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.

Knowing your idiosyncrasies is important to having a good time in the water… at least for me it does.

Yesterday I surfed for about two and a half hours. A pretty long go out for me in the winter. Usually an hour and a half is enough of the cold, but yesterday wasn’t to cold so I hung for awhile longer. Reason being, it was way to crowded for the consistency, 3 or 4 slightly overhead set waves every five or eight minutes is not enough waves to fill the needs of 25 guys in a very uniform lineup. I kept hoping the crowd would thin out so I could get a little more action than I was getting…. It just didn’t happen.

One idiosyncrasy, I didn’t paddle out where I had a view of the line up. When I go out at the point or pipe when there is surf of decent size and I don’t get a view of the line up as I’m paddling out for some reason my timing gets off. Funny, even though I’ve surf these places thousands of hours I still get disoriented sometimes if I don’t get a look at the line up a certain way.

At the point if I don’t paddle out going up into the line up I just don’t get a good enough feel of the oceans rhythm to be set up for a good surf session. Yesterday I paddled out at the top of the point. Aside from getting picked off just as I reached the impact zone, another bad omen, I still never got a good look at the line up.

I didn’t catch a wave for at least 10 or 15 minutes either, which is another idiosyncrasy. I’ve got to get on my feet within the first few minutes in the water or my rhythm gets off. As well, the tide was dropping, I do better on a static tide or in coming tide.

So after two and a half hours I got a few OK slides and finally caught a wave that took me far enough down the point to call it quits. I don’t know… maybe the surf wasn’t as good as it looked.

Oh well, I sure have been enjoying the 7’0 stubbie quad I’ve been riding though!

D.R.

D.R. photo by David Puu.

My story post 32

As a teenager I read stories in the surf magazines about guys in Hawaii surfing big waves and being out when the horizon would disappear. I always wondered what the heck that meant…. It sounded ominous.

In winter 1967 I went up to Santa Maria with my sister and brother in-law Jerry to visit my Dad. My bother in-law surfed and we both thought that we would take our boards on the trip. Santa Maria is not that far away from Pismo Beach and some other spots. With our boards we could go look for surf on our weekend visit.

So Saturday morning we set out from my Dad’s house to surf and ended up at Morro Bay. I’d never been there but we found our way out to a spot at the giant rock that sits at the head of the bay. And what we saw when we drove up was some pretty good looking surf… a nice peak that broke into what looked like deep water along the rock where there was a deep water paddle out zone.

Though from our vantage point which was some distance from the surf zone and above the beach the surf looked good, and there was nobody out. So we got on our wetsuits, grabbed our boards and worked our way down the rocks to the waters edge.

When we jumped into the water we where surprised to find that we didn’t have to paddle because the water along the rock had a big rip current that took you right out to the line up. We really didn’t know where the line up was but when we got out to where it looked like the surf was consistently breaking we paddled out of the rip and over to the surf.

One thing for sure was the surf was much larger in the water than it looked like from the car. As well the current along the rock very strong and the size of the rock was spooky…. Then a set came.

So there we were, in the water all by ourselves and no one on the beach at a place we’d never been and looking at an on coming set that was much larger than we’d thought we’d seen from the beach… As the first waves came at us Jerry took off. I watched to see how Jerry had done with the wave but couldn’t tell because the surf was to big to see a rider from the back, he was gone and I was by myself.

I turned around only to see another set coming at me, but further out than where we were lined up for the previous one. I started paddling out as fast as I could and as I rose up the wave face of the first wave reached its top and looked over it to see what was next all I could see was feathering waves all the way to the horizon. I couldn’t see the end of that set and I couldn’t see the horizon. The wave right in front of me was feathering and so were the waves behind it.

