🏄‍♀️ Yes, you too can get seasick while surfing 🤮

👋 Happy National Monte Cristo Day! It feels like just yesterday we celebrated National Welsh Rarebit Day. What is this obsession with grilled cheese sandwiches, I ask you? And does it work for surfing seasickness?

🏄‍♀️ Let’s surf:

• Yes, you can get seasick while surfing 🤮

• Strike the pose with your board 🏄🏻‍♀️

• What the heck is balsa? 🌳

• From portable showers to Waco 🛀🏻

• Surf news roundup 🗞️

• Who can still go on surf vacay in 2026? 🏝️

^SURFODRAMA

🏄🏻‍♀️ Yes, you too can get seasick while surfing 🤮

Personally, I don't get seasick or motion sick while I'm surfing, but on a few occasions after leaving the water, I've felt as though I were still floating. I had to sit my ass down until the land remembered how to stay still.

It turns out that neither experience is particularly unusual.

Some surfers feel mildly queasy. Others gag or even vomit while waiting for waves. Isn't this just delightful? As if surfing wasn't hard enough already.

And there are some surfers who don't believe one can get seasick while surfing. Until… it eventually catches up with them. No one is safe.

Because a surfboard is, after all, a very small and particularly unstable boat.

🧠 What causes seasickness while surfing?
Seasickness is a form of motion sickness. The most widely accepted explanation is something called sensory conflict, which is what happens when your brain receives conflicting information about whether and how your body is moving.

Your inner ear contains your vestibular system, which helps detect movement, balance and the position of your body. Your eyes and the sensory receptors in your muscles and joints are also feeding your brain information.

Normally, all these systems broadly agree with one another. But imagine lying prone on a surfboard in a choppy lineup. Your inner ear feels every rise, fall, tilt and sideways wobble of the board. Meanwhile, your eyes may be staring at the deck, the water immediately in front of you or a relatively stationary coastline.

Your body says: We are moving. Your eyes say: Are we? For real? It doesn't feel like it. Your brain responds by making you want to throw up.

The same conflict can happen while you sit on your board, although many surfers in our group said lying down was considerably worse. Paddling requires more head movement, more looking downward and more time spent rising and falling with the surface of the water.

Symptoms normally appear gradually. You might first feel warm, tired or generally "off," followed by yawning, sweating, dizziness, stomach awareness and increased saliva. That can progress into nausea, retching and vomiting.

In other words, if you suddenly find yourself salivating as if you've just noticed a tasty donut, it may be time to head in.

🌬️ Why does it happen on some days but not others?
For many of the surfers who responded, the clearest trigger was choppy, windy or rolly water.

Clean, glassy waves move underneath you in a relatively predictable way. Wind chop can move your board constantly and in several directions at once. Add currents that require you to keep lying down and paddling, and your brain has a great deal of confusing motion to process.

Some people are simply more susceptible to motion sickness than others. Genetics appear to play a role, and people with a history of migraine, vertigo or vestibular disorders may be more vulnerable. Women report motion sickness more frequently than men, because, of course.

Being sleep-deprived can make it worse. Alcohol and nicotine can too. The group also identified heat, dehydration, hunger, caffeine and anxiety as possible triggers.

💡 How can you fix it?
There is no single trick guaranteed to work for everyone, but a few tested approaches include:

Look at the horizon: giving your eyes a stable visual reference can reduce the conflict between what you see and what your inner ear feels.

Reduce unnecessary head movement: sitting rather than lying on the board helped some members of the group. Others felt better after getting off the board and into the water for a moment.

Try controlled breathing: controlled breathing has worked surprisingly well in laboratory research, although it is not as effective as medication. But given that you have to take medication before you get out into the surf, not after, it's worth trying.

Get used to the motion: easier said than done. But apparently if you do it long enough your brain will adapt.

Choose your conditions: the obvious one. Don't go out when it's choppy.

