Baby's first surf lesson

We arrived for our surf lesson keen as mustard at 12:00 even though the lesson didn't start until 12:30. Once our fellow wannabe surfers arrived for the lesson (two brothers aged 12 and 7!!) we went round the back of the surf kiosk and we kitted out with wetsuits and a soft surfboard each. Mine was 8' 6" and I could barely lift the thing, I had to drag it along the sand to our surf spot!!

Our teacher for the day, Angela, was a young Aussie girl and she sat us all down to explain a bit about rips and what to watch out for (namely each other and other surfers) and to demonstrate what we'd be doing first.

One Mile Beach at Anna Bay

Our first challenge was to get out into the water up to our waists, wait for a wave (or more precisely white wash was this is easier), when the wave was approaching push the board out in front of you, hop on, paddle and when the wave reaches you to put your hands at chest level around the 'rails', push up with your arms but still be laying down but with your chest raised and follow the wave back in.

Sounds easy doesn't it. The tempation is when the wave catches up with you to put your arms out in front of you which then tips the board into the water and you wipe out! We had a few practise runs at this and we all had the hang of this part quite quickly.

Angela called us back to the beach and demonstrated part 2 of the crash course, which was to attempt to stand up on the board. This involved raising your bum up after you had lifted your chest up and then moving your legs one by one to the correct position on the board (your strongest leg at the back, which is also the leg you attach the leg rope to). Jodie is left foot at the back (otherwise known as being 'goofy' footed) and I am right leg at the back.

Someone else's board, much smaller than mine!

We hit the water again and Angela spent some time with the youngsters to make sure they were ok, Jo and I caught wave after wave and eventually we both managed to stand up on the floating raft that were our softboards!

The 2 hour lesson went surprisingly quickly and we had such a great time that we signed up to do another lesson the next day!

Day two saw me "progress" to an 8ft board and it was much of the same really, just consolidating what we had learnt the previous day. Jo made excellent progress and was catching about 80% of her waves I reckon. I was a bit slower on the uptake but towards the end of the lesson I managed to work out where I was going wrong and caught a few goodies.

The father of the two boys we did the lessons with (they joined us for day 2 aswell) took a great picture of his son that managed to capture Jo full flight and he said he would e-mail to us, if we receive it I'll be sure to upload it in all it's glory :)