I wanna gather together the weirdest and wonderfulest ideas ever to come out of the surfboard designers` mind.
In order to understand where we are today in terms of surfboard design, we need to understand where we have come from and learn to embrace the ideas of our forefathers who may have spent a little too long inhaling a hot mix or two.
Some ideas are fleeting and become consigned to the next council clean-up, others become life-long obsessions for the designer chasing validation from the masses while others remain hidden, in garages, under the porch, gestating, twitching, browning, waiting for humanity to catch up.
So come on people, lets not be self conscious, give us a glimpse of the future of surfing without all the boring bits. Submit your photos for everyone to see. I got one here as a matter of fact. …
Wow! What an amazing line-up of beauties, and we`ve only just begun…
My dream would be to have a “BIZARRE SURFCRAFT CONVENTION”! Imagine a weekend where all us forward thinking weirdos gather at one spot to bust out the scariest, most advanced and perhaps ground-breaking shapes, all in the name of fun. It would be open slather, ride any board you want, perhaps culminating in an (very) informal competition scenario followed by the usual slaying of a goat and drinking of its blood.
Anyway, I propose Crescent Head because it`s a cool spot and has everything.
Here’s a picture of a board made by a fellow I shared a shack with back in the last century. He called it the “Bone”. I’ve blacked out his face because I can’t seem to get in touch with him, he moved away shortly after he made the creature. It’s taken from a snowboard template. I don’t remember the actual length, but for those dying to know - you could probably make a good guess using the base of the twins as a relative measure.
He believed the design would offer certain advantages regarding flex. We didn’t hold the same views as to the role of flex, but that’s unimportant, he saw it as a good thing. As it turned out, the board was bit ‘squirrelly’ (even with a larger center fin). My take from his report was that it was like surfing a pizza pan with fins. He didn’t have much to report on the flex component, but that only meant he didn’t tell me. He later cut kind of bat tail into it, which he claimed improved things a bit. He moved away shortly after he made it. I never tried it.
The guy who made it was a real natural. I suspect he actually could surf pizza pan if he cared to. We were an odd couple, as few things came natural to me, other than being cranky (about him being such a natural… talented bastard!)
Others have made such beasts. Here in the Northeast, I believe there is a fellow up in Maine who swears by them.
