Mate I'm too lazy to read through it all but biggest tip I can give you is no matter what you do, how diligent you are, you are going to stuff up at the start. Caught in the impact zone, looking like a fool in the whitewash, going over the falls.

The biggest thing is swallowing your pride, have a good laugh and get back on to it and have fun. A few months and things start clicking, a year or 2 and you really start getting into things.

Make friends with locals and the blokes on here. They as much as they go off on a tangent or take the piss out of each other, have surf wisdom beyond the imagination of which you could ever learn.