Surf Etiquette in the Line-up

[gibber]

I had a surf yesterday, first one on home turf and to say it was a welcome experience would be lying. The truth is, although the surf was ok, probably even better than average, the real let down was the behaviour of the other surfers in the water.
I know i'm one of the older generation, not as old as the goats that can remember surfing places like the point (lennox) without twenty footy teams worth of people sitting shoulder to shoulder waiting for their wave of the day. I'm probably in the next level of surfers, the gen X of surfing.
See when i was a grom we had a code to live by. It wasn't written down anywhere, that would have made it easy to learn and understand. No this code was learnt the hard way, either through pain inflicted on you or by witnessing the pain of others. Now in today's reckoning this would be deemed assault or possibly worse, but in growing up through this tradition of trial by fire you knew what was acceptable behaviour in the water and that which was most definitely not.
If I or one of my peers were to paddle into an oncoming set wave shouting at the guy riding it to watch out for me and don't run me over I would have been ridiculed and most likely pushed off my board and told to "swim in after it and don't fcuken paddle back out till you learn how to duckdive KOOK!". You see this happen once or twice and hopefully not to yourself and you soon learn that to be out in the water you need to take a few on the head. To paddle across and open face and cause a guy who is riding that wave to have to dodge people, a wave he has been waiting for possibly twenty minutes or so to catch, to ride it like some slalom course and not as he would most like is in my mind a fcuking outrage! But my dear fellows, this is exactly what is happening and we are all guilty of allowing this mentality to exist and flourish.
Personally, I have started to not accept this as the way things are now, I have started to explain to other people in the water why they should paddle inside a guy coming at them and not cry like a twelve year old when a set is bearing down on them. Most don't understand, some get abusive and want to have a go but I am past worrying about dickheads getting sh1tty about someone telling them that they need to get some fcuking brains and learn how to take a few on the head AND hold on to your board.
The other issue i am having trouble coming to terms with is the guy who paddles out past you in the line up and sits about five meters inside and expects to get the next wave...Uh Huh, sorry not going to happen champ. This behaviour is so incredulous, so disrespectful of the guys sitting on the spot waiting their turn that the perpetrator deserves to be dropped in on and faded out of contention and told to fcuk off and wait your bloody turn. They show no understanding of surf etiquette. I have come to expect it in places with lots of travelling european surfers as these guys usually haven't grown up learning the ropes like those of us here in aus and their knowledge of right of way goes only as far as the one on the inside has priority...don't worry if you just paddled around five guys to get it though...
Again, this is where we all should stop this behaviour happening and stand up and say something to these pricks otherwise it will continue to grow out of proportion and all hell will break loose! Hello Snapper!!
Anyway, enough of a rant from me. I'm getting cranky lately, maybe i need more sex or less beer and coffee, or maybe i want to surf into my old age knowing that we haven't fcuked things up by not instilling the ethics and values on the ones that come through after us, because that would be an immense shame on my generation and the ones that follow.

[Trev]

^^^^^^^^^^^^
With you all the way gibber.
I am of the generation who was able to surf Lennox with a half dozen out (AND pre-leggies ) but everything you say is true.
And I've been "edumacating" people out in the surf for the last couple of years. It helps to only do it at your local where there is support from others.

[marcus_h]

gibber for PM.

[Headlander]

Gibber, I hope you are not suggesting that some manners in the surf is called for with the younger generation and foriegn surfers? Cause I'm afraid that it will be falling on deaf ears.
You have to remember the new generations of surfers live by the "its all about me" code of conduct and fcuk the rest of you and oh by the way, can you take a photo of me too so I can show everybody on facebook what a great surfer I am!
A few timely,well chosen words to some of the offenders can at times work to settle their behaviour, as some really don't know they are doing the wrong thing ie paddling inside and snaking, but others know and continue to make cnuts of themselves to get as many waves as possible.
One of our local lads has taken to instead of punching heads, punching fins out and says "cnuts cant surf with no fins hey". Seems to be having the desired effect but he can't be out there all the time!
I'm not saying all the younger crew and travelling surfers are the same but by Christ there are a lot of them that can and will make cnuts of themselves when they paddle out. Unfortunatly their attitude is why you get locals fired up and fights starting between the travelling surfers and locals.
So if you are not surfing your local break and I know at times we all do travel, just try taking your time and turn to get waves,say G'day to the locals, don't paddle up the inside or snake them, don't travel in footy team size packs and if its too crowded find somewhere else that might not be as good but you will get a heap more waves with a better atmosphere if you do.

If all else fails get on facebook or youtube and you can watch the days events in the comfort of your own home without even having to step outside the front door. You'll get to see some of the worlds best(in their eyes and minds) surfers at any given break within hours of the session and no doubt they will probably tell you where and when it was taken, therefore saving you the trouble of even going to look!

