SURF SHOOTING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 299, 22 January 1915, Page 3

SURF SHOOTING.

KAHANAMOKU TALKS.

Kahanamoku's natatorial supremacy is not, it' is well-known, restricted merely to competitive swimming. As a surf-shooter he has for years been famous, and even among the hundreds of experts on the ocean beaches of his island home he has been recognised as a champion. The surf-board has long been in common use in Hawaii, and the champion had something interesting to say concerning it while iu Sydney. " Surf-shooting is a new" pastime here,'' said he. "With us it is as old ■ —as old as the hills, perhaps. Shooting on a board and in a canoe must, have started further back thai) body-shooting. Thexe are surf-boards in the Honolulu Museum which saw service ever so many years ago, but tliey wouldn't do to-dav. We have improved our boards a bit, though they may look crude enough. The length, the width, and the 'Balance caused by a nicely-judged distribution of weight, are the results of the study of cause and effect, as well as experience. You have hundreds more surf-shooters at work in one day around Sydney than we sec in a week, or perhaps a much longer stretch of time, at Honolulu, but I think the old island has the pastime at greater perfection, which is only to be expected, considering its antiquity with us. We race each other in on a breaker, and the desire to excel sets us all think - iug hard and practising constantly.

THE DIFFERENCE. "You catcli your wave as it curls. We take it earlier, perhaps half a dozen

yards away from the point of turning, and accumulate speed by scooping the water with the right hand and using the left in the ordinary way, putting in the while at least the speed you saw me finish my world's record in last Saturday afternoon. ' Then the velocity of the , shoot is materially increased, and its duration rendered greater. We begin 011 our sides, and find we get more control the effort, then we turn on our backs or breasts, as fancy suggests. You are apparently content with the one position. Two or more of your beaches I have seen where dozens of bathers were shooting, or trying to shoot, are not. suitable. The best performers among the people patronising those places would do a great deal better if assisted by more favourable conditions. Holes and channels created by

the water's actions are against the best results in surf-shooting. We believe there is not another place in the world the equal of Waikiki—that little cove lying in the shelter of Diamond Head —for surf-shooting purposes, and the thousands of travellers who call at our pictiwesquer island every year endorse that opinion. It has a big curve protected by a large coral reef about half a mile from the shore. There is absolutclv no undertow.

SURF-BOARD AND CAXOIi

"There the fascinating sports of surf

canoeing and surf-board riding are indulged in by man, woman, and child, who insist, that they have the most exhilarating and fascinating pastime known. The canoe is cunningly turned before a breaker near the edge of the

reef till it is picked up like a feather on the inclined plane of the front of the wave, and borne with remarkable speed —frequently right to the shore. The hoard is worked on the same principle, but its control calls for much greater skill. "There are numbers of high-class surf-shooters in Honolulu, and some white people among them, but, as with every other game, a few can do better than the great majority. It was with the few I delighted to be. You ask me if I held the championship as a surfshooter? I did not, because we had no competitions, but 1 do not mind telling you that there were none round Honolulu whom I knew anything about able to shape better than me, and the full-blooded Hawaiian population of the place is something between 25,000. and .'JO,OOO. "You must get suitable days here to achieve the best results, and we, at Honolulu, also need suitable days, but more of them occur at Waikiki Beach than on this country's ocean front.

FAVOURABLE CONDITION S REQUIRED.

"Take Freshwater, for instance. I was promised a long roll there the day I gave that exhibition on the board, and perhaps such a state of affairs may be more often experienced at Freshwater than at Manly, Coogee, or Bondi, but I found a short roll and a sea otherwise which needed some managing. With everything favourable, one can

show one's best, and the more frequently conditions \re right the more practice the shooter "Your surfers do wonderfully well, all things considered. But not every man can become expert. All people are not built the right way. The greater the buoyancy the easier ,the task. There are men who can never 1 float properly. Their legs will insist upon dropping down.''