This web site is dedicated to learning about nature and how this understanding may help paddlers enjoy the sport and perhaps paddle smarter on race day. Many paddlers are fully experiential and have no need for theories on weather or waves. Learning science of nature may make one a better paddler, or it may not.
Much of the material in this web site has been reprinted with permission from the authors, educational web sites that offer their material to other non-commercial web sites that focus on learning and some may have been compiled from various sources. If this is a problem for any author, please let me know at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and the material will be reviewed and if found offending, will be removed..
Some of the material is original and is compiled from my notes taken during numerous aviation related meteorological courses over the years. Some of it is my own conjecture and theories. Some valid, some maybe not so much. Wherever possible credit is given to the origin of graphics and text.
Nature is a unique, 'holistic' system and attempting to describe the different parts such as water currents leads to discussing waves as they are affected by wind, which leads us to discuss wind currents. To create a menu we should just have one topic called NATURE, but we do not think that way and must describe how the parts of nature work, so our menu organization will be a guideline only.
The more understanding gained about the place we live, the more clear comes the knowledge that man's vision of his environment is extremely myopic. We appear to believe that nature is a gift to us that we can do with it what we wish.
This belief appears to be that we can manipulate and do our will with nature in some omnipotent fashion. The craziest thought of all is that we are outside of nature. "If we just get a little smarter, we can hop on a rocket and go to the next place if we screw this one up." We may be able to screw this one up, but NATURE WILL CONTINUE, man may just not be a part of it.
By respecting nature, or not; we are respecting ourselves, or not. Surely the Hawai'ian concept of 'ohana includes the earth as a family member as well as our fellow human.
We are as much a part of the energy that makes up this earth as the waves of the ocean or the heat from the sun. A philisophical 'guru' from the sixties, named Alan Watts, made the argument that we are all of the same stuff, even to the extreme. He referred to the topic of man being inextricably linked with, and part of, nature by the academically known name of field theory. Science cannot accurately describe a being or that being's actions without describing what is going on in the environment. He explains, "We do not, generally speaking, experiece ourselves as the behaviour of the field, but rather as a center of energy and consciousness which sometimes manages to control its environment....there is a somewhat hostile relationship between the human organism and its social and natural environment, which is expressed by such phrases as "man's conquest of nature" or "man's conquest of space, and other such antagonistic figures of speach."1
In two thousand years of paddling by the Polynesians, no doubtedly, would have understood Alan Watts explicitly because this would have been the way they interacted with the oceans, wind, weather, etc. Their being was as much a part of nature as nature was a part of them. I believe this is the very blood of the old culture of paddling, that nature resonates within us.
This web site should treat the study of our environment with respect and present an accurate understanding of why and how we can interact with more efficiency and wisdom in our paddling environment. The environment is a homogenous energy system. The study of ocean waves is much like the study of sound waves. Basic wave theory is the same science that addresses, sound light, radiomagnetic propagation and other energy forms. As sound, it explains power (volume), amplitude, harmonics, etc. The love of sound and encouraging it into patterns is the making of music. Nature perhaps does the same with its ocean waves.
A picture comes to mind of porposes and whales enjoying this huge symphony of music created by their own songs against the orchestra of wave sounds above and the physical sensations throughout the ocean. Their sound experience of man and his machines might imaginably be like a friday night ambulance screaming and careening down the road through the middle of this natural harmony of sound.
"The above photo must be how god would go surfing when not doing all that important god stuff."
Credit Where Credit is Due
The source of much of this graphics, text and photographs is the COMET® Website at http://meted.ucar.edu/ of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)), sponsored in part through cooperative agreement(s) with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) ©1997-2009 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. All Rights Reserved.
Much of the narrative is compiled by myself from a lifetime in aviation, mostly in coastal environs, numerous courses in meteorology and 10 years of paddling in coastal waters of Canada.
Reading the wind direction: Often in higher winds found offshore, it is faily easy to determine the wind's direction. In coastal areas, however winds are often lighter.
