Innholdsfortegnelse for #343 SURFBOARDS i Surfing Life

Surfboards start us off on this insatiable journey of riding waves and our fascination with them begins early. While at first we don’t entirely understand them, we feel them under our feet – sometimes sure, sometimes tentatively – but always with the sense of freedom that comes from flying across the face of a wave. I was eleven years old when I first started surfing, relatively late by today’s standards. I saw an ad in our local paper, advertising a state surfing event down at the local reef break and asked my dad if I could go and watch. He dropped me off at 8 a.m. and said he’d see me at 5 o’clock that afternoon. I perched myself on top of the hill and never moved a muscle the…

The Pacific Ocean has much to answer for this past winter, particularly when looking to the north of our Great Southern Land. First it was Cloudbreak that came out in emphatic fashion, searching for the ‘swell of the decade’ laurels. And just as we had all recovered from the heroic acts of some dippy ocean warriors, she roared to life once again. This time, some 4000 nautical miles to the east, when another mega swell hit the Indonesian island chain. Most spots maxed out at the height of the swell, but one famous right-hander held its own and produced another bone-jarring spectacle. Nineteen-year-old Burleigh Heads charger, Toby Mossop, was right in the mix, snaffling waves off some of the best surfers in the world. This is his account of the…

SHAPER: STEVE DEL ROSO 5’11” x 18 5/16” x 2 3/8” 27.4 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: This board definitely is a classic modern shorty with all the volume in the right places. I surfed this in some pretty solid conditions, where I was able to knife under the lip for some nice tubes. So, yeah, you can get barrelled pretty well on it and who doesn’t want to get barrelled? I was also able to put it on rail and it was really nice. You could really drive through your turns and it held well. If the goal was to design a shorty that you could walk in, grab off the rack and go surf it, these guys certainly have achieved that. SHAPER’S NOTES: This board is a good all-rounder…

We all know their names and we’ve seen their enticing curvy lines, but do we actually know what the tails of our surfboards do? Here’s a clue: they’re not just there to look good. They actually have a purpose and each of them is subtly different. Shaper, Adam ‘Sparrow’ Fletcher, takes us through the nuances of the most common surfboard tails you’ll find down at your local… let them be a mystery no more. SQUARE/ROUNDED SQUARETAIL The squaretail, or rounded squaretail, is the go to for most guys on their everyday board. It’s predictable, dependable and forgiving and offers that little bit of release, making it a great choice for intermediate to high-performance surfing. SWALLOWTAIL Swallowtails are having a little resurgence of late. We have been doing a lot of…

Bagging the ultimate surf shot is not just a case of point and shoot. Capturing that unique frame demands skill, timing, and the right gear. It’s kinda like choosing the right board for the right conditions; it can make all the difference in the outcome. Whether shooting from the sand or the sea, here’s the lowdown on what you’ll need from our mates at CameraPro. CAMERA Control over your camera’s settings is the key to technically nailing surfing shots. Choose a camera that accepts interchangeable lenses and lets you manually set the aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focus area. Everything happens quickly out in the water, so your camera needs a snappy autofocus system and burst rate to keep up. Weather sealing is an added bonus. LENSES Image quality is…

THE WAVE “Everything smelt fishy.” Matt Bromley is describing Nias, the day before the great, big boat pitching swell of July, 2018. “You could tell that the ocean had shifted. The day of the swell, I woke up in the dark and it sounded like there was a tsunami outside, super loud. I could hear the water rushing up through the restaurant and up the sides of the houses. I went back into my room and I was really nervous. So I got in the zone, opened up my bible and read some scriptures, got my boards waxed up and the next time I stuck my head out the door, it was first light. I saw Laurie Towner, Marty Paradisis and Jughead heading out. The paddle at Nias is usually…

Well that’s the Boards issue done and dusted. If nothing at all, we hope you walk away a little more informed than when you first sat down on the bog for a moment (or two) of solace. The biggest thing that has evolved in my surfing life over the past few years is the addition of some alternate craft to my quiver. The asymmetrical and the twin fin have added a bit of extra flair to my weekends, especially when the surf is below average. Many times these ‘outliers’ have taken the seriousness out of trying to score a 9 on every wave on my regular performance boards (or is that just me?) and have opened my eyes to a new way of riding waves… almost always adding a lot…

