Surfing with Young Kids

[Scuba_ref]

Well given that my fuel issue was resolved Friday night I spent about 10 hours on the boat Saturday. Went fishing for sockeye from 4am until 10am and then headed home to take my buddy and his young family out.

For 30 minutes we tried to get the dad up on a surf board and it never really did happen. These are not water sports people. During that whole 30 minute stretch the 7 year old boy kept asking for his turn. So when the dad finally gives up and the 7 year old is now raring to go, I think there is no way he is getting up by himself so I suggested he ride with me.

We did the water start with the boy laying in the water on me/between my legs and holding the rope ahead of the end where my hands were. We popped up right out of the water and went for a mile long surf. When it was time to end I ran the board up onto the swim deck and he just walked right off the board onto the boat. His little sister (5 year old) thought it was pretty cool so she wanted to try and we did the same thing with her. I was surprised at how easy it was. We didn't go ropeless as I didn't set up any ballast, but I was really expecting us to struggle a little more.

 

[jcyamahariders wife]

Showed my girls your pics and they said they would like to try it like that ! They are 7 and 11 so next trip out would be awesome to try it out !

 

[octavio3311]

Very cool

 

[jetboater4life]

That is exactly how we have done the tandem surf too. The kids were a little scared at first but now think it is cool. I haven't put the board on my deck so I'll need to build up the courage to do that. One thing that we have resorted to for anyone that can't get up on the surfboard after two tries is to get someone in the water to position them on the board and help them dig the board into the water when the boat starts moving. We have a 100% success rate with lots of different sized people doing it this way.

 

[Scottintexas]

I was also able to get a 7 year old up surfing this week. I had to have my daughter stay in the water and help him tilt the board at the start to get the resistance against it but as soon as she did that he popped right up and surfed for about 10 minutes.

 

[Scuba_ref]

That is exactly how we have done the tandem surf too. The kids were a little scared at first but now think it is cool. I haven't put the board on my deck so I'll need to build up the courage to do that. One thing that we have resorted to for anyone that can't get up on the surfboard after two tries is to get someone in the water to position them on the board and help them dig the board into the water when the boat starts moving. We have a 100% success rate with lots of different sized people doing it this way.

Good info, I'll give that a try. Probably just keep a good book with me so when they get up and surf away I will at least have something to read until they come back and pick me up.

We've really not had issues getting people up before and he was up three times but couldn't maintain his balance to stay up. We definitley wore him out trying!

 

[jetboater4life]

I just circle the person in the water so that they are protected from other boats