100 foot faces !!!

General Discussion
1

i knew that title would grab ya …

heres the real story and its a total buzz …

my kids are 6 and 9 years old , everyday when they get home from school , its " dad can we go sandboarding ?" , unless its raining , im more keen then they are …

its just like snowboarding , but you have more control and can dig the rail deeper …

ive got a few friends with kids the same age , my buddy whos a real good skater is doing the most insane boosts off jumps we are making (hes 41 )…

i have to get some photos , you will stoke out at the fun you can have when theres no waves , the best part is , the landings are so much softer than concrete …

my 9 year old has definatly run away with the program …

weve nicknamed him booster , the kid is getting 6 foot in the air , with a style that looks like hes riding a longboard …

weve got this full underground dune surfing movement going , ive been making these things for customers , mainly crew with kids the same age as mine …

a few weeks back i came home all dis illusioned , my son can genuinely out perform me , hes giving me advice like " just go with the flow dad , just hit it and relax"

ive always had sandboards ever since i was a kid , but just this year we have all hit a new level and lost some fear we used to have of getting hurt , purely from the introduction of elastic footstraps , so now your not twisting ankles and ripping skin of your feet if you rip out the straps , its so much safer now …

plus i made some real flexy thin boards , so the ride is cushioned and it handles bumps real well without digging rails …

the pic is our quiver , and in the forground is a new design we dummied up out of cardboard tonight , weve been getting into 540 fakies on the rim so the snowboard influence is starting to creep in , were hitting more vertical sections and critical boosts , so we need more nose flip and area …

serious fun for all the family …

my son has big plans for a sandboard business , ive been forming them up , he cuts and cleans up the outlines , hes been trying to crack the whip on me for more production …

i told him to employ someone …

slowly the reality of business is making an impression on him …

its been a lot of fun …

regards

BERT

2

I like that fish style board… do tails and stuff make much of a difference on sand?

3

its really weird , that fish style is astheticly pleasing and one of the nicest to look at , but its one of the worst performers , you have no hold on that one , once it starts sliding sideways you dont have much chance of recovery , its fast on flat sections but 2 hard to get on the rail , its the second worst board there , the worst one is the red one , we call it the killer board , no control plus the nose entry is to flat so it catches rails chronically , plus its the thickest one so it throws you off when the ground gets bumpy …(thats the one we lend to friends who are learning )

all the rest work real well , especially the one on the far left , which is a shame coz it looks super ugly …

alot of the principles are the same as surfing , there both planeing vehicles …

more area gets you planeing at lower speeds and other things are similar as well …

the hips act as fins and dig in when your on the rail stoping you from sliding out and letting you hack turns …

but if you wanna do 360s and controled slides into 180 fakies then you need a double ender ,

ive always been into directionals , only recently ive got a taste for the double ender …

this keeps you super fit …

after 35 or 40 runs in a session , youve done 3 or 4 kms of running back up the dunes …

we always seem to have the most fun with the biggest crowds , especially when theres a few crew learning , you see monster stacks , plus everyone seems to push the limits more …

regards

BERT

4

“its just like snowboarding , but you have more control and can dig the rail deeper …”

Wow, never knew that about sandboarding…

I have a pretty total control of my snowboard. Compared to it, the surfboard is quite uncontrollable. I learned to do carving turns on snow in less than a week and after a year of riding I was able to dig the rail into hard and icy groomed slopes (although now, after some 12 years, I prefer digging it 2 feet deep into the powder snow…)

Either I need to learn a little about sandboarding or you have to study some more snowboarding ; )

5

Hey Bert…

Ive also flurted with sandboarding as there are some slopes just 5mins up the roads on the riverbanks,

I made a top notch sand board awile back and yeah its pretty cool…

Anyway,

Happy Surfing,

Josh.

6

Hey Bert,

My kids are 6 and 9 too. A while back my son (9) came up with an idea for a combo sand board, skateboard, wakeboard. He drew me diagrams and everything. I love it when he’s thinking like that though my adult mind could see a few problems with production. I think you have to go with ideas when your’re stoked about them. We’ll have to resurect the idea with Summer coming on. There are some huge sand dunes on the west coast here.

