Volume 1 No. 3 ‘09 $5.00
Modern Longboard Design
Christian Wach | Wetsuits | Candice Appleby
THIS SPREAD Who says the golden age of longboarding is over? Eric Vallely enjoys a golden moment in contemporary time. Photo: Chasen Marshall.
ON THE COVER Three views of the modern surf scene: Steve Thomas rips his longboard off the lip. Photo: Danny Franks; Christian Wach gets his fish to fly. Photo: Yazzy Hilal; Candice Appleby digs deep for a cutback in the 21st century version of a beachboy tradition. Photo: Ryan Beppu.
Evolution and Revolution
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Yes, it’s not on the coast and it’s easy to bypass when you’re on surfari. But SLO is a surf town well worth dropping in on. By Mike Aguirre.
Waterwoman
Wetsuit Buyers Guide
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Candice Appleby is turning heads for her exploits as a pro longboarder, SUP surfer and open ocean racer. By Betty Depolito.
Staying Power FEATURES
Surf Cities: San Luis Obispo
Modern longboard design has deep roots dating back decades. But today’s boards are very different. So how did we get here? By Greg Loehr.
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Only a handful of surfboard labels can claim 50-plus years in continuous production. Their shaper-founders talk about their trials and tribulations during a half century in the board biz. By Paul Holmes.
Defying Odds
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Winter’s coming, but you’ll be chillin’ in the best kind of way with these toasty treats from the nabobs of neoprene.
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Christian Wach burst on the pro longboard scene as a mid-teen prodigy. But he’s had to be creative to make surfing into a career. By Chasen Marshall.
ASP World Longboard Tour
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Australia’s Harley Ingleby and Hawaii’s Duane DeSoto go headto-head in the finals of the first Oxbow WLT event, and so become the new front runners in the men’s world title ratings race. By Sam Bleakley.
Women’s World Title
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Jennifer Smith takes her second world crown as the leading lady longboarders go back to Biarritz for the annual Roxy Jam ASP championship showdown. By Jennifer Flanigan.
Publisher'sNote
Unleashed or Unsafe? A Surf Dog’s Dilemma Not long ago while surfing one of my home breaks, I was leaving the water along with one of the women pro longboarders and exchanging small talk. I’d mentioned that her surfing was looking particularly stylish that day and I’d heard a number of comments from the usual crew of men surfers that they too thought she was looking very good. Her comment that followed nearly floored me. She suggested that if I didn’t have that leash plug and leash attached to the back of my board that I too would get more comments about my surfing. Fortunately for me, my age has taught me to think before blurting out obscenities, so for the moment I just let it pass. That evening I began to get annoyed with the thought that having a leash on my board had anything to do with making me a better surfer, so I began making a few calls to friends about the leash dilemma, as I’d heard others make similar remarks about leash users. Here’s what I found out. There are three very good reasons for using the leash. Safety issues: Yep, safety. Once I’d spoken to my group of surf buddies it was clearly the consensus that the ocean and the waves would certainly be a lot more dangerous with surfboards adrift and flying all over the place. More than once I’ve been seeing the nose of a board headed for my head only to have it come up short thanks to a leash. And what about the little kids a loose board could clobber on the inside? Time management: I can certainly speak for most who are employed. Time in the water is extremely important and if you only have an hour or two for a session, half of it can be wasted swimming and getting back outside especially when the surf has any size. Perhaps some pros never fall off (and have the whole day to go surfing), but I know it happens to me from time to time (and I don’t). Damage control: Boards today are expensive and when left unattached will most certainly find some kind of trouble to get into, many times resulting in dings that result in expensive repairs. Especially where there are rocks, piers and jetties, dings are bound to happen. Why incur the cost? So here it is in a nutshell. If you don’t surf with a leash, good on you (and I hope your loose board never sends someone else to the ER), but don’t look down on those who do use a leash. And for those of you who do use one, thank you for making my sessions a whole lot better and for being a considerate co-citizen of the surf zone. Good Waves,
Publisher
Volume 1 No.3 Michael Anthony Aguirre Publisher, Editor-in-Chief Paul Holmes Managing Editor Chasen Marshall Editor-at-Large Paul West Contributing Editor John Ker Photo Editor John Bass Art Director Nikki Brooks, Chris Grant, Moonwalker, Keith Novosel, John Slavin, Lance Smith Contributing Photographers Jennifer Flanigan, Brian King, Greg Loehr, Ned McMahon Contributing Writers Copyright 2009 morSURF Magazine, Oceanside, CA Printed in the U.S.A. October, 2009, Volume 1, No. 3 morSURF Magazine is published six times per year by One Last Run Publications, 3460 Marron Road, suite 103-375, Oceanside, CA 92056. Periodicals Postage paid at Carlsbad, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to morSURF Magazine, 3460 Marron Road, Suite 103-375, Oceanside, CA 92056 morSURF Magazine’s Coverage and Distribution: Domestic subscriptions are available at $25 for (6 issues), $40 for (18 issues). Call us at (760) 803-2003 or Fax your order to (760) 314-0049. For foreign subscriptions contact info@morsurf.com for rates. Contributions: morSURF Magazine is not responsible for unsolicited contributions of any type. Unless otherwise agreed in writing, morSURF Magazine retains all rights on material published in morSURF Magazine for a period of six months after publication and reprint rights after that period expires. Change of address: We need six to eight weeks to change your address. Send your new address along with your subscription label to morSURF Magazine, 3460 Marron Road, Suite 103-375, Oceanside, CA 92056 or call (760) 803-2003. IMPORTANT NOTICE: The post office will not forward copies. We are not responsible for replacing undelivered copies due to lack of or late notification of address change. Advertising in morSURF Magazine: To advertise in morSURF Magazine please contact our Advertising Department at 3460 Marron Road, Suite 103-375, Oceanside, CA 92056 or call us at (760) 803-2003 or send us an email at info@morsurf.com.
Great Waves of Recession
Surfspective
In Bad Economic Times, Surfing Itself Seems to Thrive By Paul Holmes It might seem extremely indulgent
whatever was to come next. For those
economic malaise. The late ’60s to mid-’70s saw several
to embark on a fantastical search for
lucky enough to be surfers in California,
silver linings when dark clouds of
however, it was a great time to be
periods of recession, including a very
foreclosure, plummeting housing values
living on the coast. Lobster and
dark period that coincided with out-of-
and unemployment are daily headline
abalone were still plentiful among the
control inflation and notorious gas
news. And it may rankle in the
point break boulders. And balsa
shortages. Still, it was a time of
boardrooms of surfwear companies
wood—some of it sold super cheap in
momentous progress in board design
that are seeing share prices plunge,
the form of de-commissioned Navy life
and in surfing performance. From the
retail sales in a tailspin and quarterly
rafts—was readily available and quickly
mini-guns and radical vee-bottoms of
decisions to give more pink slips to
adopted as the “new” material for
the late ’60s, to down rails, the first wave
wide-eyed workers who thought they
surfboard blanks. Fiberglass and resin,
of popularity of twin-fins, and the
were part of a bro-down without end.
developed during the war, made
introduction of swallow-tails and wing-
A review of the
flyers, the period stands
corresponding history of
alone as time of wild
the U.S. economy and
experiments in the shaping
surfing, however, reveals a
room and in the waves.
strong case that in times of
Oh, and it is also when the
stress, from the Great
surf leash was tried out—an
Depression to the Great
innovation that had a
Recession, surfing itself
major effect in opening up
makes progress.
surf spots in front of boarddestroying rocks. Other
The disastrous economic effects of Great
flights of surf fantasy
Depression extended
became reality too—like
throughout most of the
the embryonic pro surfing scene that grew sufficiently
1930s, but this was also the period when surfing took root in
unvarnished progress possible and
from ’73 to ’75 and led to the first IPS
California and the first seeds of the
surfboard makers in California, where
World Tour being launched in 1976 with
“surf lifestyle” were sown. The Pacific
the new materials had been used in
mainstream sponsors like Coca-Cola
Coast Surfriding Championships, first
aircraft manufacturing, were in the
and Smirnoff helping fund the fun.
held in 1928, continued annually. The
prime place to take advantage.
first West Coast surf clubs were formed.
Two economic downturns occurred
One of the gnarliest downturns, 16 months in duration, occurred in 1981-’82
Plus, Tom Blake’s hollow boards were
during the ’50s, separated by some
and was a “double dip” coming on the
licensed to various manufacturers, do-
three years of growth, but the decade
heels of a previous brief recession in
it-yourself board building kits were
nonetheless was the time when surfing
1980. In the surf world, however, there
made available, and Pacific System
progressed from being a hobby to
was little sign that the economy was
Homes launched its “Swastika” and
being a lifestyle industry that could
going backwards. A game-changing
“Waikiki” line of ready-made, plank-
actually support fledgling businesses.
design innovation, the tri-fin Thruster,
style boards. Oh, and Tom Blake put a
The first commercial custom-made
moved surfing performance into a
fin on a surfboard for the first time in
board makers emerged, wetsuits were
brave new world and spurred a spike in
1935. Yes, the economic times were
developed, the first surf movies were
production among surfboard builders,
certainly awful, but surfing itself was on
made and even specialized surf trunks
as did the emerging spin-off sport of
the uptick.
and tees became available. By the time
“windsurfing.” The “surf look” as a
the economy slipped into recession
fashion trend was born, leading to an
in part the aftermath of WWII (no job
again in the early ’60s, surfing itself and
explosion in the number of surfwear
for Rosie the Riveter) and the shift from
the surf industry were booming,
companies starting up to take on
a war economy to a new era of
seemingly immune from the general
industry giants like Hang Ten, Op and
The recession of the late 1940s was
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Offshore and rising apparel rivals like Quiksilver and Billabong. By the mid-’80s, surf fashion was the darling of New York trendies and neon was the shizznit, but where today can you find early ’80s labels like Hot Moves, Pipeline, Catchit (sounded like another newbie, Gotcha, but wasn’t), Sunbreaker and countless others? The new companies employed hundreds of creative and sales types eager for a job connected to their emotional involvement in surfing, and provided sponsorship opportunities to scores of would-be, can-be and did-be pros. Largely the residual aftershock of the stock market plunge of 1987 (Black Monday), the early ’90s recession was short but brutal in many sectors of an economy that was becoming increasingly globalized. In surfing, though, the longboard resurgence and retro revival was a boon to surfboard makers, creating a knock-on effect that extended for years, right up to the present in many regards. Meanwhile, “Grrl power”—the growing trend of young females to gatecrash what had been almost exclusively boys’ sports like soccer, and skateboarding—spurred a huge influx of teenage girls into the lineup, and often their still youthful mothers too. Since longboards are easier to learn on than shortboards, the double-whammy cultural phenomenon represented a major shift in surf demographics and wonderful marketing opportunities for the surf industry in general. By the end of the 20th century recessions were becoming less frequent—tamed, it’s said, by better monetary policies and greater understanding of what causes booms and busts in the economy. But the burst of the dot-com bubble and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were enough to send all that into a early ’00s tailspin. For surfing? Well, not so bad. The tech boom had made surf reports and forecasts a science and easily accessed on the Internet, and ASP’s “live webcams” had put millions of pro-hos instantly in touch with real-time classic contest showdowns half a world away from where they lived. Meanwhile, CAD-CAM technology and relatively new, sophisticated manufacturing methods were making boards stronger, more accurate and mass-produceable— a mixed bag of benefits, depending on your point of view. It’s far too early to say how surfing may have progressed through this most recent economic meltdown. The rise of SUP has been a blessing for surfboard makers, that’s for sure, but the big picture is no bed of roses. Maybe, years from now, surf pundits will look back and say stuff like, “Oh, that’s when Kelly Slater’s alternative pro tour took off and surfing’s TV coverage made it possible for sponsors to build wave parks in landlocked cities and surf breaks on the coast got less crowded and that print- and web-based magazine morSURF got started and everything was wonderful and global warming changed the coastal zone and created untold sic waves that never existed before and we all lived happily ever after and surfing was never more fun.” We’ll see. Stay tuned.
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AfterHours
More Sophisticated Suds: Lagers No Longer Mean Boring Beer By Alastair Bland
Craft brewers have elevated lager to new heights of complexity and taste comparable to what microbrewers have done for ale.
