The Quiver Killer Surfboard is Matt Biolos’s new model of surfboard and Quiver is excellent.
The wave range here is much higher than all his other surfboards. It will look great on powerful gentle ones.
Pros of Quiver Killer:
- Quiver Killer is incredibly easy rowing on big seas;
- Quiver Killer has a very high performance, works great in difficult conditions due to the design features;
- feels vividly underfoot, especially on strong waves.
Minuses of the Quiver surfboard:
- The Quiver surfboard itself seems too large and massive to a comfortable ride.
Best Wave Type for Quiver Killer: The Killer behaves best from shoulder to head. Also, this gear works very well in high tides overhead, as well as in critical ones.
Every surfer rides big waves whether they use. However, each has its own “big” tide.
For the famous bigwaver Greg Long, a big one can be 15 meters in size, and for a simpler surfer – 1.5 meters. But regardless of the size of the wave, the same techniques are used to overcome fear and gain additional self-confidence.
There is no easy way to get started surfing the bigger ones. As in other areas of life, in order to conquer your “big” wave, you need to gradually develop the necessary skills and work on self-confidence.
And here the trick is not to conquer a huge wave like Jaws, but rather to be able to have fun in a variety of conditions: it does not matter whether these are small ones or real giants!
Table of Contents
Start riding on a big tide
When we want to start riding big waves, we need to understand – there are various fears and obstacles that prevent this.
The first step is to recognize the ones which hinder you. For example, are you afraid of depth or shallow water over reefs?
Or maybe you really don’t know how to ride a Ghana, or have no idea how you will behave if a leash breaks?
Recognize your obstacles, your fears, and then start working to remove them during riding the Killer surfboard.
Know the wave
Swim to the spot with surfboard and a mask and spend some time diving under the tides.
Learn to understand how they move and break, what happens underwater when a tide travels from above.
Try to understand how close you can get on a surfboard before you get sucked in by the tide, and how hard the lindens can penetrate the water, can you swim between the foam and the bottom?
Stay calm
Your body reacts physically to what you think about.
If you start to worry, your heart rate rises, your breathing quickens, you may start to sweat, and your muscles become tense.
There are several techniques you can use to calm yourself down. For example, you can imagine that you are in a familiar, safe environment, while you need to present as much detail as possible in bright colors.
The first few seconds this method may seem useless, but after 2-3 minutes it will have a powerful effect.
Another way to calm down on Quiver Killer is to realize that the other surfers on the line are people just like you. The tide kneads everyone equally.
Breathing
Last time we wrote about how useful breath control is for surfers.
The ability to hold your breath for a long time increases your confidence, you become less afraid of wipeouts on large waves.
Even just the realization that you can hold your breath for a long time already helps to hold it for a longer period of time.
Get closer to your gan
If you only take out your big sea surfboard when the big swell comes in, then it’s not surprising that you feel less confident on it than on your everyday surfboard.
So try to ride your ghana on small days.
Forget the sneering glances on the lineup, get used to your surfboard for big tides, understand how to ride it, how to rake it on the tide. And when the swell of the year comes, you will be fully armed.
Keep yourself in form
Not the most tricky advice, but very useful nonetheless. Getting in good shape will help you both directly, for example, during rowing out on the line on a big day, and indirectly, as an added bonus to confidence in how your body will behave.
Don’t miss your chance
Don’t put off hitting big waves on a Quiver Killer surfboard for the next swell. Use every opportunity which comes along, push your boundaries constantly.
While surfing on a Killer, we cannot set a specific day on which we will ride the one of our life, and train for that date. So if a swell has come – go to the ocean, expand your comfort zone!
Consider a return plan in advance
If you know which spot you will ride when the big swell comes, then you should think in advance about how you will get ashore, or what you will do if the Quiver Killer surfboard breaks or a leash breaks.
Do you need to swim ashore through the tides, or do you have to swim a certain distance to the nearest exit from the water?
Don’t put off deciding what to do until a small piece of the Killer surfboard dangles at the end of your lichen.
Most likely, nothing bad with Quiver surfboard will happen, but the planning process itself will give you extra confidence on the lineup. And this confidence will help you try to take more tides.
There is nothing bad in damage
Even if you swam to the line-up, and realized that the conditions were too much for you, then there is nothing wrong with going back to the shore.
This is also an experience from which very useful conclusions can be drawn.
By carefully analyzing all the factors that cause concern when riding large seas, the surfer will be able to know in advance how he will need to behave in different situations.
When you sit on a line-up full of this knowledge, you have no choice but to have fun!
Big wave surfing is very popular among the professionals in our sport. Waves are most often soothing and bewitching to the person watching them.
Just imagine: the beach, the setting sun is sinking in the ocean waves, one after the other running white foam on the golden sand.
Now imagine: strong gusts of wind, a cooling breeze and a huge 30-meter waters that rose right in front of you in a matter of seconds.
Most famous spots with big waves
Today we will tell you about the most famous spots with big waters: how and where these ocean Hulks come from and who is hunting them.
Mavericks, California
The spot got its name back in 1967, when three friends-surfers came to ride on an unnamed spot.
They had a dog with them – a German shepherd named Maverick, who loved to swim next to the guys.
Leaving the dog on the shore, they took a boat to the line-up, but the dog still went after them. The boat had to be turned around in order to tie Maverick more tightly – the weather turned bad and it was not safe for the dog to be in the water.