[Headlander]

Well fcuk me if I don't all of a sudden use the word goose a lot when I describe somebody who looks or acts like a vagina in my posts! Seems the censorship has gotten strickter since last I posted or have I missed something? I know I can't spell real well but I know how to spell the c word or ones that look like it and it really takes away the impact of what I try to say. I also know that the local that I was quoting would never use such mild language in the company of grown men!

[bumfluff]

I had a surf yesterday, first one on home turf and to say it was a welcome experience would be lying. The truth is, although the surf was ok, probably even better than average, the real let down was the behaviour of the other surfers in the water.
I know i'm one of the older generation, not as old as the goats that can remember surfing places like the point (lennox) without twenty footy teams worth of people sitting shoulder to shoulder waiting for their wave of the day. I'm probably in the next level of surfers, the gen X of surfing.
See when i was a grom we had a code to live by. It wasn't written down anywhere, that would have made it easy to learn and understand. No this code was learnt the hard way, either through pain inflicted on you or by witnessing the pain of others. Now in today's reckoning this would be deemed assault or possibly worse, but in growing up through this tradition of trial by fire you knew what was acceptable behaviour in the water and that which was most definitely not.
If I or one of my peers were to paddle into an oncoming set wave shouting at the guy riding it to watch out for me and don't run me over I would have been ridiculed and most likely pushed off my board and told to "swim in after it and don't fcuken paddle back out till you learn how to duckdive KOOK!". You see this happen once or twice and hopefully not to yourself and you soon learn that to be out in the water you need to take a few on the head. To paddle across and open face and cause a guy who is riding that wave to have to dodge people, a wave he has been waiting for possibly twenty minutes or so to catch, to ride it like some slalom course and not as he would most like is in my mind a fcuking outrage! But my dear fellows, this is exactly what is happening and we are all guilty of allowing this mentality to exist and flourish.
Personally, I have started to not accept this as the way things are now, I have started to explain to other people in the water why they should paddle inside a guy coming at them and not cry like a twelve year old when a set is bearing down on them. Most don't understand, some get abusive and want to have a go but I am past worrying about dickheads getting sh1tty about someone telling them that they need to get some fcuking brains and learn how to take a few on the head AND hold on to your board.
The other issue i am having trouble coming to terms with is the guy who paddles out past you in the line up and sits about five meters inside and expects to get the next wave...Uh Huh, sorry not going to happen champ. This behaviour is so incredulous, so disrespectful of the guys sitting on the spot waiting their turn that the perpetrator deserves to be dropped in on and faded out of contention and told to fcuk off and wait your bloody turn. They show no understanding of surf etiquette. I have come to expect it in places with lots of travelling european surfers as these guys usually haven't grown up learning the ropes like those of us here in aus and their knowledge of right of way goes only as far as the one on the inside has priority...don't worry if you just paddled around five guys to get it though...
Again, this is where we all should stop this behaviour happening and stand up and say something to these pricks otherwise it will continue to grow out of proportion and all hell will break loose! Hello Snapper!!
Anyway, enough of a rant from me. I'm getting cranky lately, maybe i need more sex or less beer and coffee, or maybe i want to surf into my old age knowing that we haven't fcuked things up by not instilling the ethics and values on the ones that come through after us, because that would be an immense shame on my generation and the ones that follow.

Jeez, this topic could be an entire thread on its own and a bloody good one too.

Gibber you bring up some excellent points here. I'm of the oppinon that if the seasoned surfers informed the kook of "the rules" and more importantly why those rules might save his head one day, I think it would go a long way to help the problem.

Too often I see experienced surfers get angry right off the bat and tell the kook to f*ck off, when clearly the kook has no idea what he's done wrong. This leads to resentment on the kook's behalf and in some of them, a "f*ck you" attitude which only ends in tears for all.

Sure, tell him to f*ck off, but also tell him what he did wrong and in lingo the laymen can understand.

Snapper Rocks is a great example of what no to do. That place is just a circus. If one person is allowed to drop in, everyone drops in. Simple as that. There's guys surfing there from former world champs to some guy who has never ridden a board in his life and has no idea he's in even at Snapper. I don't know what the answer is for that place, but I'm tellen ya, it's a time bomb waiting to explode. There is so much aggro there that I won't surf there anymore cause it's just not worth it. Not to mention the constant dings from other guys hitting you or your board. They tried putting up signs explaining the rules but it has fallen of deaf ears.

This may sound crazy to some but I am of the opinion that at certain breaks, there needs to be some kind of licencing for surfers. Maybe have 3 categories A B and C. Pretty self explanitory, you start at C and work your way up to A. The key thing here is that as part of you showing some authoritive body (a surf school?) that you are a competant surfer, you also must prove that you know the rules and can apply them. So in a place like Cooly you could have 3 grades of surfers on the whole beach with everyone getting the waves they deserve. Grade A at Snapper. Grade B at Rainbow Beach. Grade C at Greenmount. Anyone caught outside their break with the wrong ticket cops a fine.

