Sensing Vibration on the Water

If you are into paddle sports, sailing, surfing, diving or swimming, you know how changeable water can be: currents, tides, swells, consistency. Water can be as hard as a rock when you do a belly flop, or smooth as cream when you make a perfect dive. In water sports, reading the water is key, and evoking the water you want is mastery. But how do you read the water? Sight, touch, smell, sound, balance… they all help. But I suggest that the primary sense is vibration. How the hull vibrates. The paddle, the groan of the keel, the tremor of the board. You feel the vibration of the water through your feet or sit-bones, through your hands and throughout the watery and boney parts of your body – and even through the air pockets in your sinuses or the spongy part of your mastoid bone.