I paddled as hard as I could to make it over the next wave. I thought if I’d get picked off by one these giant waves there was no way I’d be able to stay with my board and without my board I’d be done for sure. As I stroked up the wave face it capped just to my left and I thought I’d made it over. But the blast off the breaking wave caught me and bounced me completely around and somehow I was sliding down the wave face. Now prone and sliding down the wave I thought the best thing was to stay that way because if I stood up and then fell I’d be with out my board and in more trouble. As I slid down the wave scooting back a bit so I wouldn’t pearl at the bottom. I held on for dear life as I reached the bottom and prepared for the white water blast.

When it was over and I was on the beach I knew what it meant to see the horizon disappear.

D.R.

Surf breaking outside the Ventura pier

Care and feeding of your surfboard.

Over the last few times I’ve been down at the beach I’ve noticed a few guys do stuff with their boards that just rubs me the wrong way.

There are plenty of recommended care procedures for EPS / Epoxy boards like ‘don’t leave them in the sun or hot car etc. but in reality about every recommended practice for the EPS and Molded boards is what we all should have been doing with our traditional Polyurethane / Polyester boards.

No matter what kind of board you have it’s best to follow certain do and don’t practices that will help keep your board in good health and give you added use.

If you travel to and from the beach with your board in racks on top of your car always have the board in a good bag or board sock. Without the bag your board will be exposed to the sun for whatever length of time you have it on your car. Even on over cast days the UV exposure is not good for a surfboard.

When you get to the beach never put your board on the pavement…. Unless it’s still in a bag. If you absolutely have to put a board on the pavement turn it bottom up so contact with the ground is only on the nose and tail.

Absolutely never wax your board with it laying on pavement… I saw a guy doing that a week or so ago and from across the street I could hear the sound of crackling fiberglass from the small rocks the board had been set on. Geez… made my skin crawl.

If you hang at the beach for several hours don’t leave your board in the sun between go outs. If there’s no shade and you’re close to your car put the board in it’s bag and set it under your car. If you can’t do that put a towel over it on the beach while between go outs.

Strip the wax off your board every couple months. Give it a complete cleaning and when it’s all clean give it a good look for any small cracks or shatters that may need fixing. Check the fin boxes and plugs to make sure there are no cracks around them. It’s real common to see cracks at the front of the long box on a long board, or 2 plus one set up. Always keep your board water tight.

If you take care of your boards they will give you much more lasting enjoyment.

D.R.

Early 90's surf trip

Three more days and aloha 2008! Time flies when you’re having fun….

It’s been a year to remember, aside from being an election year here in the states, the media and powers that be talking so loud about the big financial melt down, you’d have to say the surf industry is seeing a slow down.

I think one of the best things that’s happened in the surf industry at least in California this year is the blank market has seemed to settle in. We’ve got a few good blank companies now that have worked through most of the idiosyncrasies of surf board foam and the people that buy it.

For me… it’s been good. I’ve got my Perimeter Stringer Long board Quad… the PSQ, which I started selling the first of this year after several months of testing in 07. I am now offering the Stubbie Quad which I will be doing some refinements on in the coming year as well as a couple new traditional long boards I’m planning to work on and offer in the new year and, of course all my other models. My lam shop is in its second year and hopefully we’ll see at least business sustain itself through the coming year. We may even have a booth at the Sacred Craft Expo in May at the Ventura County Fair Grounds.

As the new year comes to us we look back and reflect and look forward to what can be. I look back and am thankful for all the people that have bought my boards and brought lam work our way. I look forward to the work I’ve got now and how I will continue to refine my trade and make a better surfboard.

Stoked and waiting for surf.

Happy New Year!

D.R.

My Wife and I and all the grandkids, Christmas eve ‘08

What does a surfer do when the surf goes dead flat and stays that way for days on end?

The short answer… you go crazy.

If you’re still able… skate board.

Take time to patch dings on your boards.

When the dings are patched strip wax and clean your boards.

Clean the sand out of you car.

Put your wetsuits through the gentle cycle in the washing machine.

Watch surf movies.

Get depressed after watching surf movies because there’s no surf.

Go visit relatives all along not feeling like your missing something… like surf, and you aren’t missing anything because there is no surf…. you keep telling yourself.