💊 What about motion-sickness medication?
We're no doctors, so we won't be recommending any potions. But this is what we know. There are two issues with taking the meds.

One: you have to take them before you jump into the ocean. Two: they may, as the small print or TV voiceover reminds us, cause many side effects. And we don't want a single side effect when surfing. No, siree.

The group offered an entire medicine cabinet of remedies: ginger tablets, ginger tea, ginger sweets, acupressure wristbands, chewing gum, electrolytes, peppermint, cold water and various combinations of snacks.

We have no statistical evidence to support these, but hey, it may be just a placebo effect. Still, if ginger sweets help you, chomp away.

🔁 Can I go for a second surf?
Some people, like me, continue to feel rocking, swaying or floating after returning to land. This is known as mal de débarquement, French for "sickness of disembarkation."

Your brain adapts to the repeated movement of the water, then needs a little time to readjust when the movement stops. It usually disappears quickly. If it persists, repeatedly returns or affects your balance, speak to a medical professional.

Needless to say, if you ever feel nauseated, dizzy, disoriented, dehydrated or unusually sleepy, going for a surf or going back in may not be in your best interest.

No one wants to surf in the puke.

^{PIC OF THE WEEK}

🏄🏻‍♀️ Strike the pose with your board

Our “Surfer girls and their boards” series continues on Instagram.

Thank you to all who participated in part 2! You are amazing! 🤩

Follow us on @girlswhocantsurfgood on Instagram for part 3, and 4, and 5…

^{SURF THRU HISTORY}

 🌳 What the heck is balsa?

They call it a hardwood, but it’s super soft and light. Go figure.

So, why do we care about balsa at all?

Balsa is a smooth, porous, “blond” wood grown mainly in Central and South America. The lightest varieties can even weigh less than cork.

Before foam came along, balsa was the material that helped surfboards become considerably less plank-like.

You will remember that early surfboards were made from solid redwood and could weigh around 65 pounds or more. Fun. In the 1930s, boardmakers began combining redwood with much lighter balsa. Pacific Systems Homes, a Los Angeles house-building company that also dabbled in surfboards, was producing redwood-and-balsa boards during that decade.

After World War II, all-balsa boards became standard in Southern California. Bob Simmons, Matt Kivlin and Joe Quigg used the wood to develop the “Malibu chip,” a thinner, lighter and more maneuverable style of board. Some weighed as little as 25 pounds, roughly 40 pounds less than the average redwood plank of only a few years earlier.

So, we care about balsa because it helped transform the traditional surfboard into a watercraft you could actually maneuver across a wave.

But balsa’s reign didn’t last long. By the mid-1950s, polyurethane foam had arrived. Foam was even lighter, cheaper and, unlike balsa, could be endlessly replicated. Bye-bye, balsa.

Not everyone was happy about it.

“The stuff just felt wrong,” big-wave pioneer Greg Noll recalled. Foam was gritty, didn’t smell good and had “no life to it.” Another surfing giant, Phil Edwards, mused in 1992: “We used to have a saying. Spastic on plastic, good on wood.” Oh, Phil.

Balsa never disappeared completely. A small number of new boards, particularly expensive longboards, are still made from it. Because a solid balsa shortboard would be rather heavy by today’s standards, modern versions are often “chambered,” meaning sections of wood are hollowed out to reduce their weight. Balsa can also be wrapped around foam rails or applied as a thin veneer over a foam core.

Original balsa boards are now valued as historical artifacts, works of craftsmanship and extremely attractive things to hang on the wall. In 2009, a 10'4" balsa board shaped by Matt Kivlin sold for $39,000.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

With big thanks to the Encyclopedia of Surfing for caring about balsa.

