a. Brush Strokes: The Classics
b. One Less Stroke
c. It’s Always Been About the Toob
d. Strange Designs: Swim Fin Artistry
e. My Name Is Alice and My Mom Is My Wonderland
Brush Strokes: The Classics
In classic art, the Ocean is frequently featured as a dark and dangerous entity, waiting to destroy ships and lives. Marine art progressed along with the evolution of ocean going vessels. Swell-producing tempests and shorebreak mayhem, smashing boats to pieces are common subjects of classic seascapes. In many examples, classic artists painted waves with illuminated skill and menacing detail. In this gallery, we’ll take at look at waves in historical fine art.
Bayeux Tapestry- 11th century
“Shipwreck of Hugh de Boves”- Matthew Paris 13th Century
The coast and waves are a common theme of Japanese painters and printmakers throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
“Waves and Rock”- Hasegawa Togaku 17th Century
“Rough Waves”- Ogata Korin 1704
The most famous depiction of waves in art history is Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” “The Great Wave” is first in Hokusai’s series entitled “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” produced in the ukiyo-e style of woodblock print making. The artist portrays an iconic and beautiful peak about to smash a fleet of fishing boats…or do they quickly turn their boats and ride the wave safely to shore? Maybe a few of the fishermen jump out and bodysurf the wave to safety…
“Women on the Beach”- Hokusai 1797
“Masculine Wave”- Hokusai
“Cargo Ship and Wave”- Hokusai 1805
Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) is best known for his dramatic landscape paintings of the frontier Western United States. But as seen here, he beautifully captured breaking waves and the power of the sea.
“The Shore of the Turquoise Sea”- Albert Bierstadt 1878
“Seals on the Rocks Farallon Islands”- Albert Bierstadt 1872
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) was a Russian Romantic painter best known for his marine art.
“Storm”- Ivan Aivazovsky 1886
Ivan Aivazovsky
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American landscape painter, known for his seascapes.
“On the Beach”- Winslow Homer 1869
“Sunlight on the Coast”- Winslow Homer 1890
-KS
Sources:
Famous Seascape Paintings
Japanese Wave Paintings
Albert Bierstadt
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One Less Stroke
The entry to a wave is the fundamental driver to wave riding experience. A smooth and precise ingress is a clear indicator of a good wave to come and a skilled rider. There are a number of ways to duff your take off. You could set your lead hand in the wrong direction taking your momentum straight down the face or off of the wave face entirely. Some bodysurfers don’t kick hard enough or don’t hold a straight enough torso. All errors which could shut down a long ride before it began, but the most prevalent miscalculation I see in bodysurfing entry is the “one extra stroke” fallacy.
The bodysurfer is in the spot ready to take the drop and thinks I need more speed. The bodysurfer may decide to take one or two more swim strokes, but I would posit this to be the worst course of action. The main reason this works against the bodysurfer is timing. In those precise moments as your body is collected skyward by the wave’s energy all of your momentum should be moving in the direction you want your body to go. Taking another swim stroke acts against that momentum. When swimming on a horizontal plane, your swimming arms exit the water while moving forward and enter the water to pull against the water’s resistance to move your body forward. You are also twisting your torso to maintain momentum. This action is not compatible with swimming down a wave face.
The twist of your torso on a flat surface doesn’t create resistance, but when on a tilted plane of water your torso will block the flow of water under your body and therefore slow down your progression. This is also the reason why you don’t see bodysurfers swimming with their arms while riding waves. The two are incompatible.
Instead of going for the extra swim stroke, I would suggest bodysurfers focus on maintaining or gaining momentum by “getting long” and kicking like hell. Getting long is a reference to extending the forward planing hand in the direction they wish to go. As covered in previous articles, getting the forward planing hand out on the water and extending the body into a straight and flat surface we are able to maximize our movement over/in water. The second focus requires little explanation. Kicking like hell could mean big powerful strokes or short quick burst strokes, but either way you are adding speed to your person. It is important to note that a kick is more efficient in this position because both the up and down strokes add velocity to the bodysurfer. Doing both simultaneously is key because if you’re just kicking like hell, but your body is not acting as an efficient rudder you’ll make little progress.
Ultimately, if you’re having fun, then you’re doing it right. But for those looking to be a more efficient wave-riding hominid I suggest trying these tips out. If you’re still finding the entry difficult you may need to practice swimming to the spot. Either way, it’s never a bad time in the Ocean.
EJ
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It’s Always Been About the Toob
It was the summer of 2001, heading into my 2nd year of college, I rented a surfboard on a family vacation to the Jersey Shore. It was raining and the waves were ankle high. I definitely did not successfully ride a wave, but it didn’t matter. I was hooked. I wanted more.
