How many go outs should you give yourself and a new surfboard to get acquainted?

Lets say you’ve got a new board that is not the same type board you’ve been riding. So how long do you give yourself to figure it out. 1, 2, 3 go outs? I’ve heard guys say if the board doesn’t work for them by the second go out it’s over.

I just don’t get that. But I guess if you think you know what you like and don’t immediately find it…

Really is there a surfboard that doesn’t work? Realistically, if the board floats and you can paddle the darn thing into a wave and the wave scoops you up it works. It may be squirrelly or you may not be launching and sticking giant airs or hanging ten but if you can catch a wave with it I’d say it works.

That’s extreme I know but what’s also realistic is it may take some time to get a certain board down. There may be a longer learning curve with some boards than others. Of course one of the problems these days are the crowds. We don’t get as many at bats these days so you don’t want to waste the few waves you get on your go out with trying to understand a new piece of equipment.

It’s best to try new stuff in good conditions not sloppy junk surf.

If a board seems stiff it may be the fins not the board.

As well if the board seems squirrelly it may be the fins.

If the board has more foam volume than you’re used to slow your moves down.

If the board has less foam volume than you’re used to keep a low stance or center.

Think and move through one maneuver at a time… like a bottom turn. After the turn let the board follow through before you set up another move.

If you continually have trouble ask someone who knows surfing for some help in figuring the board out. Figuring out new equipment will help your surfing, even if it is finding out what you don’t like.

D.R.

After a nice session with old or new equipment it’s always nice to have it set in your memory with a scene like this one.

Photo by Matt Riley.

What drives surfboard design? Is it the pros, the shapers that build boards for the pros? Is it the regular core guy that asks a shaper to make a board a certain way? Or….?

It’s probably all of the above…. To some degree anyway. The pro boards are pretty generic. There is a direction professional surfing seems to move and everything and everyone that follows it stays in that narrow design parameter. Pro riders have there own ideas for what works for them, so boards are made around those ideas.

For instance, when I worked at Hawaiian Blades and shaped boards for Kaipo Jaquias in ’97 he liked a pretty flat board over all. As well, he liked a wider nose on his boards. So we made his boards to his interests. And the boards that went to Japan under the Kaipo model where like his boards. I can’t imagine any of the pros that don’t shape there own boards being any different.

The local board builder may simply follow what is happening around him. See a particular board and make one like it. Surf it and have the guys that ride his boards surf it and get feed back on how it goes. Make changes and develop a board design that way.

Now, as has been said, the field is wide open. Surfboard design has almost no boundaries. And surfers are not adverse at trying deferent things. Because of the interest in trying different things it’s seems board design has moved away from the narrow pro board parameters.

Core shapers get ideas and develop those ideas via the guys that ride their boards, refining what works along the way. As these new and or different designs get noticed interest is built and surfers begin to buy the boards they see the local core guys riding. This isn’t any different than the way pro board designs get developed really.

So… surfboards are designed by surfers, at least the ones that work. It’s an evolving process that circles around the core and pro surfers that want to improve their surfing and explore ways to ride a wave.

D.R.

I’ve been reading the book “Surfboards” by Guy Motil. Loaded with interesting reading about surfboard history, it’s full of pictures of surfboards from redwood planks to modern day pro boards and everything in between.

The last chapter, Contemporary Surfboards, gets into what the writer calls the alternative surfboard or alt boards. With a quotes… one from Duncan Campbell “ I think the alternative board movement is good because it focuses on technique; surfboard design isn’t just pro-driven anymore.” And shaper Scott Raymond Henry “We went through design evolution so quickly the first time around… every three or four months we were onto something new” With Gary Linden adding “ Nowadays shapers get a chance ot reevaluate the old designs and see what’s valid from a futuristic point of view; when things are progressing rapidly you tend to forget what basic design elements work”

I can relate to those comments, as well, that particular chapter of the book. Though I’ve shaped plenty of tri fin short boards, or Thrusters, and even shaped boards for a top 5 ISP competitor, I personally have only had one standard Thruster type board, which I liked very much BTW. And it hasn’t been until now that I’ve got a name for all the boards I’ve built for myself over the last 3+ decades…. Alternative.

The very first tri fin I made for myself was different, it was egg shaped, I got laughed at, but now a tri fin egg shape is real common. I had been surfing a 6’3 single fin hull for about a dozen years until 1982 when I made that first tri fin for myself. It seemed natural to make one egg shaped because I’d been riding an egg shaped board for so long. I change the foil and rail line of course but it still was not the run of the mill look. The board worked great and I moved on to yet other boards that weren’t run of the mill.

Now that the alt board thing is around doing something different is even more fun than in times past. I get nice comments about my perimeter stringer stubbie quad every time I take it to the beach. One of the guys that rode the 5’11 stubbie quad I’ve got being passed around right now said “this board is hilarious”. He was riding it really well, so I think has comment was a compliment.

I like being different.

D.R.

My story post 33, the lost files…

My long time friend Bob told me a couple months ago he had a board he’d like me to look at and tell him if I thought I shaped it. It was a board from the early seventies under the Pure Fun Flyers label. I remember the name but… So, this past week Bob came by the shop with his seventies board and the story of how he got it.

One day a guy went by Ventura Surf Shop looking to sell the board. When Blinky saw it he bought it, and got Bob to come by and give it a look. Bob being the guy who had a small shop on Front street in Ventura back in the day, the boards he had made and sold were the Pure fun Flyers. He was of course interested in seeing the board. When Bob saw the board he was stoked and bought it. Really who wouldn’t? it’s in such good shape and besides it’s part of his history.

Bob brought the board to the shop so I could see it and determine if I had shaped it as well, to give it a little touch up work. He has a spot on the wall of his pool room, or is that billiards room, where the board will look nice.

I see the board and think ‘wow that is really clean’ and Bob asks “ do you think you shaped it?” I say ‘ well judging by its looks I suppose I could have but, I don’t remember ever shaping any boards with this label’ Bob says “ what are you talking about? You shaped a bunch of boards for me under this label. Blinky says if you did you would have signed it but there’s no writing on it except the number on the tail 529.”

‘Well, I tell Bob, I didn’t always sign boards back then. As a matter of fact I hardly ever signed board back then. So that doesn’t matter. But the 529 very well could be my writing.’

As we continue to talk some of the pieces begin to fit together for me. I did shape boards for another guy at the time under the Natural Motion label and Bob would have me do his boards too. Since the number is in ink and the board has an ink pin line on it I start thinking I may have laminated the board as well.

Man, how can I have a void in my memory like that and not remember shaping boards with that label. Are there any others out there? Lets see, Ryder Surfboards, Morye-Pope, William Dennis, Wilderness, Natural Motion, a few for Con, Hawaiian Blades, Dick Brewer, John Perry, JD… who am I missing?

I got to thinking about the Pure Fun Flyer and remembered an outline I saw in my archives. I dug it out yesterday and sure enough I think if I lay that outline over Bob’s board it will fit.

D.R.