IT’S A PRIVILEGE TO SIT AND CHAT WITH INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE. SOMETIMES THEY’RE FAMOUS, MOST TIMES THEY’RE MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE THAN US, AND OFTEN THEY GIVE A GLIMPSE INTO WHAT’S UP AHEAD… LINES ON THE INDUSTRY’S HORIZON. Mark Price has been around in the surfing industry for a long time. His pathway to CEO of the global Firewire Surfboards business, included executive positions at Gotcha and the industry-disrupting, MCD brand. He also created his own apparel brand, Tavarua and started his fascination with sustainable manufacturing and the environment back in the early ‘90s. He’s also a former pro surfer and is a perfect candidate for a chat about the surfboard market. So what’s up ahead in the surfboard space? Price suggests we are in the midst of a number of changes, “The…

In the early evening of August 5th, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale flattened the north-eastern corner of Lombok, Indonesia. A hundred kilometres south of the epicentre, an untouched Desert Point was firing – flawless and lacking its usual maddening crowd. An island away on the other side of the Wallace Line, Sunday session partiers in Bali felt the low rumble of the quake and watched on worried as their villas swayed, and sets broke in their swimming pools. This was a big one. It has been a strange season in Indonesia. The early season was fine and the world tour was blessed with reasonable, if not spectacular, waves in May. Then the plug was pulled for a couple of months and things went flat – in the…

TEST PILOT KORBIN HUTCHINGS Korbin Hutchings, may have a slight identity crisis; the 21-year-old is from New Zealand, lives on the Gold Coast, and says that Mexican is his favourite food. What he’s not confused about, however, is riding surfboards. After an impressive junior career, Korbin is currently taking his aerial antics and a solid rail game, to the world qualifying series. He’s the perfect choice for this year’s expanded Surfing Life, ‘Board Test’, because we know he rips, and at 1.83 cm and 74 kg, he’s pretty much your average Surfing Life, reader. So we threw him a bunch of sleds; all in the 27-litre area, and let him loose on a diverse range of east coast set-ups to give them a spin. And now that we have the…

SHAPER: TOMO 5’4” x 18 7/8” x 2 3/8” 26.7 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: I was really interested to try this board just because it’s definitely not your usual shape. When you’re on the QS grind, you do stick to what you know works, because it’s tried and tested. To have the opportunity to try something with a different twist, was exciting. To be honest, I didn’t really notice the nose not being there and at 5’4” I thought I would. The boards supplied to us were all basically 27 litres, which was also why I thought this board would be interesting to see where they hid the litreage. They hid it well – everything worked – with boards like this, they can tend to catch as you transition from…

Speed, power, balance and control… you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a line out of the World Surf League’s judging criteria, but in this case, it’s not. We’re talking about fins. They say that a tyre is to your car, as a fin is to your surfboard; it’s instrumental in how that board handles. We agree, so here are some basic principles on how our veritable rudders work. The key factor when it comes to fins, is choosing the set that is not only suited to your surfing, but also to the conditions and board you are riding. SIZE First up we need to choose the size of our fin. Generally, they scale from XS to XL. Something along these lines: XS – UNDER 55 KG S – 55-70…

As all dedicated surfers know, every board needs fins, wax, tail pads (unless you’re left back in the ‘70s), legropes (unless you’re a hipster and don’t mind the odd swim to shore), and a board bag to throw them all in. Our board test was no different, and we needed the good oil for our test pilot, Korbin Hutchings, so we asked around and got the support of some incredible brands. Here’s a good old-fashioned shout-out to FK Surf, Creatures of Leisure, and Scarfini fins, who generously hooked us up! All the accessories we used were right on point and never let us down – and trust us, we put them through their paces – dragged them in and out of cars, and tested them over sand, ledge, and reef.…

Walking into a World Championship Tour (WCT) locker room is a bit like getting a pit pass at a Formula 1 race. It’s a place where the machinery lies bare for all to see and an opportunity to look under the hood of what everyone is driving. And while we’re not exactly comparing engines at pro surf events, there is something to knowing what’s under the feet of the world’s best surfers. Over the last couple of years, it’s been widely suggested that Filipe Toledo is one of the fastest surfers on the planet, if not the fastest – not only in the unbridled free surfs, but also at the elite competition level. World Surf League webcast anchor, Ronnie Blakey, has seen a few heats in his time and he…