Hang with your surf buddies.

Pic from the 1970’s courtesy of Doug Galati.

This house is right on the beach and take notice , the three guys are looking at the camera and the guy on the right ( Mike ) is looking out at the surf. Does he have the look on his face like ‘ is it flat or what’ ? Actually I don’t know if there was surf that day or not, just guessing.

The surf here is pretty much dead flat and has been for a week now. I could say it’s a good thing because Christmas is just a few days away and I don’t have a conflict with needing to do Christmas stuff and surfing at the same time.

Yeah, spent the last couple days shopping with my wife, and amazingly wasn’t conflicted at all. We went downtown Ventura yesterday and went to Carpinteria today.

Happy Holidays!

D.R.

Surfing a hull is different than surfing a multi-fin board. Contemporary foiled multi-finned boards are generally surfed off the tail, with the fins and hard edged bottoms they will hold a high line. Not so with a hull…

No, hulls won’t hold a high line. Saying that will bring questions to most like: Why would I want a board that won’t hold a high line.. that’s where the speed is? That’s a good question but to surf a hull it’s best to understand how a hull works.

There is a method to riding a hull that depends on your ability to maintain control of weighting your board in the right places down the wave face. Taking off you will slide down the wave face and weight into a turn at the bottom. After banking your board over on its rail and weighting into the turn you will drive your board down the line and because you stood up into your turn… weighted…. The board will climb up the wave face. As you come to the top of the wave you must un-weight the board so #1. it will stay with the wave and #2. if you’re on a lined up wall you won’t slip or spin out.

That first set of moves… take off, setting your edge, turn and climb give you a load of speed and once you’ve returned to the top of the wave you are ready to repeat the slide down the wave face setting your edge and climbing back up the wave face and gaining more speed.

There are many variations of where and how you will work your way along a wave face gaining speed, turning back, slowing down, riding in under and through white water but all the moves are dependent on maintaining control of weighting the board.

1. Sliding to the bottom of the wave.

2. Setting your edge for the drive back to the top.

3. Flying across the top.

4. Un-weighting to the bottom.

5. Setting your edge again.

The video clip shows the basic rhythm to weighting down the line and gaining speed along the way. You can see the momentum after Travis pulls out and still slides some distance from the speed generated from surfing a hull.

D.R.

There have always been conscientious craftsman in the surfboard industry but I think for the most part they are usually over looked and as surfboard lengths shortened over time the way we made boards changed as well.

During the seventies as surfboards continued to evolve there was a fair amount of attention to making boards that not only rode well but also looked appealing too. If you find any vintage boards from that decade you see color and line work all done with resin that by 1980 had become all but forgotten. Not that color was absent but the color changed from resin work to air brush paint work.

Air brush color is quick. Take a shaped blank, spray some color on it, let it dry for a couple hours and then go laminate it. You can do fades, panels, rail bands, stripes or even killer graphic art work via air brush. That’s all fine but the interest was to simplify the fabrication process so it didn’t take as long to make a surfboard. By the nineties color was not as much a component of the process. When fin systems took hold and we didn’t have to do glass on fins… making a surfboard was simplified even more. Sanding a board with out fins was the best thing to come to surfboard production sense foam blanks.

With out glass on fins the surfboard became much easier to make and with the ease came the hack job, get it done, get it quick, get it cheap kind of surfboard. “Yeah man, clear free lap sand only to 120… your board is ready.” Short board, long board it didn’t matter. What was important was getting the board done and for as little dollars as possible. Go surf the thing and when it’s lost that fresh feel toss it and get another.

The poorly crafted board at first glance may not look any different than a very well crafted board. Can you tell by looking at the tail of your new board if there is good glass coverage around the corners? Probably not. Can you tell what glass schedule your board has on it by feel or look? No.

If you don’t know that your board was made by a top drawer board crafter you generally won’t know how well your boards are made until after you’ve surfed them.

D.R.

The compound color lam.

