I guess its time to add my two cents worth.
I’ve been surfing for over 30 years now and have owned well over a hundred boards in that time.
I have bought numerous boards, both custom and off-the-rack from the very best Australian shapers and board builders. There were good and great boards, but in the pursuit of a reasonable weight I had to give up durability. I don’t want to ride a 2 sixes on the deck and a six on the bottom. All the lighter boards didn’t last long: twelve months and they were pretty well worthless as a trade.
Originally from Cronulla, I moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1990. The virtually non-existant surf in Perth led to me taking up windsurfing as well as continuing with surfing. I rode custom PU wave boards at Margaret River and up north. Initially custom PU were used by 95% of wave riders, but various forms of EPS/epoxy boards started to appear.
For a couple of years there were lots of problems with them as various forms of construction were tried out. Finally, a rock solid construction method, EPS with a vacuum bagged Divinycell layer, solved all these problems.
At that time I continued to advocate the custom PU as the best solution and became one of the last holdouts for this construction. But finally I tried an epoxy. I was hugely impressed with the performance and durability, and never purchased a PU wave board after that. Despite the fact that you could buy a custom PU for only $750 when an epoxy was $1500.
These boards were so strong and so light that I started to think why weren’t there any epoxy sandwich surfboards available. I put the question to Marty Littlewood at Delta Designs (still one of the best surf and sailboard builders in Margaret River) and he said sure he could do me an epoxy sandwich surfboard. Problem was price. He figured it would nearly take as much labour and materials to do the surfboard as it would a sailboard, a little less on materials, so would do a custom surfboard for $1200. This is in about 1994, way to much for me at that time.
But I figured it was only a matter of time before someone started manufacturing epoxy sandwich surfboards
Meanwhile one of the better sailboard manufactures was Seatrend. An American company owned by Randy French. I came across one of his early wood veneer surfboards a few years later and bought it immediately. Since then (over 10 years ago) I have not owned another PU board: epoxy sandwich boards are so much lighter and stronger. I have boards that I have taken to Indonesia every year for the last 6 years. They have done lots of Indonesion internal flights as well, plus boat trips and have been piled on the top of buses. People still think that I have bought then new for the most recent surf trip. I could still get 70% of their original cost as a trade in.
So I can buy a new Surftech for about $1000, ride it for 2-6 years, and still get $700 as a trade in. I have bought and traded at least 30 epoxy boards over the last 10 years and never lost more than 30% of the purchase price.
So are Surftechs overpriced? Absolutely. Surf shops here in Perth are getting epoxy sandwich boards of the same quality as Surftech made in Asia and are selling them for half the price of Surftech.
In my opinion PU manufactures who complain about Surftech have got it wrong. Its Surftech that is maintaining an artificially high price for epoxy sandwich surfboards and so allowing PU construction to maintain market share. Think about what would happen if Surftech halved their prices.
Sure they are made in Asia as the labour is cheaper there, what isn’t nowadays. But here in Australia custom builders can still compete with Surftech prices, but where are the Australian epoxy sandwich shapers. I used to buy some Bert Burgers boards when they were made in WA. Speedneedle, who posts here, offered me a competive price for an epoxy sandwich. Trouble is he’s in Victoria and I’m in Western Australia, so shipping adds a hefty premium, plus I really like to talk to the shaper and look at his boards before buying a custom.
Enjoy whatever you ride,
Dave
