The surfboards I ride post 2 or, the surfboards you ride.

Did anybody that surfed in the sixties ever hear the words ‘the board doesn’t work‘? I don’t remember hearing anyone say that. Actually, I don’t remember ever hearing anyone say that until maybe the eighties.

What I do remember is getting a new board and surfing it until you figured it out. Sometimes you’d get it down in short order. Sometimes it would take a number of trips to the beach. But, you always worked at it until you knew what you could or couldn’t do with the thing, and then lived with it until you got a new board.

Sure, as we all progressed and wanted to do quicker turns and maneuver more on the wave we ditched the old “D” fins and found smaller aspect fins helped with maneuverability but, did the old “D” not work? Maybe its semantics, “D” fins worked fine until we found out that they limited maneuverability…. Then they didn’t work anymore. But before that they worked fine.

I remember once making a board for someone… like a team rider type… when the guy saw the board for the first time said ‘the board won’t work, the tail is too thick’. How thick or thin the tail was supposed to be for the board to “work” he couldn’t say, but what he saw wouldn’t work. Since surfing is 98% mental guess what? There was no way the board was going to work after the guy said ‘the board won’t work’. I later mentioned what the guy said to another board builder friend, his comment?... “ He said it wouldn’t work before he rode it? Well, it sure won’t work now will it”?

I made a board for one of the pro guys I’ve done boards for in the past. I’d made him plenty boards, but one in particular as soon as he saw it he rejected it flat out. He never said it wouldn’t work though. Of course good surfers can ride anything and look good but, this particular board was not what he was wanting, he could tell by looking at it, so that was that.

Personally, of all the boards I’ve had over the years there have been none that I could ever say “didn’t work” First off, a surfboard has no moving parts…. Unless the fins are loose…. So how could they not work? Each board may ride a bit different than another but reality… they all work. That said, I had one board that was seriously moody. When I first started riding it finding my feet was none to easy. Seems more times than not I’d plant my feet down in the wrong spot on take off spaz through the first turn until I could relocate my foot position for the next maneuver. After a few go outs I even decided to put some markers on the deck for my foot positions…. It helped a little. But even with the board the way it was there were go outs that I had the best time surfing it. So… did the board work or not?

Are there boards you can get that are as close to perfect as possible? Are there boards that “work” great starting with the first wave and every wave after? Is there such a thing as love at first sight?

Surfing... and love.... is a very individual thing. The questions asked in this post; you may have to answer them yourself. What do you think?

Geez, I even ended with a question...

D.R.