The evolution of surfboard weights and consequently strength is sometimes over looked in the discussion of a surfboards life span.

When I started surfing the foam and fiberglass surfboard was the standard. There were a few wood boards around but really weren’t sold much if at all commercially. My second board was balsa but I made it from an old board that I stripped down, reshaped and re-glassed.

For the most part boards in the early sixties were about 30 to 35 pounds, and generally were between 9’6 and 10’ in length, 23 to 24 inches wide and in the 3 inches thick range. The foam was a bit more dense. As an example, the common weight of surf blanks now is between 20% and 40% lighter than foams of the early sixties. That means if you have a 9 foot blank now that weights around 10 pounds the comparable blanks from the early days would be 2 to 4 pounds more. A short board blank, unshaped, that weights around 5 pound would have been around 6 or 7 pounds… of course there were no short board blanks then.

Now that dosen’t seem like much but, in the sixties a typical stringer was ¾ inch redwood or maybe 2 inch balsa. Now? A longboard will have a ¼ inch to 3/8 inch stringer and short boards 1/8. The difference in wood weight could be as much as 2 or 3 pounds.

The glassing schedule of the old boards was considerably heavier, and there was a reason… surfboards weren’t attached to your leg back then. If you fell and lost your board it was vulnerable and could get a whacking from other surfers and their boards and or what ever was on the beach… like rocks… the boards final resting place if you couldn’t catch up to it before it got to shore.

The typical glass job before we started making boards lighter was 20 oz glass top and bottom. That’s 2 layers of 10 ounce cloth for the deck and bottom of your board. One layer from each side would lap so you had 30 ounces on the rails. That is a significant difference in what boards are glassed with now.

Is it needless to say that boards held up better before the foams became lighter and the glassing schedules were reduced to less than half of what they once were? So… how did this happen?

For me, I didn’t need a heavy glass job because I got better at surfing and didn’t loose my board so I could glass it lighter…. Maybe 2 layers of 8 ounce. Then I liked the lightness and went to one layer of 8 on the bottom and 2 layers on the deck. When boards got shorter we wanted them lighter as well so a layer of 8 on the bottom and a layer of 8 on the deck with a 2/3 8 patch was good. It kept going, next it was 6 once cloth instead of 8. 8 ounce cloth is actually 7 ½ once by the way.

Stringers kept getting thinned down too, from ¾ inch to ½ to ¼ . Some boards in the late sixties and into 1970 had 1/16 stringers.

When guys started attaching their boards to their legs and didn’t have to worry about a lost and probably dinged up board in the process we started glassing boards with 4 ounce cloth. And all along the blanks were lighter too.

It was surfers that wanted lighter boards. As boards got lighter and lighter I don’t remember anyone complaining that they also got damaged easier or even broke. Now… it’s not uncommon for surfers to complain that boards don’t last long and get bust up easy. Yet it’s been surfers all along that have wanted their boards made the very way they are now… light and destructible.

D.R.

It was a few weeks ago when Blinky came into the shop and asked if I ever thought I’d be making surfboards when I was sixty. At the time I wasn’t quite sixty… my birthday was this past Friday the 21st.

My wife, son and daughter decided to host a 60th birthday party for me and was planned for yesterday. It may have taken my wife a month to get an invite list from me, not that I procrastinated but I’m so self conscience about stuff like that. Anyway, come 6 pm yesterday evening people began arriving until the house was full. What a great time!

My wife told me she was thinking about having the party catered and asked what I thought of “ L & L” the local Hawaiian BBQ place. I said ‘are you kidding? That would be great! ‘ I love that place, Suzi and I go there all the time…. Geez, Friday special Lau Lau, Spam musubi . She was afraid some people wouldn’t like it, but I said don’t worry about it, I like it and how could anyone not? Well, she followed through and we had the best grinds a party could ask for.