^{LATEST FROM GIRLS WHO CAN’T SURF GOOD}

💬 3 things we’re figuring out this week

🚿 What's a good portable shower for a surfer's Christmas gift? Community top picks: RinseKit and RinseKit Pro (pumped pressure, most-recommended), BeachBox (no power needed), Advanced Elements Summer Shower (solar-heated, throw it on the roof of the car), and USB-rechargeable Amazon options like Ridgewinder. Winter hack from a couple of members: partially fill it and top up with just-boiled water from an insulated bottle right before use for a warm rinse.

🎡 What's Waco Surf Park actually like? Community consensus: it's genuinely great, and one member calls it her favorite place on earth. But heads up: they've started pushing overnight hotel bookings (better prices, priority waves) as they build out the timeshare/condo development on-site. Which, if you read our recent Surfodrama on everyone wanting a piece of surfing, will sound familiar. You can still go for a single session, but you have to check the calendar. On the flip side: Palm Springs Surf Club got a thumbs down from the same member, and everyone's watching for DSRT Surf to open.

🇯🇵 Where to catch baby longboard waves in Japan? Community top picks: Kamakura (45 minutes from Tokyo by train, a full surf town with rentals and change rooms everywhere), Kugenuma (mostly baby waves, walk up and rent), Kuujukuri Beach in Chiba, Shimoda, and Okinawa. Etiquette is roughly the same as Australia (change in the car park, use the outdoor showers), but locals appreciate a greeting when you paddle out.

👉 Join us for more recs, chatter, and support

^{THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY SURF NEWS ROUNDUP}

🗞️ Don’t cross Gaga. LA wants a wave pool. Shark. Crocodile. Surf college.

🎤 Lady Gaga demands $232K from Lost Surfboards
A federal judge dismissed Lost's $100M trademark suit against Gaga in August. Now her legal team is demanding Lost cover her $232,484 in attorneys' fees, calling the case "a publicity stunt masquerading as a lawsuit."

🏙️ Now LA wants a wave pool too
A new proposal would redevelop Redondo Beach's Seaside Lagoon into a year-round facility with a compact wave pool, competing with a stalled $200M South Bay Surf Park proposal in El Segundo backed by the same billionaire behind the Palm Springs Surf Club.

🦈 A West Australian surfer risked his life to save a shark attack victim
Shannon Dunn spotted Mel Ismail (bitten at Glenfield Beach on Monday, lost his foot) waving from bloody water, paddled out to rescue him, and drove him to an ambulance in the back of his ute.

🐊 And a crocodile went for a paddle at Pavones
A 6-foot croc was spotted cruising an (empty, thankfully) lineup at Pavones, Costa Rica on September 13. Costa Rica recorded 28 crocodile attacks between 2015 and 2024.

🎓 Hawai'i is getting its first college surf team
Hawai'i Pacific University announced this week that it will launch the state's first college surf team in spring 2027, competing at the NSSA Championship at Salt Creek in June.

👉 Read the full news roundup

^{ALL THINGS SURF DIRECTORY}

🏝️ Who can still go on surf vacay in 2026?

Who says the summer’s over? There’s still time to squeeze in a wee surf retreat before the end of the year.

🇵🇭 Siargao Island: Over 40s Retreat — Oct 4-10, 2026 · Philippines
🇪🇸 Surf & Soul Retreat — Oct 10-17, 2026 · Andalusia, Spain
🇵🇹 Lambada Surf & Yoga — Oct 15-22, 2026 · Peniche, Portugal
🇲🇽 MoFlo x Surf Retreat — Nov 11-15, 2026 · Baja, Mexico
🇮🇩 Over 40's Surf Retreat: Lombok — Nov 30-Dec 6, 2026 · Indonesia
🇱🇰 Green Wave Improver Retreats, The Sevana — Dec 20, 2026 and Dec 27, 2026 · Sri Lanka

👉 Browse all upcoming retreats in the All Things Surf Directory

^{SUPPORT THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

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^{ALL THINGS THE WIPEOUT WEEKLY}

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⬆️ Aaaaaaand that was the last wave of the week!
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With stoke,

Zuz & The Wipeout Weekly