Jack Johnson

I met Jack Johnson last night at the Quicksilver Happening at Bondi Pavilion. Last time Jack was here he was blessed with one of the best right hand banks Bondi has seen in the past 10 years. I was taking some photos of some guy ripping and when I got the shots back I saw it was Jack. Good work son!

thanks to Mad Dog for the pic.

2SM Surfabout 1982

This is a 6'0" swallow tail twin fin 'Clinker' design shaped by Laurie Byrne for Hawaiian surfer Vince Klyne for the 1982 Surfabout at Narrabeen. 'Clinker' refers to the extremely deep channels and splayed fin setting. Some boards are worth collecting because they good examples of innovative design and some are worth collecting for their historical significance and some are good riders. This board is all 3! Its a bit rough... but as you can see in the photos of me at Seal Rocks NSW it still goes great. Its fast and loose and the deep channels really hold in the pit.

Sam's board sale.

My mate Sam decided it was time to clear the garage and have a surfboard sale. He sent the emails around and by 11.30am had sold 20 boards. Eugene sent 6 boards along and priced them like they were going to the Louis Vitton store and sold none.
This is the ideal hunting ground for the collector cause generally no one knows a thing about the old boards stuck in the back of the garage and you can get them at a a bargain. I'm sure Karl would have sold me the Glen Winton 'Mr X' shaped quad fin for a dollar if I told him it was rubbish. Plus, I got to sell a nice old Hot Roc single fin to Simon Letch, letting me break even for the day.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

I have surfed this board 100's of times and it still looks brand new. It looks like a modern day reproduction of a twin fin but its not! Its a 6'2" single fly, swallow tail twin, channel bottom, twin fin by Jackson shaped by Jim Parkinson in 1981. It has an unbelievably hard and heavy gloss coat that appears virtually indestructible.
In about 1982/83 many surfers became obsessed with the new 'Professionalism'. Everyone wanted to look like a pro-surfer. They started wanting super light boards with wafer thin glass jobs, they started putting big logo stickers all over their boards, even when they weren't sponsored. They stopped getting decorative sprays on their boards and ordered all white boards. They stopped being interested in innovating designs and they all wanted to ride the same 3 fin board design.
The equivalent would be if all musicians suddenly lost interest in their own genre, rock, folk, country and all wanted to sing Britney Spears pop songs.
Sadly the 20 years after 1985 barley produced a board worth keeping. Most of the good boards have snapped, the rest have fallen apart or they are so boring they are not worth keeping.
Thanks to www.aquabumps.com for the photo.

Right tools for the job. Part 2

I have a board rack by my bed with about 20 boards on in. I often lie in bed and stare at the different tails and fin set ups and wonder how each of these designs would perform in serious, quality waves. So when I go on surf trips I always pack one vintage board from the collection. This always annoys my traveling companions and gets me charged excess baggage but I don't care.
On this trip to Bali I decided to see how a 6'0" single fly swallow tail Lightning Bolt twin fin would go at low tide Padang Padang. I had always imagined that this board would sit really nicely in the tube. What I didn't think about was how it was meant to do a bottom turn.

In the first 2 shots you can see my friend take off and pull in on a nice new rounded pin tail thruster. In the last shot you can see me taking off on the next wave. You can see the twin fin completely spinning out and you can see me about to get smashed on the dry reef in the fore ground.

U.S Laser Zap

Like the El Camino (ute) and the stump jump plow, the Americans want to copy everything the Australians do. Here is a board my friend Mark and I found in San Clemente, south of LA. A unqiue U.S licenced version of Geoff McCoys Laser Zap design. I brought it back to Bondi for a while and found an original Star fin for it before sending it back from wence it came.

Of course the truth is Australian copies everything the Americans do, except for the ute, the stump jump plow and the bionic ear, including being the only nation on the planet to back the US in every war since the war of independence. But don't get me started on the need for an Australian war of independence and how Australia is tied to Great Britian's apron strings.

Neal Purchase Jr.

NPJ is a hero of mine. Unbelievable surfer, shaper, musician and artist. I have seen him backhand tube ridding Kirra right past me better than other human while I coped a beating with half a broken board. He is part of the new innovation movement of surfers and shapers who are pushing the boundaries of modern design. I met him last night and we discussed his 2 x 1 fin 'widow maker' set up with a large centre fin. Check what he's been up to at www.theswiftmovement.com

"Charlie don't surf"

The most collectible surfboard in the world in my books is the 8'6" Yater Spoon as used by Lt. Col. Kilgore in the movie "Apocalypse Now". Emblazoned with the word Airmobile it was part of the surfing sequence in "Apocalypse Now" that is among the most memorable scenes in a film that many critics include on their list of the best 100 movies of all time. The highest price ever paid for a movie surfboard was $12,300 for a big-wave "gun" used by Hawaiian Pipeline master Jerry Lopez in "Big Wednesday," a 1978 surf-themed film directed by John Milius, who also wrote the original screenplay for "Apocalypse Now."

Egg

This is my Jackson 6'0" round nose, round tail, rolled S deck, flat bottom 'Egg' with 50/50 rails that go down at the tail. Short ... for quickness - thick for buoyant paddling and radical - with low soft rails for power surfing. The photo is of Laurie Byrne shaping this actual board at the Jackson factory in Taren Point in 1970 (possibly).

