How to Leftie Pan-Am Minibus -Luke Pomeroy

This first week at keeners has been awesome with many epic features on both channels of the Ottawa River. The middle offered spots like Angles Kiss, Butterfly, Garvins waves, Infinity wave, Big Smoothie, and Warm Apple Pie. The Main channel offered the legendary Mini-Bus wave at very low side, huge whirlpools and a massive Coliseum rapid. 

    Of these spots my favourite was definitely mini-bus, although very different from prime flows and much more foamy this wave was still so awesome. My favourite and go-to trick on this wave is the left blunt/Pan-Am. Here I'll explain how to execute this trick.

  Step 1: Catch the wave,

 This is the make or break move when trying to do a pan am, if you don't want the wave you will not catch the wave, go more right than you want to because it will pay off. Nobody wants to miss the wave and wait in line again.  

Step 2: Cycle to the top of the wave

  Congratulations you are now surfing an awesome big wave, this in itself is sick but you can make it even better by getting to the top of the wave and driving down the face. To do this on Minibus you want to gently carve to to surfers right and aggressively carve back left into the foam pile. To help know how high you are on the wave look over your shoulder and spot the top of the foam, this is where you want to be. There is a very fine line between getting a sick pass and flushing off the wave here and it will take a couple surfs to really learn the wave well.  

Step 3: Starting the Pan-Am rotation

   Now that you are driving down the wave you are going to wave to aggressively edge to the right and lift your knees hard. The harder you lift your knees the bigger you will throw. The first bounce out of the foam will be this biggest on this wave but it is possible to throw lower. Try to throw just left of the top of the shoulder. Have your bow facing between 12 and 2 o'clock on the wave when dropping your right edge. 

Step 4: The Pan-Am 

     Now you will want to quickly switch edges from right to left and drop a bunch of left edge. You will want to have your left blade close to the side of your boat and slightly over vertical. Having your left blade close beside you and punching your right blade away and under your boat will help you get over vertical. You should be looking under your boat at this point for faster rotation and be completely upside down on the wave. 

Step 5: Landing the Pan-Am

       From here you will want to very quickly crunch way forwards and put in a quick back stroke to stay on the wave. Now you will want to get your head back looking upstream and claim it from wherever you are! You just did a Pan-Am and it probably looked sick!!

(Thank you Mom and Dad for sending me again!)