Skimboarding the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch

In June I was invited to visit the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch. It's been my goal for a couple years to be the first person to run and skimboard out to the kelly slater wave, and I finally had a shot at it... but only one shot. I took a video on my phone of the wave and studied the timing for over an hour in the back room. Needless to say I was shaking like a leaf on a tree when I was finally standing on the edge waiting for the train (that creates the wave) to start moving. I couldn't believe I was even standing there. When I originally told corporate what I wanted to do they wouldn't give me "approval" to skim it, but I decided to go anyways for the slight chance I'd get the opportunity to try when I got there. Thanks to the awesome friendly and professional staff at the surf ranch, I was given an opportunity to try something nobody else has - Run, Drop, and Slide out to the Ultimate man made skimboarding wave at the Kelly Slater Surf Ranch. The good news is I made the long and difficult timed slide first try, the bad news is corporate was watching over webcam and told the employees to not let me skim out to it anymore. So I decided I'd just do a standard jet ski step off on to my skimboard. Well, they didn't want me to do that either since my skimboard didn't have a leash and wanted to prevent the board from getting washed up and damaging the thick vinyl liner covering the bottom of the pool. So we called the awesome maintenance guy over and had him drill a hole in my skimboard so I could attach a leash and still skim the wave.