Is the old pic of the guy in Sydney Harbour ? AU East coast somewhere? The background looks familiar?
The ARK looks like a floating coffin. Props for thinking up something new tho.
I think we’re eventually going to see powered boards come back. I remember meeting this guy back in the late 70’s who designed these water jet powered rescue boards. He was at Haleiwa testing them and I had a chance to talk to him. Those things never did get to be successful.
I’m pretty sure someone has already made these, but they aren’t saturating the surf spots yet.
I think someone will eventually figure out how to make them more mainstream. If people are too lazy to work for waves and move to SUPs to get more waves, we’ll eventually see powered boards take over the paddling altogether.
One day we’ll probably see someone put ski lift type things that go out into the ocean and we won’t have to paddle out. Just grab a rope and go using strapped boards. Then they’ll figure out how to make that work for catching waves, and we’ll see surf spots being commercialized and we’ll have to buy tickets and wait in line to ride waves.
I’m still waiting for someone to build a wave pool with perfect 200 yard long rides. I think I’d pay to surf that.
Well, based on a surprise I saw two months ago at Old Man's, of all places, maybe I've seen the future. There I was, an older guy on my 7'10" round pin, outside on a pretty good late afternoon waiting with few else but a few tankers. The tanks, by the by, were getting most of it. Sets a little overhead, pretty smooth, some doubling up but not really threatening.
So I'm waiting for the next set with another guy I didn't know. Along comes a paddleboard, a nice new hollow expensive job, I didn't pay much attention except to think, look at the outside, here comes a set, it's gonna be overhead (most of the sets were that day)... the paddle boarder oughta skeeedaddle or he'll get stuffed and my lose his 1200 buck hollow PB. Okay I move out a little, as does the other guy and the PB. Lo and behold, rather than hittin' it for the horizon, the PB sits up, wheels around and takes off. I was a little surprised at this moderately risky maneuver but I figger what the hell. THEN the PB stands up. This I've not seen.... a round bottom 12-footer with no rocker, no curve in the outline some "whatever" fin and a pretty damn large turning radius... he makes the wave easy as pie.
Hm! Ten minutes later we're sitting pretty far outside and the set of the day breaks 250 yards further out, WAY out there, and we're pretty far out already. Well, no problem, it'll back off before it gets here... the PB again moves out a little, wheels around and takes off. Only this time the wave has backed off and reformed and jacked... to big, dark DOH M-Fer, I shit you not, and steep. The PB paddles over the ledge, stands up and holds a stall position on the rear so that rather than zoom down the face with board parallel to the face like the rest of us, he comes down standing on the tail with the PB sticking out horizontally (so he doesn't pearl). I 'bout shit myself. They guy has major skills. And, he makes the wave though he close to speared some girl bailing off her longboard at the bottom. Well TS on her for being in the impact zone. No harm done.
After me and the other guy duck dive this bomb and look around for the next one (which really didn't come) I turn and say "THAT is the future. Next year we'll all be riding 12-foot hollow paddle boards, taking off half a mile out. SUPs will be history, a bad dream, and gone." The other guy wasn't really taking this in and just sorta mumbles something. But I saw something I'd never imagined could be done, and I was impressed. I've seen guys take off on big and small bombs, slabs and ledges all over Oahu and not make it, and a few that somehow pull it off by luck or skill. But a paddleboard going for, getting on, and making a drop like that that doesn't happen often. As in, never before.
Would I do it? mm, no. 1200 clams for a new hollow PB is a lot to risk on one wave. But I saw it, and I'll remember it for a long time.
Ec-friendly PWC surfing?
I cant think of the next wave rider but I can think of new accessories...
stcik on tail shapes that change a square tail to a swallow /round / pin / bat / etc... ?
or stick on tail-rails that add 1/2 in to each side and then reduce it with a double flyer ? Fashionable fish looks with 70's retro styling.
or how about applying surf fin technology to SUP paddles and coming up with a twin bladed "twinzer" version paddle with the 2 blades at one end of the paddle ?
LOL!
As the popularity of SUP’s brings more and more people to already over crowded waters and as tempers flare from it, a new hybrid of MMA and SUP will evolve: SUPS (Stand Up Pugil Sticks).
[img_assist|nid=1044664|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=632|height=640]
Surffoils Technologies Corporation- "Forwarding society by lowering standards."
Just wait, someone will bring out the twin bladed paddle, maybe Schick ?
Honolulu, Do you think he was Owl Chapman?
I like the barefoot approach. I recall a friend of mine was attempting to break the world barefoot waterskiing record.
I approached O’neill for a special wetsuit, which they ponied up when I explained I had Steve Bissell and George Greenough coming along and documenting the attempt. This was on Lake Nacamiento in the dead of winter with no one around. He had to break over 100 to beat the record back then, and for the official runs he would have to do it two ways for it to qualify. Runs down and back…this was around '75…GG probably remembers this adventure.
Even if you get towed in to a wave, you’d have to pick a glassy day. The guy that was doing the run, Bob Plank, was a hell waterskiier, super talented, so I think this would be super hard for your average Surfer Joe. He had to hit a pretty high speed before planing up…he also had tried booties and there was no way this was gonna work. but the water gets hot and we duck taped his feet. I put my hand out of the boat on a practice run and man, the water was HOT!
Maybe the training wheel approach might help for low planing to be possible. I think if you are really good, you can plane up around 40-45…something like that…but you have to have talent. So I can’t see the lineup full of these new age riders…plus there would be a lot of boats all over the place running over guys that went down and crashing into each other, especially in small wave zones, forget leashes, more like strangulation by tow lines!