When David Puu walked in and greeted me he said “ I didn’t even bring my camera”. I replied saying ‘that’s good, you should be able to go somewhere relax and not worry about missing out on a good photo moment'. Funny though, when everyone filled in and he saw the depth of the gang he said “ I should have brought my camera!”. Of course if he had his camera he would’ve taken the picture instead of being in the picture. We got a group shot of some of the guests.

From left to right kneeling: in front is Rachel Jorgensen one of the few female board crafters, also one of my partners at Studio 609 Board Craft. Then David Puu, though now a photographer, a long time board builder under the Morning Star label.

From left to right standing: Steve Huerta, Huerta-McNair Surfboards, Spencer Kellogg, Surfboards by Spence, Sammy Cammack, Sueno Surfboards and also production manager of Fletcher Designs Surfboards, Wayne Rich, Wayne Rich Surfboards, Bill ‘Blinky’ Hubina, William Dennis Surfboards, Myself, Chris Fallon, the most talented paint and line guy in the 805, as well as my partner in Studio 609. And finally Mike Smith, though not a board builder he does have his own ‘Mike Smith nose rider model’ for William Dennis and just happens to be the Mayor of “C” Street.

I had a party for my 30th birthday and was told back then I was over the hill. Now at 60 I’m told I’m over the hill. So what? I wasn’t over at 30 and I’ve been still climbing the hill for the past 30 years? No wonder I’ve been so tired all the time.

D.R.

The Hostess, My beautiful wife Suzi.

My Story Post 35

My first long board right when it started to be OK to have one again.

If I remember right it was 1981 when one of the local guys here in Ventura bought a Takayama long board and of course began surfing it… one of the first guys to start riding long boards again here.

I don’t think he had that board more than a year when he got nailed by a small wave in just the right place and busted his board in half. We got to talking one day after his mishap and during the conversation I asked him if he’d like to sell me the busted board. We came to a price of 30 bucks.

At the time I was riding a 6’3 hull and hadn’t gotten into longboarding again… I may have barrowed a long board once or twice for a couple waves but didn’t have one of my own. I thought for 30 bucks, a little resin fiberglass and work I’ll have myself a tanker to cruise on.

We made the transaction, I let go of 30 bucks and got a surfboard in two pieces in exchange. I’m not sure how long it took before I got around to the repair of that board but I did and when it was complete I had myself a single fin long board. It wasn’t the best looking board having been through some major surgery but it was fit and water tight. And when it was ready I took it down to the beach on a nice sunny summer day with small summer surf to get it wet.

It was a day just like what I wanted the board for, and when I got down to the point there were a couple of the local guys looking at the surf contemplating a go out…. There wasn’t much to go out in but I had this tanker that would make up for the small surf. We got to talking and I showed them my repaired board and said that it was perfect for days like that day. “So, I’m going out and I’ll bet you guys 5 bucks I’ll hang five on the first wave I catch” … I’d never ridden the board before but what the heck…. We all laughed and off I went.

Well, I’m sorry to say I lost the bet…. I’d didn’t hang five on the first wave. No, I hung five on the second wave. Oh well, I had plenty fun on the board. I'm not sure how long I had that board, at least a couple years, and surfed it when the surf was small and fun for a tanker.

You know, I hadn’t thought of this but I mentioned in a post from 11/19/06 that the only board I ever had that I didn’t make myself was a Phil Edwards. I need to correct that, I forgot about the DT. Though I had to rebuild the DT, it was a board I didn’t make myself so, of all the boards I’ve had there have been only 2 I didn’t make myself. The Edwards and the DT.

D.R.

Pic 1.. the boken board
Pic 2.. being put back together
Pic 3.. the boken board in the surf

Learning to surf, a shapers view post 5

Standing on a surf board takes balance. It also takes movement. When you ride a bicycle you need forward movement otherwise you’ll fall down. It’s the same with surfing. You need to be moving… sliding on a wave with enough speed to be able to maintain balance.

Once you catch a wave, when you stand up you must stand on the center of your surfboards width and have you body over your feet. Depending on the length of your board, where you stand in the length may not be as critical but you must be in the center of the width.