Of all the many, many colors,
macrobreweries monopolized the
golden amber, is capped by an
flavors and styles of beer, there are at
market, lagers were popular and
appealing layer of foam and tastes of
the most basic level two kinds: ales and
became the trademark category of
nutty malt. Samuel Adams’
lagers. The ale category, which often
all the big labels, and thanks to the
Chocolate Bock is another fine lager
consists of deep flavors and robust malt
doings of these giant corporations—
and one of the handsomest beers
character, best represents the craft
like cutting corners on recipes by
that bubbles. Capped in a 750-ml
brewing category, as ales are relatively
using less and cheaper ingredients—
bottle stamped with raised lettering
cheap, easy and quick to make, often
lagers have gained a bleak
on the front, the Chocolate Bock is
dwelling in the tanks for a week or less
reputation as bland, thin, almost
released each fall. A bock is a style of
before heading to the bottle.
flavorless and very simple.
lager usually deep in flavor and often
Lagers are a different creature.
Not all lagers fit this bill, however,
very high in alcohol, but the
Frequently more estery and more
and several craft beer companies
Chocolate Bock runs just 5.5% ABV.
elegant than ales, lagers are made
make a lager or two. The Boston Beer
What it lacks in strength it holds in
using a species of yeast which ferments
Company, home to Samuel Adams,
charisma. It pours a reddish leathery
at low temperatures and requires a
even features a lager as its flagship
tan, lurks beneath a finely bubbled
month or more to complete its work,
beer—the Boston Lager. Unlike the
head, and smells of fudge, warm
making lagers relatively unprofitable for
nondescript macro-lagers that rule the
grain and coffee. The flavor is subtle
small beer companies with limited
beer industry, the Boston Lager bears
storage space. During the 1950s as
sincere flavor complexity. It glows rich
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Continued on page 14
Continued from page 12
Something tall, blond and sparkly? Sounds like a date with lager.
and slightly sweet and suggestive of a bitter dark chocolate. Velvety in the mouth, the beer is pleasure to sip. Rogue Ales also brews a beauty: the Morimoto Imperial Pilsner, first made in 2003 specifically for the use of Iron Chef star Masaharu Morimoto, who now features the beer in his restaurants. The Morimoto is 9% ABV, smells of lemon zest, tastes of thick malt and feels like bitter grapefruit. It’s a giant, but light in body, and you might be tempted to guzzle the Morimoto as a thirst-quencher. Watch yourself. Coney Island—a label of the Schmaltz Brewing Company—consists entirely of five lagers. The Albino Python, billed as a “white lager brewed with spices,” actually runs on the hazy yellow side, carrying a small head but crisp carbonation. The beer fizzes with scents of lavender, sage, nutmeg and allspice. Though low in alcohol, the beer is full and satisfying in the mouth. The Coney Island Lager, the label’s mainstay beer, is wonderful. Full, creamy, rich and malty, it smells and tastes of cedar, pumpkin and apricot. Lastly, a Coney Island seasonal worth snagging while it’s still here or marking the calendar for next October is the Freaktoberfest. This beer may give you a fright as it goes from bottle to glass; for reasons unexplained it is almost blood red—though it tastes, not of pomegranate, but heavy brown malt, wood, leather and dark fruit. While America’s macrobreweries have bastardized the lager into an innocuous bore of a beer, creative craft brewers of the nation have bastardized the lager in the other direction. Their creations are often rich, full and interesting, and it’s unlikely that you’ll taste any reason to complain.
Evolution and
Revolution The Roots of Modern Longboarding By Greg Loehr The history of performance longboarding is not a recent phenomenon. Many may argue, but the genre is full of the same kinds of revolutionary tides that define our more media saturated shortboard sister sport. Moreover, high performance has been at the heart of the cutting edge of surfing and surfboard design going all the way back to Tom Blake. Who would argue that taking 50 percent of the weight out of a board and adding the first fin wouldn't be a step into high performance? Mr. Blake was always pushing boundaries.
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Kai Sallas, outracing the lip with a highline drive. Moves like this on a longboard would have been hard, if not impossible, to pull off on the heavy, single-fin boards of yesteryear. Now, we just take them for granted. Photo: Chasen Marshall.
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“Spin-out—that age old nemesis of performance— disappeared into the historical rear view mirror.”
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Blake's influence led in the mid 1930s to the development of the Hot Curl surfboard, the very first glimmer of real high performance. While Blake, Duke Kahanamoku and George Freeth stylishly posed (traditional?), shaper/surfers Wally Froiseth, John Kelly and Fran Heath soon had surfers like Rabbit Kekai and Conrad Cahna ripping on these modern looking, thin, narrow tailed, deep veed, high performance shooters. Suddenly they were zig-zagging across faces, pulling cutbacks, getting tubed and noseriding. "Rabbit really started this style that they call hot-dogging," said Californian Joe Quigg. "In the summer, Queen's would get overhead and Rabbit would be inside of the tube hanging five with no fin and his back arched. All you would see was this flying green blur visible through the lip of the wave. He'd do it over and over again, always with precision." The name Hot Curl referred to the fact that these boards could be ridden close to and inside the tube. Hot dogging, high performance, call it what you like, but this was its birthplace—Waikiki, mid-’30s. In the ’40s and early ’50s in California there was Bob Simmons and his implementation of rocker and another 50-percent reduction in weight through the use of wood and fiberglass composites and polystyrene foam cores— Simmons was anything but "traditional." And as a result of
his many other advancements, Simmons became widely known as the father of the modern surfboard. Later one of Simmons collaborators, Joe Quigg, created the first real The best of today’s high-performance longboarders make a mash-up of classic and progressive styles. (Above) Troy Mothershead sets up for an off the lip that likely would have been confounded by both momentum and water-sucking 50/50 rails had it not been for advancements in design and materials. (Inset) Lanky Taylor Jensen dips a paddle-sized hand for an additional pivot point, but it’s three fins, refined rocker and rails that release which will carry him through the roundhouse cutback. Of course, it helps to have Jensen’s talent, too. Photos: Chasen Marshall.
modern longboard, the Malibu Chip, built in the early ’50s. Arguably, it is the template on which all modern longboards, high performance and traditional, are based. Then late in the ’50s hot-dogging produced a new group of heroes. Phil Edwards (the Guayule Kid), Miki Dora and of course Dewey Weber. Through their sweeping 19
“The added drive that concaves provided gave performance yet another dose of acceleration.” power turns and noserides, California was in the midst of a revolution. This revolution spread, and by the early ’60s there were proponents worldwide. In California you had David Nuuhiwa, Corky Carroll, Mike Hynson, Mike Purpus, Dru Harrison, Dale Dobson, Joyce Hoffman and many others. On the East Coast was Gary Propper, Claude Codgen, Mike Tabeling and Mimi Munro. Australia had Midget Farrelley, Nat Young and Bobby Brown. Before long, in Hawaii, there was Ben Aipa, Barry Kanaiaupuni and Eddie Aikau and the Hawaiian brand of power. In that Golden Age longboard surfing reached a pinnacle; a beauty and stature from which we still draw inspiration. Then it evaporated— disappeared for over a decade. So what's happened since? In 1967 shortboard surfing took hold and the vast majority of resources in competition, media attention, business and athleticism took the focus and never relinquished it. Longboarding somehow became the little brother—or stepchild if you will—and as a result most of the quantum leaps forward since then have honestly come from the shortboard side. There are five real changes that make the boards today different from the boards of the ’60s and they aren't small ideas although they do come from a smaller genre. First, down rails. These were first ridden in the late ’60s. Added to shortboards they gave the smaller equipment more lift and drive. Drive (or acceleration) was a necessary component in the smaller world because trim and glide
began riding concave-bottomed, three-finned
were not as effective on a six-foot board. It turns out that
surfboards at an out-of-the-way place named Sebastian
for performance they are effective on longboards as well.
Inlet. Up until that time three fin boards were always
Second, three fins. This one’s obvious. Simon Anderson
veed, and this was true of short and longboard versions.
broke all molds with this design. It’s been copied and
While you may not know some of the names involved,
tweaked for every conceivable surfing product in the years
like Bill Hartley, Mike Notary and Mark Puchaty, some of
since 1981, and longboards are no different. The addition of
the younger ones you probably have heard of—Danny
Anderson’s tri-fin concept and later assimilations gave
Malhado, Todd Morcom and of course Kelly Slater. The
boards both long and short the ability to plane and drive far
added drive that concaves provided gave
better than earlier designs, and with far greater reliability.
performance yet another dose of acceleration. Design
Spin-out—that age old nemesis of performance—
was off to the races again. By the early ’90's (thanks in
disappeared into the historical rear view mirror and surfers
large part to Mr. Slater) the rest of the surf world was
from all genres enjoyed newfound freedom.
onto this new design aspect and longboards were
Third, concave bottoms and three fins. About the mid’80s a group of young up-and-coming Florida surfers 20
certainly not precluded. Fourth, the concave was followed shortly by added
Design concepts like swing weight play little role in modern longboard design, largely because today’s foam blanks are already foiled and much lighter. (Above) That doesn’t mean that a stall and cutback combo can’t be executed with classic style. Steve Thomas in traditional pose—at least for a split second. Photo: Danny Franks. (Right) Kai Sallas makes a rather radical left hand turn at Oceanside Blvd. It’s a good thing he has two more fins in the water, since one of them is clearly carving only air and sea spray. Shortboard zealots may be dismissive of a move like this— not enough rail buried—but they can’t hang ten like Mr. Sallas can. Photo: Kevin Kinnear.
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“Added rocker gives the ride a free and easy motion, and makes high performance maneuvers much more makeable than in the past.” rocker. Sixties’ boards generally had three inches of
gone on since Blake's day and never seems to let up.
rocker in each end. The really cutting edge boards of the
Today there are numerous technologies to choose from,
day had four inches in the nose and three in the tail.
all claiming the high rung on the performance ladder.
There were three primary models built in that era, each
Epoxy, polyester, urethane, EPS, carbon fiber, S-cloth,
considered radical for their day. They were the Bing
Kevlar, veneer construction, sandwich construction, etc,
David Nuuhiwa Noserider (designed by David and
etc, etc. Take your pick as to which is actually at the top,
Donald Takayama), the Oceanside Spoiler (designed by
but one thing’s for sure: without these technological
Johnny Rice), and the Weber Performer (designed by
breakthroughs, today's performance would look a lot
Harold Iggy and Dewey). By contrast, it isn't rare today to
more mid-20th century than 21st century.
find longboard pros riding boards with rockers in excess
Evolution is the work of time and effort. The work and
of four inches in the tail and six inches in the nose. In part
effort evidence themselves in the performance we see
the concave nose allowed for increased rocker because
and enjoy today. The way aspects of the past are
it gave the boards more lift to work with and the rocker
blended with technology and design expertise by today's
added control. In essence this added rocker gives the
master shaper/designers give us all the new freedoms we
ride a very free and easy motion, loosens up the edges
experience in our everyday surf sessions at every break in
and makes high performance maneuvers much more
this blue water world. Evolution continues year in and year
makeable than in the past.
out, and begs us back our local boardsmith again and
Fifth, lighter weights. The search for lighter weights has
again for a new slice of tomorrow.
Got air? We’ve resisted some of the more outrageous examples in this roots-related feature. But there’s little doubt that Billy Harris (opposite) has caught some lift as he boosts off the top in this nifty move at D Street, Encinitas. Photo: John Slavin. (Above) Colin McPhillips has long been a master of the entire gamut of progressive and traditional longboarding. And he has three world title trophies to prove it. Is this high-performance or classic? You decide. Sure, contemporary longboard design has borrowed from advances in shortboards, but great style is about how you ride, not what you’re riding. Photo: Chasen Marshall. 23
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Candace Appleby Turns Heads with her Stremgth and Skill in Surfing and SUP By Betty Depolito with Paul Holmes
In a world where few women are able to be 24/7 career athletes, Hawaii-based Candice Appleby is one of an elite group. She has the looks of a healthy American girl (Tommy Hilfiger listen up), the power of a strong German girl (a hot tip for Adidas), and most importantly the goals of a champion with an impressive track record as a competitor in multiple forms of surfing.
