there's plenty of essay whaffle in this - but the thing gg is riding sounds unique
He hasn’t changed much.
We never met, George and I. The closest was in 1964 when I coat-tailed a friend into the house Bob Cooper, Russel Hughes and Bob McTavish were renting up at Noosa. They were all in the kitchen. McTavish was talking about himself, Hughes was looking at himself and Cooper was bent over the kitchen table drawing some vision on butcher paper. GG wasn’t around then but there was something in the air.
So that was about 48 years ago and the other night I was talking to the fellow who took me to Noosa that day. We’ll call him Allan because that’s his name. He’s been married to Elaine for 40 plus years. I stole a kiss from Elaine at the Keever’s old Wategos cottage about the same year I never met George.
We never talk about it.
Allan was telling me about George.
‘ He goes out to the bombies around the Cape and links them all up on his …. craft,’ says Al, ‘ it looks like a mat but the thing is only half full of air and can be used as a kind of bodysheath so GG can plane it out and accelerate when the wave starts to get steep and throw, and then he can shift its function to something similar to a hull-cut and carry on through the fat bits – still at full speed and no slap-bumps because he’s changed the in-water configuration of the thing somehow – until the next shallow section shows its boils. ‘
This threw us. Greenough has invented something new to ride waves on has he? – and on the bombies out behind the Cape where all the local White-pointers meet for lunch ..
‘ – and if anyone reckons he needs company he just buggers off and goes further out and further back around the Cape. ‘
I wonder where the old bloke is out today – there’s about a 10′ swell jacking up into the north coast and he won’t be looking for company.
my guess too is a pg 4th gear flyer as they have been collaborating on different designs(and materials) for a loooong time. GG must have some sort of vibration around him that sharks either don't like or at least relate too. the fact he has not had that unfortunate encounter is beyond me. many of the reefs and points he surfed around his california home are white shark hangouts, now he's doing the same down under with the bronze whalers, whitey's etc. i'm in california and surf many of the spots gg did both on a board or a mat. being on a board doesn't bother me but when on the mat,(at some of those spots) i feel like i'm nothing but a big lure for a shark to enjoy.
Sounds like a mat. Maybe a high-falutin’ mat, but a mat just the same. You squeeze here, it bulges there. He’s been doing it long enough to control all the squeezin’ and bulgin’ (Oh my!). Bulldogging the jellyfish…
would love to read a book on GG, reckon his mind is full of interesting and odd thoughts, just love readin about those times back in the day on the Sunshine Coast when they were all trying different stuff, chopping noses off, and trialling the first glass fins…pretty sure my local is where GG used his first fibreglass fin…
wouldnt suprise me if he rode krypt surf mats http://www.kryptsurf.com/SURFMAT.htm their the only high performance surf mat ive ever heard of in Oz, their from lennox/byron so id assume theirs some connection
4th gear flyer is another mat available in oz. it's something gg and pg started decades ago in california. though they now are on different continents, they still collabotrate on the mat designs, materials they are made from etc.
Mat riding used to be a standard when I was a kid during “black ball”, in Huntington 11-5, and Newport 12-4. Used to surf till the lifeguards kicked us out, sometimes people got tickets. Then we’d mat. West St. in South Laguna was a place we would just ride mats, because that’s where my cousin’s house is, the rocks are, and a backwash so wicked sometimes we would do aerials without trying… I remember those long summer days, we didn’t need towels to dry off, just cover ourselves in warm sand until it was time to go back out. Hemmingway, didn’t matter (well maybe one of the grandkids, like Mariel), nothing did, we would talk about tubes and how cool they would look if we could take pictures inside of them. We used to scream in the tubes, any else ever scream in them? Black Sea Bass tasted so good back then, so did Abalone; White Sea Bass, tasted great last night, and will taste even better when I smoke some today,.
Greenough’s a trip, always barefoot when I used to see him, spending time with him talking about board designs at Yater’s or Haaks, or surfing at the Ranch with him and Charlie Coffee out.
Linking experiences by writing, so others can share in them is cool. Making things for others to experience is cooler. George designing the 17 and 22’s for Anderson Boats provided us with another set of experiences still can’t write about because the experience is beyond my writing skills.