This one is for all you bonzer enthusiasts. and everybody else.
today while surfin for the second time i was thinking about a surfers journal article i read a few issues back, or many issues back, that had a campbell brothers bonzer feature. in there, one or both of the bros says that the bonzer is truly more advanced and more capable then any other design, thruster included, and that one day a world championship will be won on one.
i havent spent too much time on a bonzer, but they do go really fast. but so do a lot of longboards i have owned, and ive made a 10’4 with belly nose to tail go really fast too. in my opinion a lot of these things are relative, and its how much you put into it that turns into how much you get out of it. and ofcourse the equiptment matters as well. its a combonation of your mindset and your board and the whole entire environment, really.
so can a bonzer ridden correctly surpass the modern thruster? Bonzers do get that potato chippey, saw one today, but as the guy was getting out of the water.
I think that Bonzers are very high performance boards, especially the 5-fins. They hold well in hollow conditions and find speed pockets really well. However, they are pretty sensitive to the wave selection. I’m not sure what I think about the versatility of a 5-finner in a variety of wave conditions, especially slower waves.
Smooth lines on a Bonzer might not get too many high scores. I think thrusters lend themselves to more snappy hi-pro maneuvers. People like to see those edgy radial turns where guys do snaps on every small corner of a wave that shoot spray all over the place.
…maybe one day. I’d like to see a world champ on a bonzer.
While they are superb boards and i really like them, they can’t release well if at all, so i highly doubt a world champion ship will be won unless there is a change in peoples view of good surfing(no more snappy flick maneuvers) if it goes to a gliding powerful swooping then yea.
While i’d probably agree with that statement, it would only be in part. You’ve obviously never seen Taylor ride one. I saw him out one day just absolutely obliterating our local spot. Blowing the lip out along with the tail, left and right. When he got out I was blown away that he was riding a bonzer, because you couldn’t tell from watching him surf that day. I wished I had known beforehand, as it would’ve made sense thinking back. The speed bursts around sections and out of his turns was rediculous. It was back in the early to mid 90’s when i believe he was just starting to get some of malcolms boards. The one he had that day was a 6’1" if i remember correctly, and the only difference between this board and one of his thrusters was the bottom and the fact that it had 5 fins. Other than that the shape was really similar. The problem is most people only see pics of bonzers that are fuller and wider sometimes even fun shape type boards, or longboards and fishy type boards. I think if you gave AI or Kelly or any of those guys a bonzer shaped like their normal shortboard, you’d see some interesting stuff. Especially on the WCT now that it goes to almost all big,lined up perfect waves!! I think you’d see some fresh lines and not any lack of performance. Now 1 foot chiba? That’s a different story.
I think that Bonzers are very high performance boards, especially the 5-fins. They hold well in hollow conditions and find speed pockets really well. However, they are pretty sensitive to the wave selection. I’m not sure what I think about the versatility of a 5-finner in a variety of wave conditions, especially slower waves.
I had that concern about the slower waves when I got my Bonzer. However I have noticed a speed differance in such conditions as comapred to normal thrusters.
i agree. i don’t think bonzers work all that well on slow waves.
i posted a bunch of my campbell bros boards on chipfish’s international bonzer thread 5 months ago. one saturday this past summer, i took 4 (all 5-fins under 6’6, and none over 20.5 wide) of them to the ala moana beach park on the south shore and tried them out one at a time for a whole day. the waves were about shoulder high at all the breaks. i guess one neat thing is that there are like 10 different waves within 2 street blocks there, some high performance, some a bit more hollower, and some slow, but playful.
I think the bonzers really did well at big rights, a fast peak that elbows into a fast hollow section with a quick off the top barrel. and also surprisingly, was pretty fast backside at kewalos and concessions. however, i really didn’t like in the slower set waves at courts, marinelands, and straight outs, which in my opinion are longboard waves, even at head to shoulder high. i have a thinned out 5 fin round pin egg, which i thought was the overall best bonzer shape, followed by the e-wing fish. i had a really hard time riding the swallow tail 5-fin, which was likened to taylor knox’s board in shelter. It seemed way too advanced for me to dial in and turn. of course, i’m not taylor. so i sold that one! i thought the same shape with a thruster would serve better. anyway, sorry for rambling and tangenting this thread, but that was a saturday tale of the bonzer.
i think if one of the top 5 WCT guys went strictly bonzer, a title might be won, but my hunch tells me that they would stick with thrusters.
Just about every pro surfer visiting the north shore at some point stops in to have breakfast at Cafe Haleiwa and borrows a Bonzer from Duncan. They rip on them, they order customs. As far as contest, the judges have become pretty gnarly about those guys riding stock tri-fins. It will be a long time before there is every a repeat of Simon’s influential Bell’s victory where a guy wins a big contest on a “new” design.