Jon

7

here comes another project my 5 and 8 year old are keen

the enviromentalists arnt going to like it though

I remember back when i used to fly hanggliders at burns beach in perth arguing that mobile foredunes were suppost to be moving but they insisted that they should be vegitated and stay put!!

Mike

8

i’d read this post but i’ve got sand in my eyes…

9

Yep it’s about time we f**ked up sand dunes…

10

uh…i think i have a few sand dunes in mind,but no sand board…are the things made out of plywood?..is the bottom plywood?..i think ive seen snowboards with like a weird bottom for riding on sand,anyway how do i make a sandboard?

11

hey onshore !!

i think i may have worded it wrong …

maybe not digging the rail a little deeper , may be turning a little tighter …

i notice snowboards doing longer carves , where as were pulling tighter turns than surfboards , with good sections you can get real good snaps happening …

yea sabs , theres this crazy mentality at the moment , that every bit of exposed sand should have vegetation on it ???

dunes are in a constant state of flux , always moving , but within a certain range of the coastline …

over here on the west coast we have sections of coast without a human footprint , completly uninhabited and yet in these isolated locations you will find the most massive naturally occuring dune systems …

the biggest problem is development to close to the coast , so shires and councils doing dune revegatation is more an issue of preventitive matainance to stop sand migrating over roads and buildings …

so whos really vandalising the enviroment ???

in a natural enviroment youll find different plants at varying distances from the water line …

the revegatation has upset the natural balance , now you have plants close to the water line that wouldnt naturally be there , they have less tolerance to winter storms and salty water , plus when they decay along with the brushing , logs and sticks that are put everywhere to stop people accessing the dunes , it creates higher nutrient contents in un-natural places so the plants that should be there dont stand a chance …

as a sandboarder we need the hardy succulent plants to create contours and jumps , those plants would normally be in the enviroment that we need , where theres soft and migrating sand …

those plants that are the first line of natural defence against wind , storms and dune migration , cant survive in a nutrient rich enviroment …

so we end up getting non existent primary dunes , with major towering artificially high secondary dunes …

since dune restoration has started in some places over here ive seen dunes grow in height up to 5 meters , in as little as 5 years …

we end up with an artifically high dune system , as soon as some sand appears at the top , its recovered , instead of being allowed to blow back into the water in the summer with the offshore winds …

we had a strip of pristine coast developed for housing , dune restoration was done , never in my life had i seen back wash at this beach , now it breaks closer to shore than ever , coz all the sand is locked in the dunes , the banks have been crap ever since , they remove the weed from the beach with tractors , which is needed to hold the sand together against winter storms , as well as help to create hooks and bays in the beach creating banks and helping in the formation of the primary dune …

now when storms do come , its a fifteen foot drop , from the top of an artificially created dune onto a barren beach …

these so called greenies and enviromentalists dont realise how much longterm damage they will be accountable for …

not to mention the shameless waste of resources …

dune restoration is the cause of worse erosion because the natural balance has been upset …

ive seen enough natural coastline in my time to know that when it comes to the crunch , ill have plenty of valid arguments against some hairy armpitted ,lentil eating , bleeding heart greenie , who helps out at revegetating the dunes , who would be lucky to see the coast once a year and who blames the sandboarders for removing the brush that got washed away in last years winter storms …

i feel like writing a letter to the papers , but i dont want to highlight our cause , at the moment being underground we have some real good hidden sandboarding locations , if i complain there just as likely to purposely move in and ruin our best spots …

i do tell my kids to not remove any vegetation that should be there , weve actually been replanting some suculents , so when the wind blows , the sand builds up in places to give us real good banks to work off …

in reality we need plants to keep the dunes fun to sandboard on …

regards

BERT the underground greenie …

12

Interesting take on sand dunes bert - here, we have the opposite problem - nearshore dredging means less sand on our beaches each year - which leads to underming of the sand dunes which means that they’re disappearing —seems like what you can do with little environmentaql impact wouldn’t be true here.