It might be okay if you have a big wide beach with a bunch of Baywatch types ready to swim out and save you in their Thong bikinis.
How about opting for an inflatable surfboard? Ribbed like a Trojan condom to heighten your wave riding pleasure?
[quote="$1"]
How about opting for an inflatable surfboard? Ribbed like a Trojan condom to heighten your wave riding pleasure?
[/quote][video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-VYCxyIa0w]
Unfortunately it doesn’t come ribbed.
I like this one. These guys look really, er, wholesome. I didn’t know they had warm water in San Francisco…DS
Hey Foils...
In all seriousness, I think you could do something with this:-
Josh
Josh, I'm still working on the foils but they have some restrictions that limit their performance, but Im still working on them. Im just about to put a foil onto a 6'6" board and give that a go.
Ive been chatting with deadshaper about weight reduction and maybe the next great wave riding device will be an ultra light board.
Fr'instance.... all the groovy young guys who ride Alaias have shown that volume/bouyancy and rail volume isnt essential, so maybe a single skin carbon hull or a 1/2 in Corflute double skin.
And all these concave outline boards have shown that the you can pull in the outline thru the middle and still ride, as well as remove the front 12 inches so just leave a front planing area for the front foot and a rear one for the back foot and fin/s.
(See pic below.)The green one shows how it might look as a 1 piece or just keep reducing it down to 2 pieces and if you put any foam in it put it in the tail section (yellow area)
A 2 piece board would certainly make it easier to carry , transport, repair, as well as provide a flexible platform for adding and changing the components. A "Transformer -Board", if you will. Dont stop at just having removeable fins.
Sure it would be difficult to ride but a standard design board today was unthinkable 20 years ago.
Whoa, hold on there! That Greenie one is looking too much like a chopped off Meyerhoffer abortion…albeit improved in looks becuz there’s LESS of it!
Can’t we come up with ‘inny thang’ bettah than this!?
It’s time for a NEW REVOLUTION to replace all the refined up the arse shortboards.
The only thing for certain is change. Let’s screw up eveyone’s established method of production and shake the cocomuts from da tree!
YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww ! (reminds me of that guy riding the rocket down to its target in Dr. Strangelove! 
charlie
there’s a guy that surfs outside the elks club and the outrigger canoe club in an eight or six man outfigger canoe all by himself standing up. I had a picture of him but I can’t find it now. I saw him about fours years ago surfing out there when we at the elks club for my cousins wedding. Blew me out of the water watching him manage that thing all by himself and standing up bouncing the nose up from the rear as he was paddling in. I think this was before the modern age of SUP. pretty amazing stuff none the less…
i always wondered why the coconut island facility that trained all those porpoise for demo duty in vietnam never trained to have them assigned to a navy seal handler like the army and airforce does with dogs(who knows they probably did).
Based on what they do with them at sea life park, i think the utimate surf mobile would be a trained pet porpoise that you’d hang onto to pull you through any wave of any size and back out again. with two of these friends you could ride on top like a board but body surfing the tube with just one hanging on to their dorsel fin would be the ultimate ride.
I’m sure cunningham, stewart and greenough would agree…
built in shark protection too.
the cold water folks could use killer whales like in whale rider or false killers like those in sea world…
wonder why this hasn’t been tried…
oh yea
they’d probably book if released into the wild i guess.
I don’t know about powered surfboards
i had two bozo’s jet skiis zoom right through my lineup this weekend
and the lingering smell was sickening
oh yea
back in 71-72
morey after alot of acid i guess did an article in surfer mag about the future of surfboards in which he described an air injected fat penguin looking thing that was soft to bend into the contours of the wave. still haven’t seen anything ever made that contained all the components he envisioned but that article is still my inspiration to thinking out of the box when it comes to surfcraft since.
simple, you can take em with you anywhere, they work in big swell or small mush, cold or warm water, you don’t need wax or a paddle and you have added protection vs. illness’. they be cheap and mass produced in asia and we can getem in any color or size, ribbed or smooth.
[quote="$1"]
Let's screw up eveyone's established method of production
[/quote]
We do that every day. I enjoy going to work and doing things differently.
I would like to see a board with TITS on it call me crazy but it could be fun!
Apparently you can buy a portable ''set''. When I was at the 12 hours of Sebring (which is like Woodstock and Mardi Gras combined with an international auto race thrown in) last March I saw them. A string goes around the neck and suspends them in the appropriate position. Great big volleyball-sized things get a lot of attention when girls are riding around in the back of pickup trucks bouncing them madly. Probably could be attached to your board easily.
In the year 2030 the [url=http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/trade-offs-modern-toedcanted-multiple-fin-systems?page=1] modern toed/canted multifin thread[/url] will have reached 100 pages and a complete understanding of optimum toe in, cant, fore/aft position and fin depth will have been obtained for every possible wave situation. This understanding will be written into a computer program running in the surfboards on-board puter powered by a solar patch on the nose of the board.
Electronic foot pressure sensors will be mounted on the deck, side pressure sensors in the fin boxes and water flow monitors will sense direction and speed of water flow. GPS will track the boards speed and direction and along with the sensors feed input into the computer. The computer will operate stepper motor units in the fin boxes and dynamically adjust cant, toe in, fin depth and position in the box and we will have CFC (Computerised Fin Control). CCF (Computerised Concave Control) and CRC (Computerised Rocker control) will also be available to produce a board that "surfs by wire". It will be common to blame wipeouts on bugs in the software