A triathlete, a cross channel stand up paddle racer, a pro longboarder and an SUP instructor, Candice Appleby has waterwoman blood coursing through her veins. Here, just for fun, she takes her SUP to the waves on a small day at Pops in Waikiki. Photo: Ryan Beppu. 25
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In July this year, she came second in the women’s SUP
put Candice on four-wheeler dirt bikes when she was just
division of the Rainbow Sandals Molokai to Oahu paddle
a tike, and the Appleby family enjoyed nothing more
race with a time of 6:50:39 and also took second place in
than camping out in the desert at Joshua Tree and
the women’s SUP division of the China Uemura
roaring around the sand dunes at nearby Glamis. Oh,
Longboard Classic at Queens, Waikiki, her local surf spot.
except for maybe hitting the beach, bodyboarding and
In 2008, she won the SUP surfing pro division of the
bodysurfing or just playing in the waves, which Candice
Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Oceanfest at Queens,
has also been doing ever since she can remember. “I
besting top male contestants Noland Martin, Noah
was always in the water since I was a baby,” she says,
Shimabukuro and Brian Keaulana in the finals. She also
explaining that while the family originally lived inland,
picked up the women’s division trophy in the same
one set of her grandparents had residences on the coast
event. And that is all on the heels of numerous titles and
in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach and her family
accolades in both longboard and shortboard surfing going back to her teenage years as a member (and captain) of the national championship-winning surf team at San Clemente High School in California. Appleby, now 24-years-old, was born in California to a family of athletes. Her grandfather was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and her father played in college until an injury ended his career. Her mom, a longtime surfer,
Candice Appleby adapted quickly and thoroughly to Hawaii’s oceanoriented lifestyle. (Clockwise from top left) A cool cutback at Queens. Photo: Atilla Jobbagyi; An emotional moment as Appleby learned she had won the SUP surf contest during the 2008 Duke Kahanamoku Ocean Festival. Photo: Uncle Robbie; Powerful and functional style with the paddle on an outside wave at Canoes with the glittering towers of Waikiki as a backdrop. Photo: Ryan Beppo.
“I was always in the water since I was a baby. My whole family surfed together. It was great.” were regular visitors to beaches both there and a little farther south in San Clemente, where the Applebys moved and settled when Candice was 11 years old. By then, Candice had already been surfing for two years, learning under her mom’s coaching and at the same
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time as her father. “That was really fun, she says of the unusual situation of beginning alongside her dad at Dog Patch, San Onofre. “My whole family surfed together. It was great.” Candice says she was both proud and impressed when her grandfather told her she was the most gifted athlete in the family. As a result, she aspired to make something of that talent as a lifelong goal. Candice began competing in surf contests when she was 10,
“I feel like stand-up paddling is what I was meant to do. I hope it will be in the Olympics—I’ll be ready.” starting with local events and then in inter-school surf club and NSSA meets, but she says she’ll never forget the very first event she took part in. “It was called ‘Kids for Clean Waves’ and held at Bolsa Chica,” she says, before adding with a laugh, “But there was a dead whale floating out there and the water was filthy.” Regardless, the experience didn’t deter her. Candice Appleby’s first encounter with Hawaii also occurred relatively early in life. When she was just 12 years old she went to The Islands with a youth water polo team competing in a tournament, a trip she was able to make after saving up money from baby-sitting. She fell in
Being a proven waterwoman allows Appleby to get respect and hang out with (top) Gerry Lopez and (above) Leleo Kinimaka, to name just two who recognize her strength and talent.
love with the people and the warm, clear water and vowed to get back. After graduating from high school at
meantime she is living the life of a pro surfer and stand-
17, she did just that by enrolling at the University of
up paddler. Her sponsors include Tropical Blends, the
Hawaii at Manoa where she earned a degree in Tropical
Honolulu based surfboard company where she helps out
Plants & Soil Science.“ I liked being in the dirt, planting
with design ideas and input for the SUP shapers, Ocean
taro and learning about the Hawaiian culture,” she says.
Minded, a SoCal-based footwear label, Pualani
But while she applied herself seriously to her studies,
Swimwear, Chicago Surf Shop, Future Fins, and Da Kine
Appleby continued to compete in surf contests. In her
surf accessories. She is also employed by Paddle Core
second year in Hawaii, she joined HASA, took first place
Fitness as a surfing instructor and teacher of stand-up
in women’s shortboarding and second place in
paddling at Ala Moana Beach Park. “It is all about using
longboarding, and thereby earned a place on the
my talent to be an example to people,” she says.
Hawaiian team competing in the national
Candice longboards, bodysurfs and shortboards but
championships where, in 2006, she won the women’s
now she says she has found her forte—SUP surfing and
longboarding title and was a finalist in shortboarding too.
racing. “I feel like I have found the best sport for me,”
Though Candice says she is looking for the perfect
28
she says. “My genetics are good upper body strength. I
job in horticultural technology or an allied field in which
feel like stand-up paddling is what I was meant to do. I
she can apply her academic qualifications, in the
can use all my athletic ability. I hope stand-up will be in
the Olympics—I’ll be ready.” Candice is training constantly. Running, swimming, biking, pull-ups and push-ups keep her in top shape—and that’s all in addition to plenty of water time each day. She eats lots of fish, poi and spinach, and is as organic as possible in her diet. She is dedicated, disciplined and determined and also finds time to help out as a youth leader at her church. Veteran ASP surf contest judge Jack Shipley has written of her: “One of the biggest honors in the Hawaiian Islands is to be known as a ‘waterman.’ This tribute acknowledges a surfer’s all around versatility in the ocean; shortboard, longboard, canoe and stand-up paddle. Personally, I can only think of about five women who would be recognized in this category. At the top of my list is Candice Appleby.” That’s praise indeed, but Appleby is not one to rest on her laurels. Among her many goals is to compete in a long list of various contests in a multitude of surfing disciplines. Among them are world class pro longboarding events, the Catalina Classic Paddle Race, the Pipeline Bodysurfing Championships and more. Among her personal objectives are to surf Pipeline on her SUP, tackle Waimea Bay and paddle around the island of Oahu. Appleby’s most immediate goal, she said earlier this year, was to defend her title at the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Oceanfest on Oahu. Heads turned in 2008, for sure, when she took top honors in the pro division against a formidable list of guys, so the pressure will be on. But she’s been turning heads ever since then too, especially with her recent runner-up result in the Molokai-Oahu SUP race. “Dreams come true for those who wake up and realize that they have them,” says Appleby. And of that, she is living proof.
Appleby feels she has found her true calling as an athlete in the world of SUP, both as a racer and a wave rider. (Right) She is constantly pushing the limits of her own endurance and performance and is not averse to taking risks if she feels it will lead her to improve her skills. Photos: Mark Klintworth. 29
Staying Power Only a Small Group of Surfboard Labels Can Claim 50-plus Years in Continuous Production By Paul Holmes 30
Surfing, at least the modern westernized version of the ancient Hawaiian art, has been around now for a little more than 100 years. The revival of board riding—it had all but died out—began in the early 1900s at Waikiki. Back in those days, of course, surfboards were crude at best and there was no such thing as a surfboard manufacturer. Boards were handmade wooden clunkers, unwieldy and finless, with little in the way of hydrodynamic sophistication in shape and design. If you wanted a surfboard you were pretty much forced to make it yourself using basic hand tools and plenty of sweat and toil. And that’s largely how things stayed, unchanged for almost a half century, two world wars, one great depression and a whole series of giant leaps in human ingenuity that brought about the polio vaccine, international air travel and television, to name but a few scientific advances. Sure there were some significant innovations such as Tom Blake’s hollow boards (late 1920s), a commercial manufacturing process by Pacific System Homes (1930s) and design breakthroughs like the Hawaiian Hot Curl, but surfboards for the most part remained self-made, heavy and crude until the late 1940s. And perhaps that’s not so surprising given the relatively small number of people who surfed in those days. The few hundred hardy souls who rode waves in Hawaii and on the West Coast hardly constituted a “market” that would support surfboard making as a serious business enterprise. The history of surfing and surfboards accelerated and then took off like a rocket in the 1950s, however. Lighter weight balsa wood emerged as a substitute for redwood and pine in surfboard cores, while fiberglass and resin lent strength and durability. In Southern California, where surfing had taken a firm root in the post-war years, board builders began to create an industry. In Santa Monica Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin and Bob Simmons set up workshops in the late 1940s, as did Dale Velzy down in the Los Angeles South Bay at Manhattan Beach. By the mid-’50s, they’d been joined by several more makers—Jack O’Neill in Santa Cruz, Burland in San Diego, Dave Sweet in Santa Monica, who was also a pioneer using a new, lighter material, polyurethane foam, for the shaped core of his boards. As the decade drew to a close, and Gidget hit the big screen, the number of surfers and would-be surfers on the coast multiplied exponentially and so did the number of surfboard makers. The equivalent of a “big bang” in the cosmos of surfboard making came in1959—a veritable explosion of (Clockwise from top left) Bing Copeland, Larry Gordon, Gordon Duane, Hobie Alter, Rennie Yater, Rich Harbour and their respective logos. In the case of Harbour, G&S and Yater, these are the original versions of the art they used. Many famous surfboard labels of the ’50s and ’60s ceased operations in the post-shortboard era of the ’70s and ’80s, although several made comebacks after the rivival of longboarding starting in the late ’80s. The companies featured here, however, can boast never having quit making surfboards during five-plus decades.
startups—with soon-to-be-well-known names hanging their shingles out at workshops and showrooms: Greg Noll, Jacobs, Gordon and Smith, Wardy, Ole, Dewey Weber, Bing and many more. This stalwart group of industry pioneers, and the dozens more who followed their lead in the early ’60s, became the backbone of a relentlessly creative and competitive business that advanced surfing performance more in the ensuing 15 years than had occurred in the previous 50, or indeed in the 35-plus years since. But ironically, only a few labels among the original core group have managed to stay in continuous production into the modern era. This is their story: 31
A pioneer among pioneers, Hobie Surfboards dates back promoting the movie and getting all the top surfers to show to the early 1950s when teenaged surfer Hobie Alter began up to see it. It really laid some solid groundwork in building making balsa and fiberglass boards in the garage of his up contacts and relationships. It put us at least a full year family’s Laguna Beach home. By 1954, Hobie was established ahead of the other guys in setting up dealerships back in a factory and showroom in nearby Dana Point. At the time, there. There was a giant response—1,000 people a night at the number of surfboard makers with what might be termed most shows and 20,000 at Gilgo Beach when we showed it commercial operations still could be counted on the fingers there. It really got in front of a lot of people. Years later, of one hand. But while commerce was an important motivator for the young entrepreneur it was by no means the only reason he started the company. “There was never any money in it,” he said recently with a chuckle. “There wasn’t back then and there still isn’t.” Rather, he says, he always enjoyed making things, figuring out how to make things better and generally being a creative tinkerer. That has certainly been a hallmark of his more than five decades in business. In the late ’50s, he and his glasser, Gordon “Grubby” Clark, set about figuring out how to make polyurethane blanks for their boards, a move that would ultimately launch Clark Foam as a when we went back there to launch the Hobie 14 separate enterprise under Clark’s sole control. In the mid[catamaran] and find dealers for that, people were still 1960s, Alter became a major player in skateboard talking about it. It was their first introduction to surfing for so manufacturing. Later that decade he turned his attention to many people.” developing lightweight, trailerable catamarans that would The timing could hardly have been better, not only for become a worldwide phenomenon in sailing—Hobie Cats— surfboard sales, but skateboards too, said Alter: “We’d just with huge local, national and international regattas. He come out with skateboards and nobody knew anything designed a remote controlled model aircraft, The Hobie much about them back then. Our team riders tested them Hawk. Later yet, his company successfully launched and on the asphalt at gas stations across the country.” licensed a line of surf- and beachwear, practical accessories Alter remembers that road trip as being a high point of like polarized sunglasses and more. At one time, Hobie had a his 50-plus years in business. “Life was good all the way network of flagship retail stores on both East and West Coasts through there,” he says. and also in Hawaii. Every longstanding business, of course, has to endure But surfboards always remained at the core of the Hobie up and down cycles. Hobie endured, and managed to brand through times both good and bad for survive the great downturn that that sector of the business. Hobie had made accompanied the shortboard revolution of 80 balsa and fiberglass boards from his family the late ’60s and early ’70s not least garage before opening up his Dana Point because he’d already diversified into the shop when there was no competition catamaran business. “I started working on operating in Orange County. From the new the Hobie Cats in 1967 and produced the location, he made some 1,580 more such first ones in 1968. At the time I didn’t start it boards before switching to foam. With that because I thought the surfboard business innovation, of course, production numbers was going downhill so to speak. In fact, I did increased by leaps and bounds and it it because I thought the surfboard business certainly helped that Alter assembled a was doing fine and taking care of itself. As it stellar team of craftsmen and riders for his happened, it turned out to be a good time label, among them Phil Edwards, Joey to be doing something else.” But it was not Cabell, Mickey Muñoz, Joyce Hoffman, the changes in surfboard design that gave Corky Carroll and East Coast star Gary Alter pause; his craftsmen were more than Propper—all of whom featured in Hobie’s able to keep up. Rather, it was a systemic extensive advertising campaigns. With them change sweeping the industry itself. “I Hobie pioneered the “signature model” realized that with Grubby selling foam to concept of surfboard sales and marketing. just about anybody, there were going to Alter was also quick to see that the East be a lot of manufacturers starting up and a Coast would be a huge market for boards lot more competition than there used to and he launched a lineup of East Coast be, especially on the East Coast where we dealers with a unique promotional push— had so many dealers who could now get premiere screenings of a newly-released boards cheaper from some guy down the movie, The Endless Summer. street. From about 10 surfboard companies “It had only shown twice up to that doing really well, which there was more or Stylish and poised, Hobie Alter was a point and I talked Bruce Brown into showing less throughout the ’60s, there were going skilled surfer and created a still-thriving business from the lifestyle he loved. Photo his movie from Long Island to Miami,” to be hundreds. And they were doing a from the Hobie Surfboards archive. recalled Alter. “We had all the dealers good job.”