13

We used to occasionally sandboard using old finless boards on the bay side of Woolamai in Vic. Good fun, good laugh, breath sand.

I just want to back Bert on this one. Early pics of Cape Woolamai show huge dunes and wide beaches. Many years ago, in their great wisdom, they started planting grasses to ‘stabilise the dunes’.

The result was the same as Bert describes. The dunes stopped their natural winter summer wind-blown movement, the beach became steep, the banks stopped forming and the waves deteriorated.

I’m sure it still gets good days, but not the same. Even some of the points that used to get some migratory sand suffered as well.

Greenies have a lot to answer for, especially the hippie style. Their intentions are good, but they all drive combustion vehicles.

The Daintree road in North Queensland is a perfect example. It has recently been sealed to Cape Trib, and it’s the best thing they could have done. Now, instead of dust, mud, potholes and choking the roadside vegetation with thick dust, you can drive through a beautiful rainforest with very little impact.

Ironically, one of the protesters who chained himself to a tree many years ago, is now the mayor. There is even talk of a bridge to replace the cable ferry, which will increase traffic volume.

Catch22. The people who live up there don’t want too much progress but want the tourist dollar. The tourists want access to pristine areas with good roads.

14

Sounds swet man. But we don’t have that much sand around here. The closest we’ve come is attaching a ski tow rope to my trailer hitch, dropping it into 4x4, and booting around on a sandbar on the river on an old pair of water skis. you can play around with it and have a bit of fun, and it you build kickers at the water’s edge, you can book along there, let go of the rope, and try for some air, if you get the jump right. We do that, and riverboarding in the summer a bunch too. There you just get a really long 1/4" nylon rope, anchor it at a riverbend and run the other end to the BOTTOM of your board partways down, and let the current keep you up. It’s actually pretty insane, and you can pull air out of it and all. We’ve got a really wicked fast river around here(It’s used by our olympic team to practice kayaking on), and it’s pretty wide. Can get nasty if you bail and don’t get to shore fast enough though…

15

yea today i snapped my board landing a distance boost …

there was about 6 of us trying to break the distance record off a little mound ,we started off doing around 2 meter jumps , we kept out doing one another , i got a monster one in at 4.5 meters and broke the record and my board coz i turned in the air and landed sideways , with in a few minutes my record was broken by about another foot or so , we were covering nearly 20 feet for distance off a knee high jump , speed and a clean launch was the pre requisite , insane fun …

im starting to get real annoyed with the coast care groups …

they are totally raping the dunes , digging everything up and loading the whole area with logs sticks and foreign vegetation , there systematically working there way down the coast killing our best sandboarding spots , the worst thing is , that ever since anyone can remember the area has been massive sand drifts ,in fact the name of the region is called white hills but now there is not one white hill left anymore , i have a friend whos a proffesional fisherman , he reckons they used the biggest white hill as a marker from out to sea for years , but now they cant even find it …

there the biggest idiots , there blocking off all the tracks behind the dunes so you have to use the beach no matter what the conditions , today my friend was driving around some rocks and dropped into some quicksand and started losing his car in the water as the beach was real steep just there , there were waves hitting his car and water coming in …he would have been totally stuffed if another car wasnt coming the other way right at that point and they had a winch , you couldnt have timed it better …hes gonna have one rusty range rover now …

coz i couldnt drive through that same spot i was forced to drive back out onto the highway along and back in another route 15 kilometer round trip to get another 500 meters up the beach , just because they blocked 100 meters of track that goes around the rocks , which people would normally use if the tide is high or the swell is up …

thats the type of brainless idiots we have in conservation and land management …

and to top it off im walking on the open beach and i kick a submerged sharp stick which the dune rehabilitation people have left all over the beaches , i was ready to explode as im pulling shards of stick out of my foot …

at that point i felt like doing some serious ranger abuse if there would have been one nearby …

i think i will be paying a visit to the rangers office and the council …

hopefully i will have calmed down a bit by then …

its like there on some power trip and if you ride a surfboard or a sandboard you dont count as a citizen …

still fuming …

regards

BERT

16

The “conservationists” are absolute idiots!! I feel your pain Bert. I used to be heavily into 4wdriving for quite a few years. Over here in Sydney, we are now having many 4wd areas being completely locked up with no one being allowed access. Now I totally agree that we need to stop the idiots who are doing damage when they 4wd etc. but stopping access for everyone seems to be their way to “manage” the environment. People say that “we’re saving the environment for your kids”, but with their policies its doubtful whether my kids would even be allowed into these areas.

