My story and the Book.

It was sometime winter 2013 when a friend called told me saying he was finishing up a board for big waves and wanted some in put on fin placement. I told him it'd been some time since I'd done any shooters so numbers weren't fresh in my head.

"I'll look in my book" I told him and  went to the file cabinet to dig it out. The book I pulled out wasn't the right book. The book I was reaching for, which  should have been in the file cabinet was my old shaping log book. The one that had board info from 1992 though about Y2K. I moved to Kauai in '94 so the book had my Hawaii board numbers and information.

I thought 'what the heck' where did that darn thing walk off too?  Well, it surfaced a couple weeks ago... what a relief... and I gave it good look though. It's a comfort to know all that information is back in my file cabinet.

A couple loose papers in the back that were extra nice. One was a note with the numbers for a Hawaiian tri fin longboard I've been thinking would be a nice addition to the model lineup and the other one was a note about the some boards I was doing for Kaipo Jaquias in '97 when he finished 5th in the ASP.

An 8 year span and a lot of surfboards. From sub 6 footers to tankers to 9 foot plus shooters. I don't write in the book now, I've got individual sheets for each board I do these days, then I put the sheets in a binder... I guess that's a book too.

D.R.

One thing about the 4th of July,  sometimes we get a nice south swell arriving on and around the holiday. 

This year we got just that. A small swell into the holiday Friday, and a slightly larger one for Saturday/Sunday. A I decided to break my MO... not going to the beach on a holiday or weekend... to see if I could get in on the swell.

Getting out early, like to the beach by 6:30A was the plan. Friday the 4th there were no parking spaces at inside point and too much crowd for up in the Fair Grounds. I ended up talking story with a few of the crew that surf pipe like everyday, guys I don't see too often.

Saturday was really clean but just too inconsistent to motivate a go out.  Today I got a parking space after a short wait, nice. Looked at the surf for 10...15 minuets and thought 'even though the surf was cleaner yesterday, and it is a little more consistent, I've come down for the 3rd time now, I should go out even if it's pretty crowded. So I went out.

I got some waves by manipulating my way through the lineup. Surfed for an hour or so and came in after waiting through a long lull and getting an insider to the beach.

On my way back to the house I got to thinking. Though I know some guys that fish plenty, and listened to them talk story about their days fishing, I've only fished about 3 times in my life.  You know what? Surfing in a crowded lineup is like fishing.  Some times when you fish you catch nothing. Or your getting no bites so you move your boat some and find a couple. Sometimes your friends in another boat get all the fish and you get nothing. 

Sometimes in the crowded lineup you get nothing. Sometimes your buddies get all the set waves. Sometimes if you move around in the lineup you end up getting a couple... Just like fishing it's all kind of random.

D.R