“Passion for surfing and fun times was the real motivational force.”
32
Still, Hobie kept on going, although not at the level of the mid-’60s when annual production exceeded 6,000 surfboards: “I never got to the point where I ever thought about getting out of the surfboard business, even though we were losing money on it. By then it was more that we wanted to keep it going because it was an important thing for our clothing business and we were just starting to get into licensing that. All the big clothing labels at the time wanted to get in with a surfboard maker, like Op for example. That was something they wanted to do to help build the brand. We on the other hand already were a surfboard builder trying to get into the clothing business. Also we didn’t want to pull the rug out from under Terry Martin and Danny Brawner because those guys were running it, although it was pretty low key there for a while.” Indeed, there was a period in the early 1990s when Hobie
licensed out its surfboard manufacturing to Bill Stewart, with longtime Hobie shaper Terry Martin and Mark Johnson mowing the foam and Stewart Surfboards finishing the boards. But as the longboard resurgence continued to build momentum—and with Hobie still identified with the classic ’60s style of surfing—the surfboard business was soon brought back “in house.” It’s noteworthy that Martin’s long association with Hobie made him quite possibly the most prolific shaper in history, with a total of some 70,000 boards to his credit by the time he finally retired in 2008. In the end, says Hobie Alter, who is also now retired and has left operations in the hands of his sons Jeff and Hobie Jr., it was always about persuing his passion for surfing and fun times that was the real motivational force that led to almost six decades in business. “If I could live at the beach and make a living making surfboards, what could be better in life
The 1964 East Coast roadshow of The Endless Summer was also a marketing bonanza for Hobie Surfboards. (Left to right) Mike Hynson, Bruce and Pat Brown, Joey Cabell, Corky Carroll, Hobie and Sharon Alter, Heidi and Phil Edwards assembled with Alter’s motor home that would take them all across the country and down the coast from Asbury Park, NJ, to Miami, Fla. Photo: Courtesy Bruce Brown Films.
33
Gordon “Gordie” Duane in 1952 at Waikiki with the first board he made himself while stationed in Hawaii in the Navy. On his return to California in the mid-’50s, he began making boards commercially. Photo: Courtesy Gordon Duane archive.
34
than that?” he said recently. Hobie’s lack of Orange County competition in the early and mid-’50s did not last long. Sensing opportunity, for example, Velzy opened up a shop in San Clemente shortly after Hobie got established in Dana Point—a southern outpost of Venice-based “Surfboards by Velzy and Jacobs” and one of series of satellite shops that by 1959 would make Velzy the self-styled “world’s largest manufacturer.” By then, Hap Jacobs had moved on to start his own label and Velzy would not hold his grand title for long—brought down by his fast lifestyle, lax business practices and, most disastrously, non-payment of taxes. By the time the ’60s boom time in surfing began, Velzy had already lost his place on the totem pole of big players and even lost control of his own name and logo. But while Velzy and Hobie went head-to-head in the mid- and late ’50s, a few others saw the growing niche to be filled in Orange County too. In 1956, Gordon Duane opened Gordie Surfboards in rented space under the pier in Huntington Beach. It was the first commercial surfboard shop in a town that would soon become synonymous with surfing itself and a hub for surf shops and surfboard companies, especially after the first U.S. Championship was held there in 1959. Gordie thus entered the pantheon of labels that have remained steadily in production to this day—and became one of the earliest inductees to the “50-plus” club. This summer, his pioneering role was celebrated with a special display at the Huntington Beach International Surf Museum. When Gordie started, of course, boards were still made of balsa. Here Gordie found himself an upstart in the pecking order to secure the best wood at General Veneer, the go-to supplier for all the board makers. Competition for the choice cuts—the longest and lightest strips—was fierce enough between Hobie and Velzy, the biggest buyers, and the other few established board makers who’d been doing business with the lumber merchant for years. A new guy like Gordie could only expect the leftovers. In one classic tale from ’56, Gordie arrived early at General Veneer to check out a newly imported shipment and was busy marking the wood he wanted when Velzy walked in and announced he’d buy, outright and for cash, every single stick of the inventory. “Who’s that gremmie marking the wood?” Velzy asked of the manager. Gordie, momentarily put in his place by the maestro, was relieved when Velzy finally relented and allowed him to buy just enough balsa for his orders. The two subsequently became the best of friends, as was almost always the case among those few early rivals in the board business. As Hobie once said of Velzy: “At the end of the day, we could always get together and have a beer and laugh about it.” Balsa’s days as a core for surfboards, however, were numbered. Dave Sweet was already experimenting with polyurethane foam in Santa Monica and making Dave Sweet Surfboards with the relatively new material that had been developed during WWII and was now commercially available. The following year Hobie and Clark started trying to figure out its practical application for blanks. Other surfboard blank suppliers came online during the next couple of years, Foss Foam and Walker Foam among them.
Gordon Duane surfing on the south side of the Huntington Beach Pier circa 1960. The shot was likely captured by LeRoy Grannis. Photo: Courtesy Huntington Beach International Surf Museum.
Gordie was quick to get on board the trend and is credited with being the first to realize that by using a center stringer, he could glue-up a foam blank with “rocker”—nose to tail bottom curve—built in. This innovation, as simple as it sounds in retrospect, was a breakthrough because even if blanks were formed in molds with rocker, the primitive foam of the day soon sagged. Gordie’s experiments with stringers led him to develop multi-stringered boards that were as much about aesthetics as function—s-bands, figure-8s, and other complex glue-ups gave his boards a stylish look. But Gordie was also one of the first (and by no means only) surfboard makers to suffer a setback because of the volatile nature of the new plastic materials of foam, fiberglass, resin, styrene and acetone—building blocks of the modern board. In 1958 a fire broke out at the Gordie shop. While quickly quelled by the Fire Department, it destroyed an almost 100-board inventory (some of them being stored there by surfers who lived out of town) and caused a huge amount of damage to the workshop infrastructure. Gordie was devastated—he still says it was the lowest point in his entire career and that he began to think maybe his wife was right and he should get out of the surfboard business—until a prospective customer from San Bernardino walked up to him as he surveyed the still smoldering scene and gave him a crsip greenback as a deposit for a new board. “That brought me back up,” Gordie said, “And I thought, by god, I’m going to hang in there. I walked over to a trash can, pulled out a brown paper bag and wrote down the guy’s name and address and took his order. I told the guy, ‘Hey, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’ll tell you what, as soon as I’m back in business, yours will be the first board I do.’ And it was. And I replaced every one of those other damn boards too.” With help from team member John Van Oeffelen, who found the location, Gordie rented a shop at 13th Street and Coast Highway and got back to work. “That was a high point,” he said of the ensuing period. “Being out on Coast Highway was great, because when I was under the Pier nobody could see me unless they walked down the stairs. In those days after about September 15, when school would 35
start, you could be down there and look all the way down to Newport and all the way up to Seal Beach and there wouldn’t be a single person on the beach.” Gordon Duane had shaped his first boards in the early 1950s while in the Navy and stationed in Honolulu. There he’d been mentored by legendary canoe maker and wooden board builder Abel Gomes. During the 1960s the Gordie shop in Huntington became something of a shaping academy itself, with a string of now famous names applying their skills as production shapers for the label. Among them: Mike Oday, Larry Felker, Del Cannon, Don Stuart, Bruce Jones, Jim Fuller, Randy Lewis and Steve Boehne. Huntington Beach became a hotbed of surfing talent during the mid- and late ’60s, and plenty of talented surfers came to Gordie for boards, including 1964 U.S. Champion John Boozer, who also became a noted Pipeline rider of the period. Gordie credits Boozer with being the first surfer to order a 7’ 6” board to take to Hawaii, “long before the shortboard thing got started.” Other notable names who rode Gordie boards back then included Robert Kooken, a little known
“The common thread was of a garagebased startup surfboard label.” name today but so hot in the ’60s that Gordie recalls him “shooting the Pier backwards, hanging heels.” As the shortboard transition got under way towards the close of the decade, Gordie changed with the times and its pintail vee-bottom design, The Assassin, was regarded as on the cutting edge of progress. Thus, Gordie managed to stay afloat into the 1970s, when its surf team, “The Hole in the Wall Gang,”—so named for the stormwater drain outlet in the seawall at 13th Street—was a major force in progressive surfing and proved it by winning the team title at the 1977 U.S. Surfing Championships. But the times were still difficult. “I had about 30 burglaries when I was out on Coast Highway, average about one a year for 30 years. I’d go see my mother, and I’d be so bummed out. I’d just come back from finding the window blown out, glass everywhere, boards stolen and it seemed like another message to get out of this game. My mother said, ‘You know what? You’re making something that some people can’t afford and so they’re going to take it from you. That’s just the way humanity is. If they want something bad enough, they’re going to take it.’ So I just had to put it down to ‘shit happens.’” Gordie was finally forced out of Huntington Beach in 1988 when the property at 13th Street was sold to a developer. But it was not the end of the label, that kept producing boards under licenses to various shapers who’d worked for the long-established brand and occasionally by Gordie himself until health issues took him out of the shaping room a couple of years ago. Today Gordie Surfboards are produced by Steve Boehne from his Dana Point shop, Infinity Surfboards. 36
Throughout the entire time, said Gordie, in contemplating a long and distinguished career: “There were always some people who were making just crap boards. They were only in it for the money. I didn’t care as much about the money as I did about the quality. If I was going to make it, I was going to make it perfect.” The proliferation of surfboard labels in the late ’50s and early ’60s did more than just meet the demand of a growing surf market. It also resulted in more keen surfers finding a way to make their living doing what they loved best. Many of them went on to form their own surfboard companies. Greg Noll and Bing Copeland, for example, were inspired and learned some basic skills while watching and helping out at Velzy’s Manhattan Beach shop when they were just early teenage gremmies. By 1959, both of them were running their own labels. So was Renny Yater, who moved north in 1959 and opened the Santa Barbara Surf Shop and Surfboards by Yater after working as a glasser for Hobie and as a shaper for Velzy. Yater too is therefore a member of the elite 50-plus club. “I took out my first resale tax number in 1959 and I’ve renewed it every year since,” said Yater. True, there were times when he supplemented slow times in surfboard sales by commercial fishing, mostly for lobster and crab, but Yater’s venerable label has remained identified with state of the art design ever since he set up shop. His Yater Spoon of the mid-’60s was a breakthrough noserider that also increased maneuverability by reducing “swing weight”— the thinned out, stepdeck nose being a totally novel concept at the time. When the shortboard revolution was fomenting in the late ’60s, Yater was on its cutting edge and his “pocket rockets” of the ensuing era—speed shapes with fast-peeling Rincon point surf for their proving ground— ensured his transition into the brave new world of ’70s design. It was one of the most exciting times to be a surfboard maker, said Yater: “We didn’t know what the next day’s work would be. It was so different from going into the shaping room and basically turning out the same old longboard time after time. Every day we’d try something new, do it and try it, do it and try it. With the shortboards we were really finding out new ways to ride waves.” When the longboard revival began in the mid-1980s Yater was once again in demand, especially by older surfers returning to the waves after a long layoff and keen to rekindle the passion of their youth, and the familiar feel of the classic Yater boards they’d ridden back in the day. Ultimately Yater passed on his knowledge and his small but highly respected surfboard business to his son, Lauran, but the craftsman still keeps his hands busy making exquisitely beautiful and incredibly intricate art boards in collaboration with surfer and artist Kevin Ancell. “Today,” Yater said, “What’s really exciting in surfboards is all the advanced materials that are available. Unfortunately, in this economy, they’re pretty much too expensive to use because all people want are cheap boards, so it’s not really happening yet.” But at 77, Yater still has his eye on the future and his finger on the pulse of what’s new. Rich Harbour, of Harbour Surfboards, is another surfboard builder who has the distinction of remaining hands-on in the shaping room throughout five decades in
Reynolds Yater in 1972 flying down the line at Rincon on one of his “pocket rocket” speed shapes. Photo: Joe Mickey, courtesy Yater Surfboards’ archive.