The ironic thing is that over the last few years, we have had several severe bushfires that have destroyed many private homes. It turns out that with no one having access to the bush, all of the fire trails have been overgrown and the Bush Fire Brigade couldn’t access the areas they needed to. Even though they learnt then that recreational 4wdrivers & motorbikers play an important role in keeping fire trails open, it hasn’t chnaged the “lock everything up” policy.

I’m all for protecting and conserving our environment, but it needs to be done sensibly, with consultation with all relevant parties, while still enabling access for all (except the idiots).

Bert, do you have any action pics of the sandboarding?

Kind Regards,

Matt.

17

I love that quiver pic Bert!!! It’s got me stoked to pull my board out and have a crack at what’s left of our dunes. What material are you using for the footstaps? We just used a piece of garden hose wrapped in foam. Effective but not exactly forgiving when you come a cropper.

I agree with what you say about the greenies in regards to the dunes, they can be a little overzealous at times but over my way (Cronulla) we have a great example of what can happen when the local government favours cash over conservation.

When I was a kid this used to be a towering dune system but years of mining have fucked it beyond repair. The refinery wasn’t visible, the lake wasn’t there nor any of the surrounding vegetation. The few boardable dunes that are left generally end pretty abruptly in hard ground which makes for some pretty wicked stacks. I love the stacks, nothing better than watching a mate eat sand. Nothing worse than being on the receiving end though…man that sand can hurt when you hit it at high speed, particularly the hard packed stuff.

The only upside to the mining was that our steepest dune, a real leg burner!!!, finished in the lake that the overmining had created. If you hit it just right you could go flying across the surface of the water. If you came into it to straight then the result was a high speed faceplant. Not particularly good for the board but shitloads of fun.

18
Quote:

its just like snowboarding , but you have more control and can dig the rail deeper …

Dude, you GOT to go snowboarding in some deep powder… :slight_smile:

regards,

Håvard

19

hey haavard , the sand is the same , when its dry and powdery its so much faster and easier to sink the rail …

when its wet underneath and compact , its harder to get the rail in , we went a few days back the day after rain , everyone even the kids went home nursing bruises and aches , kept sliding out in sections where it was to compact , but then the worst part is when you hit its like concrete at speed …

the straps in the board are either 50 mm elastic doubled up or the webbing you have in your couch that support the pillows …

the stretch webbing seems to be the most durable , the elastic straps are showing signs of fatigue …

hey matt i dont have any photos yet , but i will get some , theres been talk from some of the other guys about the video camera , either way we will get some action shots sooner or later …

i think im really hooked on this , all i wanna do at the moment is go sandboarding …

hey luke , you should see this spot we got over here …

this huge dune comes over a head land and drops into water on the other side , in the bay , when the swell is up waves will hit the base of the dune , if you time it right you can fly down the slope and do a reo off a small wave …

some more boards getting added to the quiver soon …will get some action pics happening to when its a photogenic day with sun …

regards

BERT

20

Hi Bert,

sound like good fun, I guess the sanddunes you got there are way different from the few we’ve got around here. Only tried to sandboard on my snowboard once or twice, but the glide was less than sadisfactory. What do you use to keep them gliding?

Still think you need some deep fluff for you snowboard. In Canada I experienced having the board covered in about 10cm of fluff and I could still see the graphics on my board straight through it. Unbelievable snow. I that kind of snow you don’t bury your rails, if it’s deep enough you bury everything. God I wish there was more/better snow and some better mountains nearby.

regards,

Håvard