As you catch more and more waves and have more and more chances to stand up you’ll be building muscle memory and planting your feet in the right place on the surfboard will become consistant. As that happens keeping your body over your feet and ride will get better.

Staying centered over your board is absolutely essential or you’ll fall. It doesn’t matter where you are on the wave face or what move you work to pull off, if your centered over your board and body and have enough forward movement you’ll make it.

The best way to see how staying centered works is to watch people surf.

D.R.

Taking off and planting your feet…. Centered

Setting up a turn from center.

Standing on the nose and centered.

After stepping back from the nose… centered.

Hitting a section and staying over your center.

Tipp rides with your body over your feet… centered.

How much does a surfboard really cost? You see discussions on the forums about the domestic made board price and imports, the molded board quality compared to the hand shaped hand laminated board etc. Should we pay as much as we do?

So I make hand shaped hand laminated…. How much do these boards really cost?

Surfing was once a very inexpensive endeavourer, at least when I got started. We didn’t wear wetsuits so you only needed an old pair of cut of jeans and a surfboard that you might have gotten used for 30 bucks. Find a way to get to the beach and have fun.

So lets say you find a board for $ 600. We won’t talk about wetsuits, board bags, extra fins, wax or the cost of parking at the beach. But if you have a $600 surfboard the first time you get that board wet it cost you $600. The second time?... $300. Third time $200 and the forth time $150.

So… if you surf this same $600 board every time you go to the beach and, you surf once a week on average by the end of a year, say you miss a couple weeks so at the end of the year you surfed your board 50 times. The board per surf session cost 12 bucks. That’s not much. My old 9’0 I’ve been surfing since 1992, I don’t surf it all the time of course but the overall cost per surf session on that thing by now is coming down to pennies.

Generally we keep our boards for a fair amount of time and surf them plenty. So if you look at the cost being spread out over the number of times that you surf the actual cost becomes something next to a hamburger lunch…. or even much less. I’d say that’s still pretty inexpensive for the amount of fun you have!

The 8’0 I’m riding in the pic below my son and I have had in the water enough for the cost of it to be down to about a nickel candy bar…. But you can’t get nickel candy bars anymore….

D.R.

Photo by David Puu

Do surfers have a one track mind? No doubt some do, what percentage of people that surf? Who knows…

For sure if you are around someone that has a one track mind about surfing you know it, because all they do is think about it, want to be at the beach, will go out in almost anything and are lost when they can’t surf.

I’m sure I had a one track mind about surfing when I was younger. After I moved to Ventura and was close to the ocean… meaning I could get to the closest surf spot in about 3 minuets on a bicycle… I was at that surf spot as much as possible or in route to another.

When the first thing you do in the morning is check the surf. Look at the tide charts and if there is surf determine when might be the best time considering tides and wind conditions would be to surf. Or, consider going to a certain spot where the surf will be best. Then you may be borderline on a one track. If you add to that the fact that you don’t know what to do with yourself if you don’t get any surf then yes, you have a one track mind.

Woodshed films, Chris Malloy released a new surf flick this past week One Track Mind. Some nice footage and even better commentary from over a dozen pros. At first I couldn’t figure out what the title of the film had to do with the film but then, Kelly Slater said winning in pro surfing takes a one track mind. If I remember right he wasn’t referring to himself but one of the other pros and his focus on winning a world title.

The film is nicely edited with comments and footage that keep your attention… at least mine and my wife’s who was with me at the show. There are a couple nicely timed comments from Dane Reynolds which are really great, and some pretty amazing surfing from all the guys that are in the film.

I’m not sure how the film is being marketed, if it’s going to make the beach cities tour or not but I’m sure the DVD will make a nice addition to your collection.

D.R.

A couple frame grabs form the preview below

What is it about the look of a surfboard that certain surfers find so attractive?

