This week on Big Whiteboard Wednesday it’s all about your leading arm. Like your first day on stage in the school play, oh what do with those hands? Your trailing arm usually minds it’s own business and gets on with the job of surfing but your leading arm just won’t do what it’s should. Getting your leading arm in the right place will make you surf better (and looks so much more elegant). Interesting it is also the most common thing to be taught incorrectly. So here it is, in all it’s glory, the great mystery of the actually very handy leading arm.

Many apologies for the late post by the way. Gem and I were in San Jose all week buying goodies for the surf resort which opened on Monday. Stay tuned next week for the video highlights from this, the first week at our luxury surf coaching resort (no doubt accompanied by a funky and eclectic sound track).

When the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) lit up last Friday we headed for the hills. The 8.8 earthquake caused a tsunami threat for the entire Pacific ocean. We jumped in the golf cart and trundled up the hill to Lagarta Lodge for what turned out to be a long lazy breakfast overlooking an ultimately tranquil ocean and a fascinating conversation about our mutual inability to understand quantum theory. Another juicy conversation we all got stuck into the other day was about how patriotism is an overrated ‘virtue’ and that we (people generally) should all spend more time trying to get on with each other and less time waving flags. As if to emphasis the point, while we sipped our morning smoothies in Costa Rica, 17 time zones away, the first ASP Championship event of the year was on hold in Australia while they waited to see if the same tsunami would appear over there. It’s a pretty small world really. No tsunami showed up either on the Gold Coast (Australia) or The Rich Coast (Costa Rica) and on both coasts there were a surprising amount of people enjoying some pretty fun waves in spite of the possibility of a ‘Day After Tomorrow’ like wall of water appearing on the horizon at any moment.

What the earthquake did change however was just how long a day’s surfing would be in future (all though not by much admittedly). NASA announced on Monday that the earth’s axis has shifted after the 8.8 quake and now an earth day is 1.26 millionths of a second shorter. This was figured out by a clever chap called Richard Gross from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Steven Novella described it as being like a spinning ice skater pulling their arms in closer to the their body and subsequently spinning faster as a result. Richard Gross also estimated that the Earth’s figure axis shifted by about three inches, deviating roughly 33 feet from the north-south axis around which Earth revolves. The figure axis is the imaginary line around which the world’s unevenly distributed mass is balanced (apparently). Pretty cool stuff!

The building work we’ve been doing to make a pool, lounge, eating area and classroom at the Innocent Surf School resort in Nosara is finally finished. We pleased as punch with it as you can imagine.

An ariel view of the chalets, pool and rancho.

We had to take a break from the unpacking and organizing for an emergency game of jenga (as you do).

This is the new classroom area where we’ll be doing all our surf theory lessons and video analysis. This is the beating heart of surfing academia. (Nice sentence!?!)

The inside of the surf chalets isn’t looking too shabby either.

The new golf cart eagerly awaits the opportunity to ferry frothing surfers to the water’s edge.

We christened the new rancho on Saturday night with a magical combination of pizza, imperial, cards and jumping in the pool.

This week on Big Whiteboard Wednesday we talking about the difference between ‘trimming’ and ‘carving.’ Usually we try to stay away from surf lingo but this is a really import idea to understand. If you’ve ever tried to do a turn and ending up tipping over instead, then this is for you.