Here are TOP 6 coldwater tips to keep you charging as temps drop and conditions get juicy…

  1. Surfing in cold water is 50 percent attitude and 50 percent gear. You just need to be amped up to get out when it’s cold. Then winter sessions may not be your calling if you’re shivering and moaning at 69F. If you’re fired up with no crowds, dense winter swells, and offshore howls, then you’re halfway there already!
  2. Get dressed indoors / undressed. If you have the option to put indoors your wetsuit, boots, and gloves…..DO IT! This keeps you warm from the beginning and also makes you go surfing instead of bagging it when you get to the beach because it’s too cold or too high or something. Go straight home in your suit after you’re done surfing and turn out of it in a HOT tub. The bottom line is that standing butt-ass-naked in a windy, frozen, asphalt parking lot is the hardest aspect of coldwater surfing. The session would feel twice as warm if you can do one of these or both indoors.
  3. Do not undersize your wetsuit for cold water. Some of the new suits are so stretchy that they are scaled up to half a size by many surfers so that they don’t get too baggy over time. Don’t do this in your hooded wetsuit in the winter. You don’t want the super tight 4mm, 5mm, and 6mm suits on the shoulders. Like the 3mm and 2mm suits do, these thicker suits will not stretch out over time. If the winter suit you are trying on (or own) feels super tight and restrictive on the shoulders, your paddling endurance will certainly be hampered.
  4. Select a warm one. There’s a tendency for boards to often go shorter and wetsuits to be thinner. Is it in our human nature to torment ourselves, perhaps? For older suits that were less flexible, to enhance the paddling stability of the suit, it made sense to go thinner.
  5. It always seems the first few sessions take longer…. It always seems like a mission to get all the gear on, particularly the first few cold water sessions of the season, no matter how good your suit and accessories are. Take your time and realize that you can get the routine down after a few sessions and it won’t feel any harder than putting on your board shorts. Holding your socks on to help slip your feet through the suit makes it much easier to put on the legs of your suit. Clearly, before you put your boots on, take them off, unless you have those high calf socks that say “Bacon Fat” on them. The ones you are meant to wear on the outside of your wetsuit.
  6. Purchase a fan from a box. Normally, at a thrift shop or Walmart/K-Mart, you can get these for $10-15. Hang your suit on the helpful hanger issued by the manufacturer after you’re done surfing, then spread out all your boots and gloves with the openings pointing down to the box fan.