Sounds like a pipe dream but it's the only thing I can think of to really hit the problem on the head instead of a scattergun approach.

[Trev]

[
Jeez, this topic could be an entire thread on its own and a bloody good one too.

Good suggestion fluffy.
Done.
Hope that's OK with Gibber.

[gibber]

yeah trev its fine mate
I am starting to grow my hair and cultivating a nice facial growth so that one day it'll all link up into a respectable beard. I am also taking masonry lessons, stone masonry not the secret handshake lodge type.
With my new skill i'll be cutting stone tablets and chiselling into them the rules of'th thy surfer, i will be appearing at a break near you in April 2012 as Moses Gibber withest thou 10 commandments of surfing

[bumfluff]

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[pridmore]

funny this should be discussed today....see the Swellnet report for today
http://www.swellnet.com.au/reports/maroochydoore/daily

[Trev]

[Headlander]

Heres another couple for the etiquette list.
If someone is sitting waiting for a wave and you want to go futher out or inside him, paddle around the outside of them not the inside and when you get there wait your fcuken turn or expect to be dropped in on or abused!

If there are not too many out and there seems to be a rotating system of people taking it in turns, try to fit in and take your place at the end of the line and you will be included but if you queue jump, expect to be given grief and get no waves and dropped in on every time by those who do wait their turn.

If you are in said system and it is your turn, please try to call someone on if you are not going to make it or go for the next wave and you will be making yourself a lot more popular. ie "you go this one mate I'll get the next one".

If you think that you are too tough to worry about having manners just remember there are people tougher, sneakier or have more back up than what you probably will ,who will use it if you keep making a "goose" of yourself in the lineup. Word gets around and soon you will not be welcome at all by any of the locals even if you decide to live there.

If you're a good travelling surfer and are getting a lot of waves you will make a lot more friends by calling some of the lesser talented locals,kids or girls onto a few waves than being a gready bugger and taking them all.

And for fcuk sake don't ring all your mates and tell them the surf is pumping at such and such making it more crowded than it already is.

[alakaboo]

Yawn.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, I just don't see the point in this topic. By all means explain stuff to people in the lineup, and tell people what the consequences will be of ignoring the rules. But don't think this thread will change anything.
Honestly, do you think there are any kooks sitting at their computer reading this and going

This will play out like all previous discussions on the topic.
Let me summarise the key points and save a few pages:

No one has respect for the rules of the lineup any more.
Someone should teach them respect.
Someone will blame surf schools for not imparting etiquette as part of their lessons.
Someone will say they used to work in a surf school and they made sure to tell people not to drop in.
Someone else will say that legropes/the internet/immigration/homosexual clergymen are to blame.
Surf cameras, surf reports, SUPs, mal riders, bodyboarders, tufflite construction, thai and chinese boardmakers and climate change will probably get a serve too.

Everyone will then retire to their instant coffee and XXXX (or state equivalent), read the rugby league form guide and feel better having done their bit for surf culture.

[carvin marvin]

Unfortunately surfers and humanity in general is completely clueless when it comes to thinking about how we can evolve.
The internet connects minds but still we have not got to the point where we agree to take action and change the rules for the better of everyone.
Look at the QuikbUCK with the poxy pro contest on the gold coast, you have a minority group (professional surfers) bribing the council with $100,000 or whatever, then there is the bribe to the snapper rocks boredriders, then the bribe to the police who patrol the water on jetskis.
And all this to deny recreational surfers access to the ocean.

And surfers put up with this.

The ASP is surfings Gaddaffi, I remember there was talk on swellnet of a paddle out protest by recreational surfers but it amounted to nothing.

Here was my suggestion regarding rules that would help surfers and surfing to evolve .

[url]http://'forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17098[/url]

[Beanpole]

That sounds about right alakaboo but you forgot the justification part where half the crew reckon there are extenuating circumstances for snaking etc.

[Headlander]

Sure alakaboo, the topic may have been done before but even if one or two people change their way of thinking in the lineup because of it, don't you think it has been a success in some small way?
If everybody was to think your way then there would never be a chance for some manners to ever be brought back into surfing again.
And really, it is not just kooks that have no idea about etquette, there are many people that should know better that just don't think about their actions without someone pointing it out to them. Hopefully if enough people are aware of how having some manners in the surf can make things better then we will all be better off and if posting on a forum like this helps in some small way then we've had a win.

[bumfluff]

Yawn.
I don't disagree with the sentiment, I just don't see the point in this topic. By all means explain stuff to people in the lineup, and tell people what the consequences will be of ignoring the rules. But don't think this thread will change anything.
Honestly, do you think there are any kooks sitting at their computer reading this and going

You're missing the boat completely.

[Beanpole]

The thing with people saying they learned etiquitte when they were groms is that they looked up to the older guys and had social investments in fitting in. Your average adult might or might not have an appreciation of someones surf skill but really couldn't give a toss about being part of the bang except in the most abstract way.