’s real important, I mean longboarding is like smooth surf, right, for to surf so many years doing shortboards, you paddle fast and then you have to be aggressive in the wave to paddle everywhere. In the big board, you have to paddle down, you have to chill, you have to feel the board, you have to feel the wave.
Joe Walsh:
You have to share.
Paco Vega:
You have to share, not every time because you have a big board but, I mean, transitioning from the shortboard to a big board, it’s hard because it’s huge, just to move the board you have to step on the right place on the board, you have to shuffle all the time back and forth. In the shortboard I feel your front foot stays the whole time, you move only your back foot from the stomp pad, is a little bit more to the center of the shortboard. In a big board, no, in the big board you have to move [crosstalk 00:25:27] you have to shuffle all the time because either you are going to fast, if you pop up right on the middle of the board and never turn or if you pop up and the tail is gonna be a swirly and you never take speed.
Patrick McNulty:
The one thing that I think is true is that guys that are surfing exclusively shortboards, nine times out of ten, are pretty good surfers so they know what they need to do on a wave. So when they transition to a longboard, the first few times, they’re not having a good time of it because the board has a mind of it’s own and it’s going one way and you wanna go another way. However, once they get used to that, they can rip pretty good and Paco’s an example of that, he went longbaord, shortboard, for a long, long time on a shortboard, back to longboard and he’s cross-stepping away now, walking the nose and so I think if you’re on a shortboard and you wanna go longboard it’s gonna be a little bit easier, you don’t have to do as big of a transition but I think that you can come along pretty quickly, probably within a few days.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, so if you’re going from a shortboard to a longboard, you don’t have to go through six different boards, each a little bit bigger each time. You can grab that bigger longboard, make sure you get a leash, and like anything it’s gonna take a few sessions to get comfortable, like any new board, it’s gonna take a few sessions to get comfortable but definitely a lot easier than going from longboard to shortboard.
Patrick McNulty:
Yeah, one thing that’s important to say about the leash is that it’s there for safety reasons and it’s there for the safety of the people in sight of you. If you lose your board in the middle of a crowded day, it’s gonna hurt somebody. So, it’s kind of a safety thing but I like it because I can go out on a really big day and I know when I get slammed, I still got something to grab a hold of unless my leash breaks.
Joe Walsh:
That’s true, I look at it though that, if I need a leash on my longboard, I probably should be grabbing my shortboard.
Patrick McNulty:
If you only bring one board, you don’t have to worry about that. And I also wanna go over this; we talk about sharing.
Paco Vega:
Right, yes.
Patrick McNulty:
We need to share out there. Right, Joe?
Joe Walsh:
Hundred percent. Well, wait, why you looking at my funny? I ride a shortboard, gimme a break, you’re the one on a longboard, direct this back to you.
Paco Vega:
Okay, one thing that I want to say about the style, and it’s crazy because people who start in the shortboard, they have a funny style because they start in a small board so the arms are all over. When you start in a big board, your body gets so relaxed in the big board so you can move your shoulders and move your hips like so smooth and then when you go in the shortboard, you go like smooth, like I rub my child, go like cruising in the waves.
Joe Walsh:
Yeah, they used to call me condor so I don’t think that worked for me, Paco. It’s taken me years to get those arms under control.
Paco Vega:
See, yeah, this one of the point. When you go small, if you start with the shortboard, I think, it feels it’s gonna take longer. I mean, if you have a period of four years doing shortboard, if you start with a big board, it’s gonna take maybe two because the timing, you get used to the timing.
Joe Walsh:
You get more waves.
Paco Vega:
Yeah, you get more waves, you got more confidence what are you doing in the water. When you go small from the beginning, yeah, your confidence goes bad because you try, I mean from ten waves you maybe caught one or two so, yeah, I mean it’s hard.
Joe Walsh:
Well, it’s hard, but not impossible. If anything, we’re teaching people every day and every week at Witch’s Rock how to transition from the longer boards to the shorter boards. It’s a pretty natural thing, it happens with most surfers in their surfing career where they wanna make that transition and that’s what we’re all about is getting people surfing and getting people surfing better.
That’s it for this episode of the Get Out and Surf podcast. For more information on how to transition from a longboard down to a shortboard, check out the Witch’s Rock Surf Camp’s blog, there’s a great blog posted there about transitioning from a longboard to a shortboard. That’s witchsrocksurfcamp.com/blog.
Thank you very much to Paco Vega for being on the show. We’re doing these podcasts every Friday and next Friday we’re going to have a really special one, an interview with surfing legend Robert August, talking about what it was like to feel the Endless Summer. If you’ve got any questions you wanna ask Robert, you can send us an email at getoutandsurfcr@gmail.com. If you haven’t already subscribed to the podcast, you need to do it. We’re available on all major podcast platforms: Goodle Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify; so you can subscribe, rate and review, or share it on your Facebook page, or Instagram page, or you can tweet, or do whatever you want with it. Just let everyone know.
Thanks for listening to Get Out and Surf, I’m Joe Walsh from Tamarindo, Costa Rica and I’ll see you surfing.