Surfski Knowledge Base

Downwind Technique Waves that you are able to surf on open water with a fast vehicle (long, narrow SUP, OC, surfski, hydrofoil SUP) come and go with the wind. If you are going for a paddle to catch wind driven waves, you are going “downwind”. ie you are going downwinding, or going on a downwinder. Saying you are going on a “downwinder” implies going solely in one direction from point A to point B downwind the whole way, having setup a shuttle for pickup at the end point and retrieval of vehicles from the start point. The exhilaration of downwind paddling drives the growing popularity of surfskis more than any other single factor.

Ocean ski, Spec ski - the modern surfski, “ocean ski”, evolved for open ocean wave surfing and downwinding from a version, “spec ski”, that was designed to break through shore break and be used for life saving. This terminology is most commonly still used in Australia.

SS - surfski, OC - outrigger canoe

Dragon Boat - 8 to 20 person canoe with two columns of paddlers sitting side by side. You typically only paddle on one side, in contrast to OCs where you regularly swap sides with your paddle and paddle on each side in turn.

HPK - high performance kayak eg surfski, SK - sea kayak, FSK - fast sea kayak etc. these are designations that were developed to provide some uniformity of boat speed classification for racing - based on width and length of boats. SoundRowers.org Classification Reference

ama - Polynesian term for the outrigger float on the left of an OC or V1

iako - Hawaiian term for a pole (2 per canoe) that connects an ama to an outrigger canoe (Polynesian term is “aka”)

huli - term commonly used by OCers to mean falling in the water which is typically a little more dramatic in an OC because the OCer almost always falls in on their right side with the ama on the left flipping to the right side also. Huli is also becoming more common in usage with other types of boats to also refer to falling in the water.