No ski. No paddle. Just a man and his disc.
It ain’t no secret that I got a little crush on the new
era of skim. Beserkers like Brad Domke skimming Nazaré,
Jaws and Puerto Escondido on a fifty-three-inch, flat-rockered,
finless disc.
And Austin Keen, the two-time world champ, and his
gotta-see-to-believe boat wake hijacks. Oowee etc.
(Click here for
that)
Last Tuesday, Austin, who is twenty eight years old, was invited
to the Surf Ranch by a skim fan who’d hired out the tank. And
Austin, who’d spent the last two years dreaming of hitting the
joint and who went to the Founders Cup just to get a feel for it,
figured he’d make his first wave a run-in takeoff.
“I wanted my first experience to be skimming right into it,” he
says. “I was shitting my pants. I didn’t want to blow it. Every
wave counts. But I’d been wanting to do this for a long time. If
you look closely you can see me shaking like a leaf, hoping I time
it right. ”
The no-paddle, run-in takeoff ain’t easy.
“I watched the other guys I filmed the wave and watched the
timing over and over. The wave moves really, really fast. I was in
the back room for thirty minutes, scrolling through my phone,
watching it, making sure I had the timing right. I had to get out
super early because while you’re sliding, the wave is moving
fast.
“I was on the sidelines and you hear that train moving and as
much as I wanted to wait longer, I made myself run before the wave
was even there. I knew by the time I started sliding out, the wave
would be forming and then starting to break. I got there right as
it was lipping up and I hit it and beat that first mini barrel
section, where the pro’s take off, and then got a nice little
barrel section off the bat.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkrpYy-j1bf/?taken-by=beach_grit
Austin says that everyone, from the lifeguards, to the jetski
guys to the workers and his skim-fan patron were thrilled by the
event, but somewhere out there in the ether, watching on some
webcam, was an overseer who told Austin he couldn’t skim anymore
unless he had a leash attached to his board.
(The pool owners fret that a leashless board will bounce around,
get washed over the bank on the side of the pool and damage the
lining. It ain’t paranoia. Both commercial Wavegardens have been
closed down for ripped linings.)
“So I called the maintenance guy over and asked him to drill a
hole in my board,” says Austin. “I was able to skim for the rest of
the session, sometimes paddling into waves on my surfboard,
sometimes stepping off the ski and skimming the wave.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BksflDsB3jO/?taken-by=austinkeen47
After posting of his adventure, Austin says he was contacted by
Kelly Slater who was “curious” how, a, shimmed onto a wave, and, b,
how he got into the pool in the first place.
“He thought it was pretty rad,” says Austin.
Now…now… you ain’t feeling these skim jams?
“Me and guys like Brad Domke, we’re all surfers,” says Austin,
who rode half his waves on a five-ten Gamma. “It’s another avenue
for us to surf and this is our little niche way of doing it.”