How good is my wife??

For my engagment present my wife Fern bought me this 79/80 period Mark Richards single fly swallow tail twin with classic dragon logo on the bottom. It surprised me when it came one day wrapped in in old blanket, delivered by courier from Queensland. 

Then I married her.

Big Simon Anderson

I have always loved and admired the spray on the first thruster that Simon took to Hawaii. The classic energy spray with white rails and blue fade on the deck. I was in heaven when I found this 6'0" single hip, swallow tail twin fin designed and shaped by Simon Anderson because it had his classic spray. Its not as collectible as a thruster from the same year, but I don't care that Simon hates them, I like twin fins.

rare pic of Simon with a twin fin.

Home made boards- Just say no! Part 2

A friend of a friend said he knew a guy who had an original Laser Zap to sell. I drove half way across town to find this crappy back yard job. But me being me I couldn't resist the super wide tail, needle nose and dodgy geometric spray. At one stage in 1983 this guy (Phil Cox) thought he was on the cutting edge of design. It's worth nothing.

Holy Grail.......

I'm obsessed with the 1982 Stubbies contest and the variety of board designs ridden by the competitors, mainly MR, Cheyne, Rabbit and Simon. I tracked down one of the actual boards to the Torquay Surf Museum near Bells Beach in Victoria. Although the board is unlabelled I knew exactly what it was when I saw it. I wiped my eyes got up off the floor and took a pic. I was further saddened to see that the great board had been snapped. But then that's what happens to all the best boards.

In my quest to capture the essence of this exciting innovation period of surfboard design I secured my own version of MR's board. Its actually and Australian shaped Lightning Bolt 6'2" Single fly swallow tail twin fin I bought from a surf life saver in Cronulla. I have no way of proving it but I suspect that the logo on the bottom with the bolt going thru the explosion was only used by team bolt riders. Pretty stoked, hey!

My biggest secret...........

My biggest board collecting secret is a little known function on the US version of the electronic auction site ebay. It has brought me some of my best boards and made me some great friends. I'll reveal it to you today. I often travel overseas for work. I try and combine my collecting with my travel. Lets say I'll be in Santa Monica, LA in a week from today and I have a free day cause its going to be Sunday. Log on to www.ebay.com and choose your area of interest, in my case surfboards. Then in the side bar under location type in 100 miles from 90410, Santa Monica. This will cut the boards available from about 1000 to about 200. From them sort by auction date ending. Look for auctions ending about a day or 2 before your scheduled day off in LA. If your lucky there will be one or two nice boards for you to bid on. I then contact the seller and say I plan to bid from Australia and if successful I will come pick up the board COD on Sunday. Often US sellers wont accept bids from overseas. More often the seller is stoked to hear from someone overseas with a similar passion. Every time I have done this I have been invited over to the sellers house or taken out to lunch or taken surfing or given their phone numbers for future hook ups.

Here is a board from my last trip to LA, its a board I could never find in Australia and it has a unique story. Bruce Jones is a legendary Californian shaper who's boards I have long wanted to add to my quiver. This board was made by Bruce in the early 80's for an in store display of Mary Kay make up. Has a beautiful spray on both sides including a hand cut stencil of the Mary Kay logo, single fly swallow tail with clear laminate fins. It has survived unridden and undamaged for more than 25 years. My friend Mark lives in LA and drove me to pick it up and took me surfing at Salt Creek where I immediately got over excited and surfed it into the rock and damaged its previously immaculate fin. But now I have a story to tell.

Custom Wetsuits

In the 70 's and 80's surfers paid a lot of attention to the sprays they ordered on a their custom boards. I know that growing up in Manly guys talked about the sprays they were going to order as much as the boards. JS was a big Dr Who fan and had an Emerald sprayed black with a full intergalactic scene with the Tradis and Daleks flying around. Fat Mac ordered an Aloha with a giant juicy hamburger on it. Max was the coolest he had his boards sprayed half hot pink and half flouro green separated by a diagonal lightning bolt. But Max went one step further, he ordered a custom wetsuit to match his board, half hot pink and half flouro green separated by a diagonal lightning bolt.
I recently tried this out. Inspired by the Wallabies world cup rugby win I ordered a custom wetsuit from Ocean One in Cronulla with Wallabies logos and badges. I took it one step further and decided to turn my footballing hero's into superheros with the addition of the cap and mask. I had a chance to present this to Captain Stirling Mortlock, Wendell Sailor, Loti Tuqiri and Stephen Larkham
For some reason they declined my offer to adapt the design for their new uniform, but they did give me a nice signed rugby jersey for good measure.

Energy Thruster

The most far reaching design development of the innovation period was Simon Anderson's 3 fin 'Thruster'.
In 1981, when most boards had only one or two fins, Simon came up with the idea of putting a third fin at the back of his board. This paid immediate dividends as he went on to win three contests that year: the Bells Beach Classic (in the biggest waves since 1965), the Coca Cola Surfabout and the Pipeline Masters. Today 99% of the worlds touring pro's ride this design.
This one here has a great checker board spray but more importantly you can see that the back fin protrudes beyond the tail (just). That means it was one of the first thrusters sold as Simon changed the design soon after cutting his foot on the trailing back fin.
The important thing about the thruster design is not that Simon surfed well on it, as Cheyne did on the Laser Zap, but that everyone surfs well on a thruster.