Renny Yater’s first Santa Barbara Surf Shop, home of Surfboards by Yater, was in the area known as Summerland. Photo: Yater archive.
business. Harbour started, like so many others, making boards in the garage of his family’s Seal Beach home. Now 67 years old and recovering from neck surgery to fix damage inflicted by 50 years of hefting hand tools, Harbour recently said he’s itching to get back to work shaping boards and expects to turn out serial number 30,000 before the year is out. “I’m really proud of the fact that I never stopped,” he added while noting that several surfboard companies can celebrate their golden anniversary this year (and some already have long since done so), but few of the names behind those labels can claim to have been
continuously active in the shaping room all these years. Harbour got into making boards almost of necessity rather than choice. At 16, the novice surfer had his board stolen and, without the funds to buy a new one, he made a replacement. The board came out quite well for a beginner. Soon he was making boards for friends, often simply for fun rather than for profit, and hand-drawing his Harbour Surfboards laminate on vellum during classes he was taking as a student of architecture. But Rich Harbour never became an architect. In 1961, his business took a leap in credibility when Danny Buell, who’d been featured in two photos in the first issue of Surfer magazine, ordered a board from the fledgling company. By the next year, though, his parents finally tired of the foam dust and resin stink in their garage. “The last straw was when I splashed a drop of resin on their brand new Camaro,” said Harbour. Forced to move out, Harbour opened up his first shop at 5th Street and Marina Drive in Seal Beach and, needing to expand a year later, moved the operation to 329 Main Street, where Harbour Surfboards has been headquartered ever since—another noteworthy milestone of longevity in the surfboard business. Harbour Surfboards quickly built a reputation for quality boards with high-performance design attributes. In 1964, Rich Chew became the first USSA Champion based on ratings points at several top flight contests while riding a Banana Model. It was just one of many successful Harbour models 37
The Banana Model from 1964 was just one of a series of successful surfboard designs from Harbour Surfboards. Note the change-up in the logo on this board compared to the original artwork that Harbour hand drew on vellum during class, as shown on the opening page. Photo: Courtesy Harbour Surfboards archive.
that included the Trestles Special and the Cheater. Several Harbour team members competed in the 1965 world championships in Peru, including Steve Bigler who took second place in the hot dog event. The 1966 world championships in San Diego saw Harbour team members Jock Sutherland scoring second and Steve Bigler scoring fourth. With demand growing, Harbour from time to time took on additional shapers to help with production, among them topranked talent like Mike Marshall, Dale Velzy and Dick Brewer. But despite being one of the most successful board builders, Harbour had its share of ups and downs. In 1963, the glassing shop went up in flames—the result of a suspected arson. Rich Harbour said that taught him the hard way that “you’re never as insured as you think you are when time comes to make a claim.” The most difficult period, he says in common with many of the early players, was when “the mid-’70s crunch was killing off the core of the major manufacturers that I began making surfboards next to. I stuck to making surfboards and even opened a skateboard factory for a couple of years. This helped supplement my surfboard income but it never made any real money. I dumped the skateboards before the 1980s and began building the complete board from shape to polish, a total one man operation. This lasted for almost a decade and those late ’70s to mid-’80s boards carry the label ‘shaped and glassed by Rich Harbour.’ At five to 10 boards a week there was enough money to pay the bills, and there is not one part of the operation that I feel that I can’t do as least as well as any employee I ever had working for me.” 38
Also, he added: “When Clark Foam closed [in 2005] it was a very trying period. We were fortunate to have over 100 blanks in inventory. Clark decided to unload his inventory but in a valued customer system. The way I heard it, yearly blank volume, those who paid their bills on time, and those that gave him the least problems would get a proportional amount. I got way over 100 blanks. I heard of companies that got nothing. But it was still a trying time until some real foam companies emerged.” But, said Harbour, he is proud of the work he’s done over the years and continues to do today. “I am a completely self-taught surfboard maker. This was a lot of fun, and it continues to be a lot of fun. In fact, I have been working on five very elaborate 21-piece balsa and curly redwood boards that are chambered. This has been the most fun that I have had in 50 years. There are so few of us that truly stayed in the shaping room through that period.” The familiar story and common thread of a garagebased startup surfboard label is one with a twist in the case of Gordon & Smith. Larry Gordon’s father was a plastics engineer and chemist, expert in all the materials that by the late 1950s were being applied to surfboard making. So while it’s true that Larry Gordon and his high school surf buddy Floyd Smith made their first boards in Smith’s family garage, the unique surprise was that they did so with polyurethane foam blanks they had made themselves at Larry Gordon’s dad’s San Diego plastics factory. “We made the molds for the blanks and we got our foaming
Rich Harbour on a small day at Ray Bay. He is currently working on a series of balsa and redwood boards that will take his label’s serial numbers into the 30,000s. Photo: Courstesy Harbour Surfboards archive.
chemicals in July 1959,” recalled Gordon recently, “And we sold our first boards on August 21st. We felt like if we going to do it, we wanted to be progressive. Hobie was already making foam boards, so that’s what we did. Plus, some of our friends were telling us that was the way to go.” And so began the internationally renowned surfboard label that is still going strong today. Gordon estimates that starting with the 10 boards a month they made at first, over the course of 50 years the label has produced some 100,000 in total. The timing of the G&S startup was fortuitous. There was only one surfboard shop operating in San Diego at the time, Burland, and in fact it was Larry Gordon’s frustration with how long it took to get a board from the company— partly because the availability of balsa was inconsistent at best and quickly snapped up—that was the initial inspiration to make his own. When Burland went out of business a few months later, Gordon & Smith’s success was virtually assured. With a growing list of orders on their books, the two young entrepreneurs moved into a production facility and showroom at 753 Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach. With no real competitors in the entire San Diego area, they soon needed hired help to deal with the demand. Among the first hot young surfers they took on were soon-to-be surf stars (and innovative shapers) Skip Frye and Mike Hynson who became the initial mainstays of a great G&S team rider program that continued during the next four decades. Larry Gordon proved to be a savvy businessman, a creative marketer and, above all, he maintained a passionate personal interest in surfing and surfboards. While he logged thousands of hours in the shaping room, he was always fast to see opportunities to expand the scope of the G&S operation. He quickly established the requisite East Coast dealership network that was so crucial to California manufacturers in the 1960s. When skateboards became popular in the mid-’60s, G&S was on it immediately and the company remained a huge force in skateboarding into the ’70s and ’80s. Gordon estimated the company sold $6 million in skateboards during its peak year. In surfboards, the company was equally successful. Its Mike Hynson “Red Fin”
model is regarded as one of the all-time great designs of the 1960s. The company’s association with 1964 world champion Midget Farrelly and his late ’60s “Stringerless Model” gave the company international cachet when the Aussies were becoming a major force on surfing’s world stage. In the ’70s, the company established an outpost in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla where 1976 world champion Peter Townend was a G&S team rider and designer-shaper. A little later, back on the West Coast, the company made Mark Richards Surfboards under a separate label just as the popular Australian embarked on his then record-breaking run of four pro surfing world titles. Although G&S made the transition to shortboards relatively smoothly compared to some surfboards labels, Gordon said it was still, “by the grace of God, I really believe that. But we were really tuned in and we had a good team and we did good ads. Skip Frye, Hank Warner, Rusty Priesendorfer were some of the shapers who were working with us and we had great team riders like Gary Keating, Joel and Reid Mayne who surfed La Jolla Shores and Jeff Crawford.” The latter, of course, was the East Coast star who made history by winning the 1974 Pipeline Masters. Even so, G&S’s surfboard business took a hit during the ’70s that it might not have survived had it not been such a dominant name in skateboarding. That, and making boards for other labels, one of which was Bing Surfboards, a fact that also places Bing on the list of 50-year survivors. When owner Bing Copeland decided to move his family out of Southern California in 1974, he licensed his brand to Larry Gordon. The boards were shaped by longtime Bing foam-mower Mike Eaton, and several other Bing workers made the move to San Diego to keep that label going at the G&S factory. Today, Bing Surfboards are made by Matt Calvani, a shaper Copeland anointed as his heir apparent when the G&S license expired in 1989. Copeland himself still gets in the shaping room from time to time to make a special replica board—rare gems much sought after by collectors. By the 1980s though, G&S was once again on a roll. Gordon established the brand as a successful maker of surfwear and accessories, even launched a “juniors” line for young women. And the surfboards were being ridden by a team of rising stars in the ranks of pro surfing, Californian Jimmy Hogan and Floridian Charlie Kuhn among them. Plus, G&S skateboards were riding a boom cycle once again
Larry Gordon surfing at South Bird, Pacific Beach, at the zenith of the classic style of ’60s longboarding. Photo: Courtesy Gordon & Smith archive. 39
Larry Gordon and Floyd Smith, founders of the world-renowned surfboard label, share a joke at work. It was Smith who started up G&S in Australia but he and Gordon parted ways in the late 1970s as Smith sold his interest in the company and went into the construction and restaurant business. Photo: Courtesy G&S.
too—it was like the ’60s all over again, only more so except for the fact that Larry Gordon wasn’t able to spend as much time surfing as he used to. That changed in the early ’90s when he licensed out the clothing side of the brand and downsized the surfboard and skateboard business. “Then I could relax a bit,” he said, “And that’s when I started surfing regularly again.” He was not the only old school surfer finding the time and inclination to get back in the waves either. Plenty of those who’d dropped out of the sport after the shortboard revolution were heading back to the lineup and the longboarding revival was in full spate. Gordon says dozens of old customers returned to G&S to order new boards. But the best of it, he said, was that “guys I’d surfed with in my youth all started surfing again, and I’d meet up with them out in the water; it was cool.” Today, Larry Gordon still gets out in the water regularly. A morning call to him for the phone interview for this story was 40
fielded by his daughter Debbie (who now runs the day-today operations for G&S) saying, “Oh, he’s at the beach. He’ll return the call when he gets back in an hour or two.”
“Finding a way to make their living doing what they loved best.” Said Gordon himself about his contemporary surfing experience: “I still enjoy getting out in the water. Skip Frye inspired me to get onto a really long board, an 11-footer, even though I can’t get up too quick anymore.” But, he added, he’s lost none of his interest and passion for
surfboards and surfing, nor for the industry and the business he created a half century ago. “I’m not as entrepreneurial as I used to be,” he reflected. “These days an opportunity may come along and I’ll just say, oh, that sounds like too much work. But I still really appreciate the product: surfboards, shortboards, longboards, boogie boards, even stand-up paddle boards; whatever people want to surf with. They’re all great and they all work.” As surfing continues to develop and mature no doubt there’ll be more surfboard labels celebrating 50th anniversaries, including a few on the East Coast and in Hawaii. And of course it has to be acknowledged that there are key individuals who’ve been plying the board-building trade for five-plus decades as journeymen, even if their craftsmanship is under several different logos. Without the small group of pioneering brands already in the 50-plus club, however, surfboards and surfing very likely never would have evolved to where they are today. (Left) Bing Copeland at Waimea Bay in the mid-’60s and (below) shaping a swallowtail board at his Hermosa Beach factory in the early 1970s. During the mid-’70s and throughout the next decade Bing Surfboards were made at the G&S factory in San Diego. Photos from the book “Bing Surfboards—50 years of craftsmanship and innovation.”
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The Christian Wach
Interview
By Chasen Marshall • Photos by Yazzy Hilal Success doesn’t come easily in longboarding. World titles, board sponsors, the occasional photo trip, sure, they're there. But the limelight, compared with what the shortboarders experience, just doesn’t tend to shine the way of the log. In the case of Christian Wach—the closest thing to a child prodigy the sport has seen since Joel Tudor—success seemed imminent, regardless of the board he came in on. With his talent, gregarious personality, and classic California good looks, he was destined to cross the marketing divide. While longboarding teeters on the cusp of irrelevance, Wach has nonchalantly experienced his most successful year to date and seemingly arrived: five magazine covers, a starring role in a highly-touted surf flick (along with appearances in numerous others), becoming the poster boy for a major clothing company, an Arctic surf journey with a big-time out-of-industry publication, a third consecutive Noosa Festival noseride title, a fledgling business and more airline miles than most people endure in a lifetime. With so much going his way and because he’s just an interesting guy to talk to, we caught up with CWach in hopes that he’d share his secrets of ascension toward stardom.