SHAPER: DANE HAMILTON 5’11” x 18 5/8” x 2 5/16” 26.4 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: A great shape, well executed… that’s what I thought when I picked up this board. When you get a great shape in excellent conditions, it’s hard not to have fun and that’s what I had on this board – fun! I guess that should be the true measure of how well a board goes, that is, how much fun you have on it. And when you get barrelled off your nut, blow some tail, and bury some rail… you’re well on your way to that goal of fun. This board did all of those things with ease and made things… yep, fun. I don’t always associate pin tails with loose off the top kind of…

I had been out the water for a while, and it was time for a comeback. I had my eye on a new board that had a little bit of extra volume, but it was an epoxy, and I wasn’t too well versed in the dark art of current board manufacturing process. “What sort of board are you currently riding?” asked the shop attendant. “Is it a PU?” Not wanting to look like an ignoramus or sound like a chump, I nodded. “Normal fibreglass?” he continued with his questions. I nodded again, thinking to myself, When did this happen? When did boards become ‘normal fibreglass’ or something else called ‘epoxy’? All my life I had just ordered a board from a shaper, and asked for certain dims and a broad…

SHAPER: NICK BLAIR 5’11” x 18 7/8” x 2 3/8” 27.3 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: This board felt so good – so light – and is shaped really well. When I first saw this board, I was super excited to surf it. I was lucky enough to get a really good point day to surf this board. There weren’t as many barrels as I’d had on other mornings, but so many sections to test this thing on. The thing I found the most exciting about this board was that as I was bottom turning, looking at the lip, I wasn’t thinking, ‘what do I need to do to do the next turn?’, but rather, ‘what did I want to do?’, and anything I thought of, I could do. I’d just…

SHAPER: BENOIT RAMEIX 5’8” x 18 1/2” x 2 3/8” 23 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: This board came in a little under the 27 litres we requested, but it didn’t matter one bit. It’s a lively fun board that you could put wherever you wanted to. I really enjoyed riding this board and although we are talking recycled blanks, it didn’t feel like it. You know when you get recycled things, they can often feel not quite as good as something that isn’t recycled. Well it wasn’t the case with this board. The plan shape was excellent and everything was shaped really well. Again, I hadn’t heard of this brand before so I didn’t have any expectations, which may be the best way to test a board. The rails were…

SHAPER: LUKE MCKILL 6’0” x 18 3/4” x 2 3/8” 27.25 L TEST PILOT’S NOTES: This board felt really good under the arm and as you know it’s a good first indicator of what a board is going to be like. It’s not a foolproof system, but when you’ve had hundreds of boards under your arm and then surfed them, you can start to tell what they’re going to be like when you pick them up. So with it feeling so good under the arm, I was pretty keen to get it out into the water. We had really good conditions to test all the boards in and today was no exception; solid, overhead conditions with plenty of tunnels to knife though, and knife through it did. I found this…

At September’s Surf Ranch Pro, held in Lemoore, California, a place where the dust settles into every case of skin like a new layer of pigment, Matt ‘Mayhem’ Biolos built surfboards for ten of the… what do we call ‘em now… oh yeah, athletes: Carissa Moore, Kolohe Andino, Yago Dora, Griffin Colapinto, Malia Manuel, Joan Duru, Michael Rodrigues, Caroline Marks, Coco Ho and Macy Callaghan. It would’ve been eleven if the reigning champ, Tyler Wright, hadn’t called in sick. Ain’t a shaper more invested in the pool game than Mayhem. And as it happens, when I call Biolos for one of his grandfatherly sermons about design, he’s just walked in the door from a weekend in Waco, Texas. It was Mason Ho’s thirtieth birthday and Lost threw the company credit…

It’s a simple idea and one that sits at the very core of human existence. The ability to share in new experiences and sensations is integral to a contented life, if only because it distracts us from the fact we’re on a long, painful journey towards certain death. “It’s a little bit like eating one type of fruit all the time, if you mix it up they just taste insane,” begins Simon Jones, the man behind Morning of the Earth Surfboards, an independent shaping label run out of his tin shed on the North Coast, NSW, hinterland. “If you’re eating bananas all day, well, it’s just bananas. I think the same applies with lots of different aspects of life,” he says. No one subscribes to the profound value of new…