I know what goes through my head when I’m shaping and how I want the board I’m working on to look. The foil, rocker and foam distribution has to have all the right proportions for me to be satisfied with how it looks… if it looks right. If the shaped blank doesn’t look right it bothers me and if I don’t work on it until it does look right…. Well let’s just say I’ll never be satisfied if I don’t get each board to have the look I’m after.

I take notice how boards are looked at. How people will pick them up and see how they feel under their arm. How they will stand a board up and massage the rails to see how the rails fit in their hands. Stand back and look at the rocker curve and foil. Contemplate the outline.

Maybe if you don’t think the board looks right then you won’t think it rides right. My personal point of view is that surfing is about 90% mental. If you think something is wrong then you won’t surf to your full potential. So if you don’t think your board looks right it will bother you and you won’t be on your mental game… your surfing will suffer.

For the discerning surfer their boards must be just right, have all the right ingredients for confidence in their pursuit of waves. An attractive surfboard is an important thing.

D.R.

My story post 34

One day this past week Blinky…. my former partner… was by the shop. He was dropping off some stuff he had cleaned out of his Julian St. shop. I was taping off a board when he walked in and said “did you ever think you’d be making surfboards when you were 60?”

Well… I’d have to answer “no”. Geez, 41 years ago when we started William Dennis I didn’t think about anything but surfing and making a surfboard that would be better than the one I was riding at the moment.

I suppose to my discredit as a business person not thinking about the future isn’t really very smart. But, as a surfer that made surfboards the only future was the next swell and how well your equipment was going to work. And, if it didn’t work or you figured out another way your board may work better then you were on the right track.

Funny though when you look back the big labels that were run with more business sense and tried to have some control of the surfboard market actually couldn’t control what was happening because of the speed of design changes and eventually left the market altogether.

How do you really know what’s going to happen in the future. You can plan for it and hopefully things will turn out the way you’ve planned. But, when you’re not quite 19 years old, like I was when William Dennis was started, how could you think that what you are doing at that moment will be around 40 or 41 years later?

It’s really pretty amazing to me, all these years later still being comfortable and happy doing what I enjoy… making surfboards and surfing. I find what I do satisfying, it’s where my heart is. Playing in the ocean is a healthy activity as well as fun and continually challenging.

D.R.

Me and Blinky… William & Dennis 1986 C Street reunion

My story post 33

I went to a take out restaurant here in Ventura with my son today that was one of the places that Blinky turned me onto for a good burrito when hungry after surfing. It got me to thinking…..

There were a number of places we’d go to after work or surfing to fill our bellies back in the day. One of the spots was right down the street from the point, Fiesta. Fiesta was where almost every surfer would go to at some time or another. So close to the beach.

Then there was Ted’s Sizziling Steaks out toward the college. This place was the after hours stop. Not really great but cheap and filling. Back then there were not any steaks houses like what’s out there now but, with the help of steak sauce the food did the job.

The little café at the west end of Main St. was a place for good hearty breakfasts. I remember the first time I went there around 1965. I was really hungry one morning and had very little money… actually not money, just some change. The change was enough for a bowl of oatmeal. For about 35 cents I got the best bowl of oatmeal I’ve ever had, to this day I still remember being so hungry and worried I’d go hungry for the rest of our surf trip but the loose change in my pocket and the little café made the day.

How ‘bout the Galley? They had a burger basket that was great! Only one block from MP, sometimes we’d go there for lunch during the work week. I remember Cooper running there for some grinds, sitting at the counter talking story and chowing down.

Now in downtown Ventura there are more places to eat than imaginable. A couple years ago my wife and I counted enough places to eat in the 4 blocks of down town that we could actually eat out everyday for a month and never eat at the same place twice. How nuts it that? But those places listed above? Except for Johnny’s where my son and I went to today are all gone. Fiesta is where Bad Ass Coffee is now. The little café was knocked down and the spot it was in is a parking lot. The Galley building is still there but the building is empty… no burger baskets there. Ted’s…. gone. Seems as time goes by all we end up with are memories.

D.R.

Looking up the beach from the pier back in the day didn’t look anything like this either.