Wach embodies the adventurer's spirit (opposite), which is key in the life of a freesurfer. His boundaries are simply a bit more extreme (above) than most.
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CM: Seems like things have really taken off for you in the past six months to a year, what gives?
chance, and nobody really pays me to ride their boards exclusively, so why should I limit myself to that?
CW: Just a lot of opportunity came in the last year. My sponsorship grew this year in travel budget and stuff. I did a lot of traveling for Picaresque. Also, just photo trips. I went on a trip for Outside Magazine, and in the midst of all that, I did a couple contests, like the Noosa Festival and just got lucky and won that. Just been having a good year, I guess.
You’ve managed to acquire some solid sponsors and get a good amount of play in different magazines. Is that you being personable and friendly with everyone or do you have a manager? I don’t have a manager. I used to be managed by Peter Townend with Active Empire when I was about 14 to 17 years old. He got me my deal with Redsand, which
How important, personally and career-wise, is competition for you in surfing?
eventually blossomed into Gotcha. He was a great
I think it helps, it’s cool, and it’s fun to win money in the
unless you’re going out there and getting it yourself. I’m
events, but for my career, if I was Longboard World
actually looking into a manager right now, but I don’t
Champion I don’t think it’d change much for me. I’d
know yet if I’m going to for sure do it. We’ll see what
rather be getting run in Surfer Magazine and Surfing
happens, because I don’t really necessarily need one, but
Magazine, as opposed to winning longboard contests.
the right guy could help me out with a lot of stuff.
Beyond the contests and travels, what else do you have going on?
Do you have any particular goals in mind, or is it just where you can take things if you have professional help?
I’m actually starting a surfboard company right now. I’m
I’d like to get into commercials, and get some help with
not shaping, but I’m doing artwork on the boards and
sponsorships. I feel like there is so much more that I can do,
having my friends who are artists do artwork on the
but it’s a matter of just doing it.
manager, but for longboarding, it’s so hard out there,
boards. We’re going to sell a lot to Japan and a few over here. It’s going to be small and limited, but it’s going to be artist based and should be a pretty fun project.
It’s seems like you’re doing a lot on your own. Aren’t you and your buddy, Kameron Brown, doing surf lessons? Yeah, we started a surf lesson business this summer. Just for
Do you have a company name? Yeah, it’s called Canvas Surfboards.
fun. It’s been going great actually. We’ve done plenty of lessons this summer, with a bunch of people we don’t know and a bunch we do know. All we did was make these little
Where’d this idea come from? I was talking with Naki—he distributes Aviso surfboards in Japan—about distributing a new surfboard line, and he just said, ‘If you find a good shaper, let’s do it, let’s work together and make something.’ That’s kind of where it came from. Ryan Engle is shaping the surfboards.
bright, neon orange flyers and we were taking them to the shops, the Marriott, and a couple other places. We actually went to the Marriott and put the flyers all over the cars in the parking lot and then we got a call the next day around 2 o’clock: ‘Is this Christian Wach? We found about 35 little orange flyers on our customers’ cars this morning. That is really illegal, we don’t tolerate soliciting. However, we do
I see your name linked to so many different surfboard brands: Aviso, Herbie Fletcher, City Fog, Almond, among others. How have you managed to do that and not burn anyone?
want to set up a meeting with you next Tuesday if you’d
A lot of shortboarders do that, they ride all types of boards, but they put their sponsors logo on there too. It’s
You’ve got quite the creative side: the artwork you do on your boards, painting, music. Where’d it all come from?
not that I’m trying to do that; I just like to ride
I’ve been into artwork since I was about 12, when my dad
everybody’s boards. I don’t want to be exclusive to one
and I spray-painted a board in the garage together. I was
person anymore because it’s just too limited. If I ride
really surprised by that and was like, ‘I can just paint all my
everybody’s boards I get to test way more boards and
boards!’ So I’d just get clear boards and paint them myself
I’ll get to have way more boards [laughs], you know
because it cost less for [the shaper] and I ended up liking it
what I mean. I think it’s cool because I give everybody a
better in the long run. Now I like my boards to stand out
like to come in and talk about working for us.’ So, it totally worked out.
and look nice and be different from everyone else’s. My dad is really artistic and my older brother was always really artistic, so I was probably always inspired by them to try it A distinct style and personality in his surfing has enabled Christian to stand out in whatever lineup he paddles out into.
out and see where it went. 45
Staying on the topic of family, I know you had a huge loss a few years back with your mom. You wrote a touching entry on your blog about her and about how she was such a big part of your life. Yeah, she was huge; she was ‘Coach Mom’. She was the one who drove us to the beach every day. When we didn’t want to go to school anymore she took us out of school and had us home-schooled and basically gave us A’s in all of our classes and let us surf the whole year in fifth grade. She just wanted us to have fun and grow up with a really nice childhood and do what we wanted to do, and we wanted to surf. She was always really supportive of us and filmed us, was just stoked on everything. She was the type of mom who told Devon Howard at Longboard Magazine that he was jealous of me, that’s why he wouldn’t run photos of me in the magazine. I mean, come on, that’s funny. I was always so mad at her for doing that, I never really forgave her for that, but those are the type of things you remember. I was probably only 10 years old when she said that, but it’s just classic. She was an awesome mom, and I love her and I know she’s in a better place. She just had some rough years and couldn’t handle it anymore. You recently returned from an epic trip with Outside. How’d you stumble into that opportunity? Basically, I got a call from Yassine Hilal, known as Yazzy— he’s a freelance photographer who works a lot for Surfer’s Journal, Surfer, and Surfing—and he said, ‘Hey, I’m doing this trip with Outside Magazine and Eddie Bauer, would you like to go?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah man, for sure.’ It was a long process, a lot of things had to be accomplished before we went because we were going
cities start. So, Russia was really freaky, just everything that I thought it would be. I didn’t like it that much, I wouldn’t recommend it. Then we went to the Faeroe Islands after that, this small chain of islands between Scotland and Iceland. The waves were mediocre. We got a couple fun days, but nothing insane. It was just cool to surf there, such a pretty place. These huge green mountains and waterfalls every kilometer or halfkilometer. It’s probably got the most hot chicks per capita that I’ve ever seen in the world, like every girl there is beautiful. They’re just a really beautiful culture. It was a rad trip though. It’s an interesting concept to go up into the Artic Circle and surf and go on snowmobiles and take 25 airplane rides and just do a bunch of crazy shit, climb mountains. We were gone for a month and a half. I think the article is going to be in Outside Magazine in December. Not too many surfers get to be in Outside Magazine either, so that’s kind of why I jumped on the opportunity right away. You’ve circled the globe a few times over. You must have filled a passport by now. Yeah, I have to get a new one. I keep forgetting I need to order it. For my next trip I’m going to have a rude awakening because I’m going to be scrambling to get a new one. My old one is expired now, and it’s pretty full. I’ve probably done like five trips to Australia now, three trips to Canada, been to Morocco, New Zealand, Japan three times, Norway, Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, Russia, Costa Rica twice, Mexico multiple times, Hawaii probably four or five times, Newfoundland.
Plus, there was just a lot of preparation for the trip, with
I’m sure you’ve scored some pretty good surf over the course of those travels, but in terms of the culture and an eye-opening experience, what are some of the locations that have really stood out?
snow gear and sleeping bags, and all these things we
I thought Morocco stood out a lot because it was totally
needed to bring to camp. I get to the airport and I had
different from anywhere else I’d ever been. It was kind of
to pay $450 for my board bag because there were so
freaky, you feel like a target there, because you totally
many boards in there. We landed in Norway first. We
stand out. With my blonde hair, I felt like a target. I had to
went to this place called Unstad and surfed in the most
take a taxi ride at 4 o’clock in the morning by myself, five
beautiful area you’ve ever seen. It was freezing but it
hours across the desert, with a taxi driver and me and my
was really nice, really cool, crisp water and really clear.
boards on the roof. I fell asleep in the taxi and woke up
There were actually surfers there too, which was funny.
at the airport, luckily. I just hoped for the best. That was
We were basically surfing in the Arctic Circle. Next we
pretty cool. Also, Japan is really insane.
to Norway and we were going to try to surf in Russia. I had to get this gnarly visa for Russia that cost like $400.
flew to Denmark for a night and stayed in Copenhagen. We rode bikes in Copenhagen and almost got hit by about five cars. It was fun. Then we went to Russia, and in Russia we didn’t end up being able to surf because you need some sort of crazy military permit to get to the coast. The whole coastline is like Camp Pendleton, it’s all military, from the coastline to a few miles in and then 46
It's not that he likes embarrassing those around him with everything he does (OK, maybe subconsciously), he just has a knack for learning quickly, be it an alaia or a paintbrush. Photos: Chasen Marshall.
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I would imagine you’re like a god over there. You’re a good-looking kid with blonde hair and you’ve received a lot of publicity in their surf mags. Yeah, Japan is rad. I love it. It’s kind of like being a rock star over there. For once in your life, you feel like you get recognition for what you’ve done, as far as longboarding. You don’t get that type of recognition anywhere else besides there. Everybody there is so nice too. Such a different culture than here. I find myself doing the wrong thing so much because I’m not used to their etiquette. So is it refreshing for you when you come home to San Clemente or are you just antsy to get back on a plane? Yeah, I love coming home. Sometimes I feel like I’m going on vacation when I come home because I love it here so much. I appreciate where I live so much. I can’t wait to come back and see my friends and surf down at Sano (San Onofre) and hang out. Sometimes when I’m here for a while, I feel like I start to lose my appreciation for it, but then when I go on a trip I’m just like so happy to come home and sleep in my own bed and be in my room, make breakfast at my house or go get Bagel Shack, or whatever. They don’t have Bagel Shack in Russia, I’ll tell you that. You’ve become quite the wordsmith as of late. I’ve come across quite a few features on the trips you’ve done in magazines from around the world. Writing is just kind of a fun way for me to remember stuff.
Growing up in Orange County, surfing status quo means a 3/2 and a 10 minute walk at worst. Christian Wach outside his comfort zone in Canada, but free to improvise.
pretty much say everything that I want to say, and then
to travel around the world, having people give you boards and product, and be seen as somewhat of a celebrity?
when I come back to it a year later or in 40 years I can
I do, I think about it all the time. I’m so grateful. Seeing
relive all those memories. I don’t know if I’m that great of
my peers, my friends from high school and what they’re
a writer, but I’ve had some things published recently. My
doing with their lives and what I’m doing, I feel really
first article that I ever got published was in Surfer’s
fortunate. I don’t know, I just kind of went for it my whole
Journal. I felt like I did an okay job with that and I was
life. I didn’t step back and wait for things to happen for
really stoked that they gave me that opportunity.
me, I tried to make things happen instead of waiting for
When I get back from a trip I can write something and
a miracle. I have always wanted to be successful and I You’re also a presence on the web. You have a few blogs going right now, correct? Yeah, I have my personal blog (christianwach.blogspot.com), which is the one that I focus on. That’s the one I really put all my recent stuff that I want people to see. The one on Gotcha (christianwachs-gotchablog.blogspot.com) they asked me to do for them and it’s updated regularly, but not often, not as much as my personal one. And then I also have a blog on Surfingmag.com. That’s recent. So you’re 20 this year. Does it ever strike you as surreal to be run in advertisements in Surfer Magazine, getting 48
wanted to go to the top, I think that’s where I’m trying to head, still. I’m always worried about it, thinking ‘Crap, what can I be doing?’ or ‘What do I want to do? What should I be?’ I have all these talents that I could use to my advantage, but I just don’t know exactly what I want to do yet. I’ve tried pretty much everything that I’m interested in, making movies or painting or shaping boards, surfing, traveling the world. They’re all awesome things, like I love doing everything. I want to be everything, but I can’t be. So I think I just need to focus on one thing and go for it. [Interview interrupted by friends coming over for a party.
