REALLY interesting you posted this reverb !!
During this morning’s surf, I couldn’t help but notice a few different things going on in the lineup…
It was one of those days where you think it’s ankle to waist high . If you didn’t check it long.
Sitting inside, paddling sideways underwater , in the impact zone, were the learners on the very boards mentioned…6-6’3 x 18 x 2 1/4" wafer thrusters. [Others were drifting down the beach on their bics, blissfully unaware they were caught in the sideways currents !]
Sitting outside, were the overweight walrus moustached 9’+ mal riders. [I kid you not… they even live up to the cliche, complete with webbed paddling gloves and short legged wetsuits [ spring suit], with booties [!] ] Also, it seemed, having difficulty catching the waves, which in typical fashion, were slow takeoffs , then throwing/closing out on a shallow, board snapping inside bank.
Into this mix paddles out jo sponnoed dude on an identical board to what the beginners are floundering around on. Paddles too deep, stalls [!!], gets a couple second tube, spat out the end, big cuttie to finish off.
Interesting watching him on subsequent waves…his subtle weight distribution, use of ankles , knees and hip flexibility [heck , the kid was probably 25 years younger than me…thirty or more years younger than the beer gut brigade out the back.]
Being that they were shifty beachbreaks, I noticed his ability to be in ‘the right place at the right time’.
He knew where and when to pump the wafer for speed, and when to relax… not what I would call a ‘hopper’, thankfully.
It got me thinking, and in fact I mentioned it to my mate I was surfing with at the time… the concept of ability, and then, watching video footage of a slater or more particularly, Curren, how he can ride a 60/70’s skip frye designed fish at small j-bay and RIP figure 8 cutback/roundhouse combos effortlessly where most would be bogging nose rails or trying to adapt to the slide as the keel left the water.
In a word, finesse…
Man, I must have watched derek hynd at j-bay in that ‘litmus’ video on the same board at least thirty times.
Because, to me with my limited knowledge, it ‘don’t seem right’… thick, chunky, wide, flat, board with a honking great 12" wide fishtail pod, BIG, longbased wood fins, pointed straight ahead, god knows what kind of rails [hopefully they had some kind of hard edge from at least in front of the fins back]… on THIS board, there’s good ol’ derek having a bit of a play [!!] in overhead dredgy jeffrey’s bay !! [I could see that would be a wave where a foiled, rockered sleek thruster with good rails and fins would be a choice I’d prefer]
But then, I’ve seen some of the ‘cords at j-bay’ footage, and how well Dan Malloy makes the fish perform. And Dave Rastovich, and donovan frankfurter , and joel, and rob machado, all riding different/ing boards, and it all looks GOOD to me!
Buttons in the 70’s …from the footage and mags I’ve got, seemed to be able to ‘jump on whatever came along , and RIP !’ to quote one of the captions. [Didn’t have to ‘pump’ THOSE boards for speed, just as an aside!]
Seems to me some of the factors involved include fitness, water time and the related ocean knowledge, natural ability/ co-ordination, board familiarity / confidence, awareness of different designs characteristics, and fins, having the right tool for the job, so to speak…and even if not , having the ability / confidence/ courage to make it work anyway…that last bit may come under the heading finesse. I posted a thread at surfer design forum once under fish finesse, something like that, asking for people’s comments on that very issue [probably should have asked Tom !]
I guess all this amble is saying to condense it to one sentence is, some ride at a certain level all their lives [that’s unfortunately probably me included! in that category], some have a good ability, and a few have finesse. Something that becomes evident in slow motion video subtlety…I think I became very aware of this watching the mentioned footage in ‘searching for Tom Curren’, and Michael Peterson’s segment in ‘Morning of the earth’, as well as most of the Slater footage from whenever!
ben
ps - here’s a question / food for thought…
Are they called ‘high performance thrusters’, these wafers, because they really DO perform at a ‘higher level’ than other boards ??
or, is the [cold/hard/simple] reality , for some [?most?] people who ride them, that the rider has to ‘perform’ a lot [read wiggle, weave, pump… and , god forbid ! HOP] … just to keep the things MOVING ??
… it’s worth thinking about. [or is it?]
