Longboard club turning the tide for women surfers in Nova Scotia

A Halifax-area surfing club is fostering a community of women in the sport, providing opportunities to improve their skills and share their knowledge.

The Trim Collective: A Ladies Longboard Club was established last summer. It holds "board meetings" and progression sessions a few times a year at Martinique Beach on the Eastern Shore, 50 kilometres east of Halifax.

"We all get together, we bring our surfboards onto the beach and we can just hang out," Sarah Zollinger, one of the collective's founders, told CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia.

"It is really nice to talk with other women about gear or equipment or just be able to talk to other women without fear of mansplaining, if I may."

Collette Robertson, who founded the collective with Zollinger, said they were inspired to start the group after a few women-only sessions were held at Lawrencetown Beach, just outside of Halifax.

During those sessions, someone would record video of the surfers to review and learn from.

"That was the main light bulb for Sarah and I. That was the first time either of us had seen ourselves on video surfing, and surfed with such a large group of women, which is pretty, pretty rare," Robertson told Information Morning.

After a subsequent surfing event was held for girls, she said they realized there was an appetite for women-only events as a place to bond and build community.

The number of women in the water has grown tremendously since she started surfing in the early 2000s, Zollinger said.

"I was often, almost always, the only woman in the water and now easily there are many days when there's more women than men," she said.

They get between 15 and 25 women turning out for events, Zollinger said. Two progression sessions are scheduled to take place on the summer and winter solstices, when members will get in the water together and record themselves surfing.

The following month, the group will get together to review the tapes, discuss techniques and provide feedback. 

"It's really hard to get better at surfing. It's a lot of shots-in-the-dark and hoping you're doing the right thing, so that's just something that we wanted to give back to the community," Zollinger said.

Few people get the opportunity to see themselves surfing on video and to learn from that, she said. That was the intention of the collective.

Robertson said the first time she saw herself surfing, it was incredibly humbling but it gave her a place to progress from.

And since the group only meets twice a year to surf, members have an opportunity to see how they've grown over a six-month period.

"We had some women that attend these events very regularly and it's really cool to see how much they've improved over the sessions," she said.

As for the name, the Trim Collective is derived from a simple longboard manoeuvre called trimming.

"You're just standing in the sweet spot on the board and you're just gliding and when you see someone do it, it's so beautiful but it's so simple," Robertson said.

"I guess it's kind of the essence of longboarding — this focusing on that beautiful simple elegance of longboarding."