Girls voices.] Sorry about that, I’m having a few people over. No worries. It seems you ride whatever shows up on your doorstep, whatever is out there, and you ride them well. What are the boards you’re really enjoying right now?
handpicked by Joel Tudor to complete in the Noseride Invitational at the U.S. Open of Surfing. How’d you feel about that? Or was the main thought on having to ride a log in 10-foot surf? I was really stoked ever since Joel invited me to do it. I was like, ‘Wow, thanks a lot. Stoked man.’ When we heard it was going to be like double overhead, then we
I’ve been riding a board that Jeff Wagner shaped, he
were like, ‘Ah, crap.’ But then it ended up being really
shapes for Lost Surfboards and also shapes the Herbie
fun, the waves were not that gnarly at all. It was really
Fletcher boards. It’s just a single-fin noserider. I’ve also
fun, or, well, I had fun in my heat. Some people opted
been having a lot of fun on my Aviso’s. I love Aviso
not to do it.
boards. I have the CJ 10-foot board, that’s what I ride mostly. Then I ride the 5’0” Cole Black Diamond, and that board is insane too. Any board that Cole makes is insane.
Last thing: what’s coming next? What should we expect in the next month, 6 months, year, 2 years? Anything fun and exciting on the horizon? Um, I’ll probably keep doing the same stuff. Be creative
You still big on alaia’s or is that a fading interest? Yeah, I still ride those, but they’re such a hassle to paddle, so I don’t ride them all the time. They’re still really fun, I love them. I have a couple now. A recent honor bestowed on you was being
and try to come up with something bigger and better, but I just don’t know what it is yet. I can’t really answer that question. [Laughs] Well, we’ll just leave it as a hanger then.
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By Mike Aguirre For surfers living in densely packed Southern California, like me, there are really only two choices for a surf-stoked road trip. Go south into Baja—100 or 1,000 miles, take your pick—or north to the also easily accessible Central Coast of the home State. In many ways, both trips are almost essential experiences for the California surfer, but they are definitely very different. The week before my most recent trip—in which I opted for the northbound trail—I was chatting on the phone with a buddy, Ted Rich, owner of Last Wave Originals (www.lastwaveoriginals.com), located in San Luis Obispo, when we realized that the beer we’d been planning on having for over two years was now possible, not just long overdue, so a stop by SLO was imminent and impossible to ignore. Once you’ve left Hwy 101, pulling into San Luis Obispo feels like you’ve taken a step back in time. The downtown area just has a warm feeling about it, with wood and brick buildings of all shapes, sizes and architectural styles. Once you’ve strolled the tree-lined streets under the soft glow of the evening’s lights, you’ll realize that SLO has the familiar vibe that most allAmerican towns used to feel like. There’s no mega mall or strip center dominating the downtown here, and you’re not really conscious of being in a college town either. “Americana” is the word that spings to mind; kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting. It was now Beer-30 and after a quick call to Ted his directions pointed me to the post office parking lot, where all you need to get free parking is a receipt from a nearby local proprietor—and the SLO Brewery was definitely where my receipt would come from. Beer is Bubblegum Alley (inset) has been attracting the curious for years, albeit with a strange fascination. (Right) San Luis Obispo technically may be landlocked, but surf spots and waves are only a few minutes drive away. Unidentified rider at “A” beach. Photo: Mike Jones.
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San Luis Obispo, Ca The Most Stoked Town Without a Beach
Population: 250,000 Best breaks: South County, Pismo Beach, St. Anne’s; North County, The Sand Spit and Cables. When to come: Fall is best, but winter isn’t bad Ideal swell direction: North or northwest Surf shops: Central Coast Surf Shop, San Luis Surf Company, Moondoggies Random factoid: Dating from sometime in the 1950s, Bubblegum Alley in downtown San Luis Obispo has been a source of weird wonder. Feel free to add your own piece of chewing gum to the wall, or just stand back and admire the unique scene. How did people get their contributions so high on the walls? How many pieces are there? What were people trying to spell out with their gum used like graffiti? One thing is for sure: you can look, but it’s better not to touch.
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Pismo Beach is just one of the surf zones close to San Luis Obispo. Central Coast resident Tom Craig finds the sweet spot on this Pismo peeler. Photo: Mike Jones.
plentiful in SLO, but the crew that my host brought along with him said that this was “the watering hole for the local crowd” and once upstairs that was evident. We snuggled up to the loaded bar and near instantly our
plenty of boards in evidence everywhere. Downtown SLO has three notable surf shops: Moondoggies, just newly remodeled, two stores into one; Central Coast Surf Shop and San Luis Surf Company, and I
beermeisteress was front and center—tall, long dark hair and
visited them all. If you need surf gear, and you can’t find it
tatts up to her ... well bunches of places, apparently. When
between these three shops, it may not be made.
she suggested the IPA, we echoed in unison, “set ’em up!” It
While talking with one of the sales guys at
was an evening to remember and our meistress was with us all
Moondoggies, I asked who was the local talent with regard
the way with great beer, great food and great service.
to board manufacturing. His instant response: Shane
I believe it’s safe to say that San Luis Obispo may not be
Stoneman. Originally, shaping was a hobby for Stoneman,
at the top of your list when considering a surf trip, but that
but it wasn’t long before competitive surfing and his close
may be a mistake. SLO is without doubt a surf town. Oh, I
relationship with a shaping guru taught him about the
know, there isn’t an ocean attached, but believe me it’s a surf
sensitive relationship between a surfer and his boards. So
town. I had three boards strapped to the top of my rig and on
much so, that he landed a spot on the U.S team and scored
every turn while in town I wasn’t a standout—there were
third place in the 1990 World Amateur Contest in Japan.
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The weekly Farmers' Market is just one feature of a vibrant downtown scene in SLO, especially at the colorful peak of the summer season.
and once the north and northwest swells start hitting, there are waves a-plenty. North of SLO in the Montana De Oro State Park there are a couple of other reef breaks, The Sand Spit and Cables. Both are highly regarded breaks and again work best on a north or northwest pulse. San Luis Obispo can boast of so many things to do—hiking, biking, festivals for Soon after that, he won
wine, beer, art, cars, food—
his first pro event on the
you name it. Taking some of
PSAA tour.
the wine country tours is said be “like a trip back to
During the years since, Stoneman has honed his skill to
Picturesque vineyards in the rolling hills of the surrounding countryside produce the grapes for a thriving wine industry—well worth a tasting tour.
produce boards for any
Tuscany.” Nearly every night in the town itself there’s a concert in the Plaza, and on
surfer’s persuasion—long, short and most anything in
Thursday evenings there’s a Farmers’ Market. For a full
between. Each creation is carefully produced under his
rundown on SLO and the surrounding area and activities
personal watchful eye, making certain that each craft
check the local website:www.sanluisobispo.com
meets his standard of excellence. The surf around the San Luis Obispo area is plentiful and
Personally I can’t wait for a return trip. On my way out of town the locals suggested McClintocks for breakfast. Yep,
within 15 to 20 minutes drive in either direction. In South
bring your cowboy boots, because it’s a western theme,
County there’s Pismo Beach with its limitless sandbar breaks.
which suits me just fine. And they’ll roll you out of the
Just up the road there’s St. Anne’s, a right hand reef break
restaurant stuffed. I definitely will be back again. 53
As you load your boards for a dawn patrol surf, the crisp chill of Fall is definitely in the air, and once you’re at waters edge, standing knee deep in mother ocean, contemplating that first duck dive, your 3/2 full feels pretty good. Like the season, wetsuits are changing. The rubber is getting thinner but still just as warm, is less absorbent, far more elastic and yes even “greener” in both the materials and production process. Today’s wetsuit designers are all about function, ease of entry and exit, and they’ve even thrown in some color. It’s giving us all a reason to head to our local surf shop, check out the new wetsuits and some of the latest technology being applied to keeping us cozy in the winter waves. —MA
54
AEX Springsuit
Advantage Jacket
Advantage Full Built with our exclusive water resistant half-zipper and water barrier to help prevent water from flushing in. Adjustable neck closure for entry ease, 3 year warranty on material; lifetime on seams.
Superstretch throughout the ENTIRE jacket. 100% superstretch allows for maximum comfort, fit and flexibility. Now with glued and blindstitched seams! Adjustable neck. Seal around waist to prevent sliding up.
High-quality Sheico superstretch neoprene and a short zipper. Quality materials and manufacturing are our highest priority. Seams are flatlock stitched. Neck closure is adjustable. Custom sizing available. Best warranty in the business- 3 years materials; lifetime on seams.
Aleeda Wetsuits 18241 Gothard St., Huntington beach, CA 92648 • Tel: 714-274-8000 Fax: 714-274-8010 • Email: wetsuitinfo@aleeda.com • www.aleeda.com
VAPOR SLANT ZIP MEN’S FULLSUIT
Surfer: Dusty Payne Density: 3/2mm & 4/3mm Water Temp: 45 – 65 degrees Features: The Vapor is now available in a sleek Slant Zip. The Vapor is constructed of 100% water repellent Vapor Flex, 100% heat reflective Thermofiber interior, and 100% Fluidseal taped seams. If you’re looking for the warmest, lightest, most flexible suit, the Vapor is for you. Limited 1 year warranty on materials and workmanship. Sugg. Retail: $399.99 - $409.99
ECO 2.0 MEN’S FULLSUIT
Surfer: Alex Gray Density: 3/2mm & 4/3mm Water Temp: 50-65 degrees Features: New for 2009, Body Glove’s Eco 2.0 wetsuit. It is more flexible and even more environmentally friendly than the original Eco. The Eco 2.0 is an incredibly stretchy environmentally conscious high performance wetsuit. It is the perfect suit for the person that demands high performance stretch but does not want to sacrifice the environment to get it. Limited 1 year warranty on materials and workmanship. Sugg. Retail: $379.99 – $389.99
MAGNUM MEN’S FULLSUIT
Surfer: Cheyne Magnusson Density: 3/2mm & 4/3mm Water Temp: 50-65 degrees Features: When your main concern is flexibility and stretch, the Magnum is the suit you are looking for. The Magnum is made of 100% Magna Flex, 100% Fluid Seal Seams, and a Thermofiber chest panel. The Magnum allows for maximum movement while maintaining the warmth needed for that extended surf session. Limited 1 year warranty on materials and workmanship. Sugg. Retail: $299.99-$319.99
CT SLANT ZIP MEN’S FULLSUIT
Surfer: Luke Stedman Density: 3/2mm Water Temp: 55-65 degrees Features: Brand new for 2009, the CT wetsuit was inspired by our athletes competing on the world tour. The CT is constructed using Body Glove’s newest super soft and stretchy Magna Flex neoprene and comes with an easy slant zip entry for maximum flexibility. The CT was designed for the surfer that is looking for the maximum performance and comfort. Limited 1 year warranty on materials and workmanship. Sugg. Retail: $239.99
Body Glove Wetsuits 2860 California St., Torrance, CA 90503 • Tel: 310.320.7873 Fax: 310.320.7889 • www.bodyglove.com 55
WOMEN’S THERMO BOSS
Surfer: Brissa Malaga Density: 3/2, 3/2.5, 4/2.5, 4/3, 5/4 Hooded Features: 100% Mega stretch materials, ultra light water repellent neoprene, Glued and double thread blindstitch construction, 100% hand taped for a nice feeling and durability, with a big panel under the zipper and water repellent collar, Also available with single lined chest and back panels. Sugg. Retail: US$ 279-349
THERMO BOSS
Surfer: Salvador Voysest Density: 3/2, 3/2.5, 3.5/2.5, 4/3/2.5, 4/3, Hooded 5/4, Hooded 6/4 Features: Warm and Flexible 100% Ultra stretch materials, Super Light - Water Repellent neoprene, Glued and double thread blindstitch construction, Also available single lined chest and back panels, 100% hand taped for a nice feeling and durability, with a big panel under the zipper and water repellent collar. Sugg. Retail: US$ 279-349
Boz Wetsuits
MAXUM
Surfer: Gonzalo Velasco Density: 3/2, 3.5/2.5, 4/2.5, 4/3 Features: Megastretch materials from the waist up that increase flexibility and comfort. Water repellent Superstretch materials on rest of the suit, Great combination of price and performance, Glued and double thread blindstitch construction, 100% hand taped for a nice feeling and durability, with a big panel under the zipper and water repellent collar, Also available with single lined chest and back panels. Sugg. Retail: US$ 219-239
COMPETITION
Surfer: Sebastian de Romaña Density: 3/2, 3/2.5, 3.5/2.5, 4/2.5, 4/3/2.5, 4/3. Features: 100% Ultra and Mega stretch special materials, Biggest paddling panel: one piece shoulders, arms, arm pits and sides, Glued and double thread blindstitch construction, 100% hand taped for a nice feeling and durability, with a big panel under the zipper and water repellent collar. Sugg. Retail: US$ 289.00 - 299.00
4584 Mt. Laplatta Place, San Diego, CA 92117 • Tel: 858-569-6788 • Email: bozwetsuits@hotmail.com • www.bozwetsuits.com
The Reflex Hooded 5/4
The Reflex Hooded 5/4 has been tailored for a custom fit off the rack using 95% super stretch. Our signature “fly-zip” entry has been modified to allow more ease of entry without compromising performance.
