One of my loves is ocean paddling and a paddling friend Greg Clifford recently described it well:
“I did the Bondi to Bronte paddle today – a paddle out to North Bondi point and then down to the pump-house of the pool at Bronte, and you do that three times.
When the swell is blowing from the north, like it is today, heading south towards Bronte, you catch ‘the runs’. That’s what it’s called – catching the runs. The ski sits on top of the swells and you’ve got to always be looking in front of you and chase the swells. The best runner is the one in front of you; so you have to try and get on those and run keep your boat running really smooth. It’s like surfing – if you keep your ski or board running really smooth, you get maximum speed out of your craft. That’s the beauty of these skis – it’s the buzz you get out of them. People think that you’re just going along on flat water, but you get it to a skill level where you’ve got to look for runs, look at the ocean, see which way its moving, and concentrate on balancing the boat.
When you’re paddling back north towards Bondi, you are going against the swell. The skill then is to pick up the backwash. It’s very protected from the north swell in here (Bondi), but there’s movement out the back. That movement hits the rocks and bounds back off them. So what you’re looking for on the way back is any sort of run of backwash. You don’t actually notice this when you’re swimming, but when you’re on the ski you see all of the movement so you can actually find that backwash. I could be 1km out to sea and get a backwash. There’s so much movement out there.
In the big southerly winds we’ll start at Malabar. We paddle about 2km out to sea in the big swells – massive!! Then you turn with the swell and just hammer it! We get these huge runners all the way into Camp Cove when it’s like that. You just fly down and I mean, we’re going down 20ft faces on these skis, there’s water going over your face and the skis are going down these waves – it’s amazing. Just unreal!!
Really, as long as I can get in the water I’m good”.