In terms of skiing, that day was not successful: the guys were surfing near the coast, and the giant waters rising far in the ocean seemed very dangerous to them.
Back on the shore, they decided to name the place after the dog, who was much more fortunate that day.
Since then, the small town of Half Moon Bay in Southern California has become a Mecca to surfers who do not know life without deadly waves. But not for everyone.
For many years, the spot was a great secret, jealously guarded only by a select few. And all the rumors about the Mavericks were more like crazy nonsense.
Only in the 90s, thanks to Surfer Magazine, the spot received widespread publicity and became a magnet for everyone to gawk and break in killer waves.
These ones acquire such power due to the unique bottom topography: at a distance of about one and a half kilometers from the coast, the reef has depressions that, like a pump, pump the wave with an additional volume of water coming from other deep-water reefs.
But this is just a “meeting of a good friend on the doorstep”: the ones themselves are formed long before approaching the shores of California.
Mavericks, in their pristine state, are echoes of storms in the surrounding North Pacific. Covering a distance of 320 km (ideal), the waves move south, driven by the westerly wind.
Another important component to the great Maverick is the period with which the swell ones reach the reefs, this period must exceed 16 seconds.
When all the factors add up, a huge 25-meter wall rises in front of you.
Nazare, Portugal
As in the case of the Mavericks, the deep Nazaré canyon (Canhão da Nazaré) plays into the hands of surfers.
This is the largest underwater gorge in Europe, stretching 170 km along the coast. In some places, the width of the Nazare canyon reaches 5 km, and the depth is about 300 m.
The waves of Nazaré are “fed” by strong Atlantic storms, the swells of which are moving to Europe.
The canyon, like an arrow pointing straight to Praia do Norte beach, enhances the power of the wave, and the sharp difference in depth between the gorge and the reef allows the waves to grow in height, reaching 30 m, and sometimes even more.
There are plenty of madmen who have conquered such giants on Quiver surfboard and others.
Jaws, Hawaii
Hawaiian spot Jaws on the north coast of Maui is happy to open its jaws to everyone from November to March. This name was christened by local surfers in 1975 in honor of the recently released blockbuster of the same name Steven Spielberg.
The waters rising here really look like the unpredictable behavior of a shark: suddenly, a completely friendly wave can turn into an 18-meter monster.
The Jaws come thanks to the storms of the Pacific Ocean’s big-wave entertainment. These high, fast and powerful waves attract town-in-surfers, those who get caught up in the waters by being towed by a jet ski.
“Jaws” appear due to the underwater ridge, which appeared as a result of a volcanic eruption.
The ridge abruptly slows down the fast movement of the swell driven by sharp gusts of wind, and the reef, concentrating all this mass, brings it down in a certain place.
Teahupoo, Tahiti
Spot Teahupu (or rather, in the local dialect the name is pronounced as “Chopu”) is located in the southwest of the main island of French Polynesia – Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean. Translated, the name sounds like “to take your head off” and fully justifies itself.
Of course, it appeared as a result of bloody intertribal wars which took place in these parts hundreds of years ago.
Today it does not lose its relevance. And all because gigantic heavy seas rise 500 meters from the shore and collapse on reefs slightly covered with shallows, sharp as a thousand knives.
This is the merit of the strong south-western swell, carrying the left water, and the unique semicircular “jagged” relief of the reef, steeply going down, allows it to show itself in all its treacherous heavy beauty. It seems that giants simply grow out of nowhere.
Chopu is included in the list of “Top 10 Deadly Waves” by Transworld Surf magazine. All the power of the “daredevil” was experienced in 2000 by the surfer Bruce Taerea.
An unsuccessful attempt by a duck dive to dive into a 4-meter wave ended in death to a professional athlete: a powerful wave pushed the athlete out, throwing him onto the reef.
Pipeline, Hawaii
What can we say, Hawaii is the historical homeland of surfing, attracting riders of all levels and ages to its waves. But big wave hunters have a certain point here – the Pipeline spot on the coast of Oahu, or rather, on Banzai Beach.
In winter, huge (up to 10 meters) pipes rise here, which, closing in shallow water, add another 10 points to the danger level.
It is noteworthy that, depending on the size of the incoming swell, the water on the Pipeline breaks into several peaks, the most worn out of which is First Reef.
It is logical, because the reef which goes into the ocean is divided into three parts by depressions which give the incoming waves additional power.
When faced with shallow water, all this huge mass collapses, creating a perfect but damn dangerous pipe.
The spot Pipeline got its name, surprisingly, not at all to the features of the tides.
It was 1961 when director Bruce Brown decided to shoot a few guys on nameless seas to his surf film Finding Summer.
And very close by, work was underway to lay underground communications in the ocean. That’s how Brown christened the place – “Pipeline” – very unromantic.
Since the 1970s, The Billabong Pipeline Masters has been held here annually, in which the strongest athletes fight against the elements to a prize of $ 425,000. But everything is not so rosy: since 2000, six deaths of professional surfers and photographers have been recorded here.
Of course, these are not the only places on earth where you can come face to face with huge tides and try out Quiver Killer. But to find out, and most importantly, to understand them all, you need to make a lot of effort.
Not only physical, but also mental.
After all, big tide surfing is a deadly enterprise. And to those who still dream of riding, e.g., Mavericks, we have come up with a motto: “Study. Go for a ride. Conquer. ”