Back in Ohio, I used the growing Internet to learn more about waveriding. Watching short clips and seeing hundreds of photos, one thing stood out immediately above all else. I didn’t care about tail-flick turns or the progression of aerial surfing. I was instantaneously fascinated by hollow waves. I stared at empty barrels and endlessly watched clips of Pipeline and Teahupoo. I would sit and think about the sensations that a surfer must experience inside.
As a beginner surfer, I quickly became aware of the difficulties in tube riding. After college, I moved to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and spent a couple years going over the falls on the hollow beachbreak waves without any success. But I was never deterred from my love of the barrel. I would sometimes stand on the sand and jump into shorebreak barrels without even knowing that bodysurfing was a thing.
I then moved to San Diego and slowly became a better surfer but tube time continued to elude me. A good buddy would sometimes bring fins to the beach and occasionally bodysurf in between surf sessions. It looked like fun, so I bought fins and…WOW! A whole new world opened up and I mean literally opened up. Instead of surfing the soft, rolling reefs around Encinitas, I started swimming around local beachbreaks. My tube time started multiplying exponentially. It was all I really ever wanted from waveriding. Bodysurfing provides it and so much more.
-KS
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Strange Designs: Swim Fin Artistry
Fin design is an art with over a hundred years of documented history. In this visual article we will take a look at some of the more out there ideas that never made it into mainstream consumption.
Our first entry is also the earliest. This patent, filed by Adolf Biedermann and Jak Howald, is from 1903. It is essentially a sandal with a collapsible flap designed to aid swimmers in all the strokes of swimming.
The next unique design comes from Charles Drummond in 1967. He took the collapsible flaps to a whole new level. It seems very likely that the more complex these designs became, the less functional they would be in the Ocean.
The Predator Defense Swim fin is the most aptly named and aggressive fin design we found. David Graves created this device so that swimmers could protect themselves from sharks. This might not be the best call for bodysurfers as we tend to get tossed around and would end up slicing our own Achilles tendons.
Above you see the patent art from the first motorized swim fin we found. William Lalli Jr. designed these devices to blend modern propulsion devices with modern swim fin design. It is hard to imagine how much propulsion could be created, but it would be worth a fun time taking them for the test swim.
Do you hate taking off your shoes to go for a swim? Frank Zakul has you covered. In 1926 he created the swim fin for shoe wearers. Like many other swim fins to be developed in the following years, the fin is designed to be collapsed on the upstroke and spread out on the down. I imagine the prototype of Zakul’s making to be covered in dust in the attic of one of his decedents just waiting for re-discovery.
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My Name Is Alice and My Mom Is My Wonderland
By Alice Latuf
I don’t remember a moment in my life I wasn’t surprised by my mom, Briguitte Linn Wiedemeyer.
Since I was a little girl, I have this image of her as someone who could do anything if she wanted to. But the thing is, she does what she loves – and, thank god, it has everything to do with water.
Her first contact with water was when she was 2 years old: she fell at the sailing club her family frequented and almost drowned. I don’t really understand why, but in the moment, she fell in love. Her family moved to Portugal and she went to beach all the time, and even though the North Atlantic is always freezing, her mother only could take her way from the ocean when her lips were blue.
When they moved back, she was 5 and my grandfather gave her a snorkel and a pair of fins. The sea became her playground, but she lived in a city without beaches. Every year during summer, they went to their beach house on vacation and she played in the waves for hours and hours.
She was a swimmer from age 14 until 24 and then she started to sail until age 31, always competing and traveling because of it. She always tells me one of her favorite trip to Japan in 1984.
Since then, bodysurfing is her passion. Her life is all around it. She works so she can go on trips to surf with other people, meet new styles and learn how to be better.
We live in Garopaba, where she raised me. It’s a small city, famous for the good waves in Santa Catarina, Brazil. She has a gym, and the place is just amazing – with two swimming pools, both heated, one 25m and the other of 8m and a dancing room. She teaches kids and adults to swim, and everything is just lovely.
There aren’t any other bodysurfers around here, so it’s kinda hard to explain what we do – people are always closed to “new” things. Even though bodysurf is as old as surf itself. It is also nice, because as a small town, sometimes there is just us out there, the beach and the waves just for us.
At the south of Brazil, we have all kinds of weather. The seasons are very different from each other. Sometimes the water is cold like in California. In summer it is hot as Costa Rica. Still, it is an amazing place.
I’m always grateful for my mother choosing this city to live. The waves are great. We are about ten minutes from our favorite beach, Silveira. The beaches are between hills. If the wind comes from the south, we are going to surf on the south side of the beach, protected from the wind.
The north side of Silveira is excellent for bodysurfing. When it’s big, there are a lot of tubes but the wave is really fast. In the south, the wave opens more and is slower so you can think more.
Briguitte loves the south, thank god – the north is all mine!
I’m amazed by everything my mother has done – but bodysurfing is what makes her the happiest. The way this sport makes people feel is out of this world. Thank you for sharing this love!
Swell Lines 