The Reflex
The Reflex is also available in 3mm and 4mm. Some new features include our Synergy Seal, Japanese Welded Seam Technology and use of special fabrics to seal both wrists and ankles. Feel the Fire Within.
The Element
The Element, is our front zip/top entry” wetsuit that’s “easier to use than a back zip.“ The Element is entirely Feather-Lyte ultrastretch with smooth skin chest/back. 100% PowerLyte tape sealed seams. The ultimate in comfort.
Hotline Wetsuits 719 Swift Street, #56, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 • Tel: 831-425-5920 Fax: 888-507-7565 • www.hotlineonline.com 56
The Cold Climate Unit
The Cold Climate Unit. This classic shoulder to shoulder front zip design has been proven throughout the years. The warmth and durability factor along with new technology makes this suit extremely popular in frigid regions.
32FLEX
Fullsuit steamer Flex 3/2mm, Level 3 neoprene, Glue seam construction, DFC2 Collar, Durapad knee, keypocket.
LAFTER
Longjohn 2mm Laird, Allover inside, Level 3 neoprene, Glue seam construction, Finemesh panel, Durapad knee
32WMN
Fullsuit steamer 3/2mm, Level2 neoprene, Glue seam construction, DFC2 collar, Durapad knee, keypocket
SPRINGW
Shorty 2mm, Level2 neoprene, Flatlock seam construction
OXBOW 3102-A Kaohinani Drive, Honolulu, HI 96817 • Tel: 808-358-0784 • Email: tdaupin@oxbow.fr • www.oxboworld.com
M’S R2® and R3® Back-Zip
Features high-quality, Japanese neoprene; patented, chlorine-free merino wool grid interior; Smooth skin on the torso, back and hips to reduce evaporative cooling; PVC-free kneepads for durability and less environment harm. For water temps 55-65° (R2) 48-55° (R3)
M’S R2® and R3® Front-Zip
Features high-quality, Japanese neoprene; patented, chlorine-free merino wool grid interior with recycled polyester liner; recycled polyester jersey inside eat and legs to increase durability; internal neck gasket to prevent flushing. For water temps 55-65° (R2) 48-55° (R3)
W’S R2® and R3® Front-Zip
Features high-quality, Japanese 2mm (R2) or 3mm (R3) neoprene; Smooth skin on the torso, back and hips to reduce evaporative cooling; critically reinforced seams; PVC-free kneepads for durability and less environment harm. For water temps 55-65° (R2) 48-55° (R3)
M’S R4® Hooded Front-Zip
Features high-quality Japanese 5mm (Chest/back), 4mm (legs/arms) and 3mm (Hood) neoprene: ; patented, chlorine-free merino wool grid interior with recycled polyester liner; internal neck gasket to prevent flushing. Seams Tripleglued and blinded stitched for 38-48° xxx water
Patagonia 259 West Santa Clara St., Ventura, CA 93001 • Tel: 805-667-4526 Fax: 805-643-2367 • Email: maile_schulbach@patagonia.com • www.patagonia.com 57
Proscene
Story: Sam Bleakley Photos: ©ASP/Shadley
Oxbow ASP - WLT Event One Akabane Beach, Tahara, Aichi, Japan July 27 – August 2, 2009
New Contenders Take Center Stage
Australian Harley Ingleby is now the leader of the Oxbow ASP WLT points race for the world championship. (Above) Ingleby’s combination of big moves and solid noseriding proved to be unbeatable and (left) to the victor went the spoils.
importance of both nature and
whole day of excellent surf to
innovation, of the given forces of life
complete it.
and of cultural change in dialogue. As
Ten of the first round of 16 man-on-
a result, there are two million surfers in
man heats were run as the sky hung
Japan blending tradition and
like a dripping cloth over sodden two
experimentation. Akabane Beach,
foot onshore waves. Hawaiian all-stars
Tahara, was an excellent location for
Duane DeSoto, Ned Snow, Keegan
the first event of the Oxbow ASP World
Edwards and reigning Oxbow WLT
Longboard Tour, presented by
champion Bonga Perkins created
Yumeya. The WLT rules changed this
rhythm from the chop, running the
year to include just 32 surfers and a
small waves ragged with top-drawer
knockout format from the outset, in
brilliance to advance straight into the
Olympian style. But with no Pacific
top 16. France’s Oxbow WLT number
the transience of the world, in
typhoons forecast for the week, the
two, Antoine Delpero, signalled his
impermanence and renewal. Surfing sits
event had to make the most of one
intent by racking up big scores on
beautifully in a place that values the
day of fickle conditions to harness a
greasy green sections. He slid all over
The Japanese have a great belief in
58
them, creating instant artworks, adopting great posture through hang tens and flexing low into outlandish reentries. His reward was the first day’s top wave scores— 8.25 and 9.5. A fresh four foot swell was on tap for the next day. A winner would be sealed in the long raking lefts. Back-toback action offered a gruelling day for surfers, organizers and judges alike. Phil Rajzman, Taylor Jensen, Harley Ingleby, Bryce Young and Colin McPhillips surfed to victory in the closing heats of round one. Sunlight pierced through the gray sky for round two, and an offshore wind organized the loose threads of sets. Eduardo Bage, Duane DeSoto, Keegan Edwards, Bonga Perkins, Antoine Delpero, Harley Ingleby and Colin McPhillips hit the right notes to join the band in the quarter finals. Competing against Brazilian Phil Rajzman, Californian Taylor Jensen performed crisp and long hang tens, followed by rifling turns all the way to the shoreline, everything linked and coordinated. But Rajzman’s explosive lip-smacks were rewarded with 9-pointers, and despite bagging an 8.0, contest favourite Jensen went down early. The audience was wringing out sweat for the quarters and semis under a heron-blue sky as the day turned sultry and the wind died. The long, sinuous waves picked up in size with the tide and the beat intensified. DeSoto and Perkins drummed out Bage and Edwards to meet in a killer semi final. A solid opening pennant-shaped wall swept in, pulled up, split at its ridge, and DeSoto took off to savor the wave’s raw meat. He landed two huge offthe-lips as if at the eye of a storm in a still patch of ocean, and advanced to the final in spectacular form. Despite their excellence, Delpero and McPhillips lost in the quarters, as Rajzman and Ingleby progressed to the
The contest site at Akabane Beach, Japan, under gloomy skies and waiting for waves to bring the crowds out to watch the action.
Very close, but no big cigar for Duane DeSoto and he hadº to be content with the runner-up spot. Still, he’s a front-runner for the world crown.
second semi. Ingleby’s long rides were filled by snappy moves that left the faces with watermarks. His cat-like agility, showing exquisite timing and torque, would reach perfect pitch in the final. The sea was veined with greens and pale blues for the deciding final. Ingleby smacked rim-shots as the lip cracked down the line, like a drummer suddenly moving into double time. DeSoto charged back to center stage, racing up the faces in honking solos, cutting back and hitting the nose with poise. Ingleby unpacked his cymbals once more, splashing them with rapid footwork, a hang ten, clips to fraying lips, hooking back and finally hitting the sand with a final flourish on the snare drum and first place. The solos were over. Both Ingleby and DeSoto played the waves rail to rail, footstep to footstep, and pulled off explosive, committed surfing and improvised brilliant music against the Japanese sea-score. As the countdown begins for the final event scheduled for the Maldives in October, they are the new number one and two contenders in the 2009 Oxbow World
60
1. Harley Ingleby (Aus)
5. Eduardo Bage (Bra)
2. Duane DeSoto (HI)
Keegan Edwards (HI)
3. Bonga Perkins (HI)
Antoine Delpero (Fra)
Phil Rajzman (Bra)
Colin McPhillips (USA)
Results
Championship race.
61
2009 Roxy ASP Women’s World Longboarding Championship La Côte des Basques, Biarritz, France July 10-14, 2009
Proscene
Jennifer Smith Takes Her Second Crown Story by Jennifer Flanigan Photos: © Roxy/ASP/Aquashot
Jennifer Smith won her first longboarding world title in 2007. This year she was back at Cotes des Basques to take yet another one. With style like this, it’s easy to see why she has long since transcended her former nickname as “Grom.”
In the early days of the summer the question on every professional woman
years and counting. Months before the contest start
Summer Romero, and Chelsea Williams vs. Cori Schumacher—with a
longboarder’s lips seemed to be an
date a palpable nervous excitement
single elimination format, and no
anxious, “Are you going?” Going to
electrified the global coastal pockets
second-chance repecharge.
France, they meant, to compete in the
where the top lady longboarders tend
Roxy ASP Women’s World Longboarding
to circulate—Waikiki, San Diego,
three former world champions
Championship, better known as the
Noosa, Shonan—as they speculated
(Monahan being the defending
Roxy Jam, the contest which crowns the
which women would qualify for the
champ), plus 2008’s runner-up to the
queen longboarder of the planet at the
Jam. In order to economize the
title (Williams), only two would
luxurious, seaside resort town of Biarritz.
contest, the playing field had shrunk
advance to further their challenge for
Founded as an Atlantic fishing outpost
from 48 competitors in years past to
the crown. What wouldn’t appear fair
by Vikings in the year 840, and made
32, and slots were hard to come by.
to a casual onlooker is actually the
famous in 1854 by Empress Eugenie, wife
The top 16 women from the 2008 Roxy
result of a complex numeric ordering
of Napoleon III, who built a still-standing
Jam received invites; the remaining
by which the ASP assigns surfers’
gilded palace overlooking the main
slots were filled through regional
seeding based upon their rankings,
beach, Biarritz has long been a vacation
qualifying events, plus the requisite
then matches them accordingly,
destination of European royalty. It was
handful of wildcards. It’s a tough
highest to lowest. The coupling is
also the birthplace of surfing in Europe
equation to decipher—who gets an
meant to pair surfers based on track
and is the beating heart of France’s
invite, who doesn’t, and what the
record, and therefore ability, but
longboard surfing scene. Equal parts
seeding is—and the women waited
sometimes it takes an uncanny twist as
opulence, antiquity, cosmopolitan
anxiously for the ASP to sort it out and
surfers exit and re-enter the game, like
ambience and authentic surf culture,
take roll call. What emerged was
Romero and Schumacher—both
Biarritz is the perfect place for a
perhaps the most startling first round
previous world champions
women’s surf competition, and has
match-up in the history of women’s
(Schumacher is twice the world
been home to the Roxy Jam for four
longboarding—Joy Monahan vs.
champ)—who let their rankings slide
62
This was gonna be a good one: of
Another piece of glittering hardware for the trophy case and a reputation now as burnished as the silver cup for a smiling Smith.
by not competing for a year or more. With this as a precursor, some of the best action of the Jam took place in the first round as spectators gathered on the storied seawall of Biarritz’s Côte des Basques beach to watch these historic heats go down. The first day of the four-day waiting period was a bust, with wave heights tallying in at a whopping six inches. Day two dawned with a little more action on the Atlantic horizon, and contest director Philippe Malvaux deemed it contestable. In one of the most highly anticipated heats of the event, it became apparent that intense expectation is truly a hindrance to competitive performance. Defending champ Monahan succumbed to the pressure and lost out to über-talented San Diegan, Romero, in what may have been the biggest upset of the event. Though the first day’s waves were the smallest of the contest, heat nine of the first round, Williams vs. Schumacher, posted the highest combination of two-wave scores of the event: 16.5 and 15.10 respectively, out of a possible 20. The crowd watched keenly as seasoned competitor Schumacher, with her authoritative, technical and power-driven surfing, led the charge against event favorite Williams. But as that heat neared its dramatic end, Williams sealed the deal with a highly cooperative wave that provided the perfect canvas for her palette of ideally executed lip smacks, roundhouse cutties and a seemingly never-ending noseride that pushed her beyond the reach of Schumacher in the dying minutes of the heat. Schumacher was down for the count, and a hush of awe swept over her fellow competitors as they realized the gravity of the situation: two-time world champ, fresh off a win at the 2009 Women’s Pipeline Pro, and everyone’s heat draw worst-case-scenario, was out. But to a true champion like Schumacher, an upset like this was no more than a hiccup in her long professional career and she vowed to return next year to pick up the pieces. It must have boosted the confidence of Williams, though, as the tiny towhead from Tweed Heads, Australia, 63
A newcomer to the top ranks of women’s pro longboarding, Coline Menard surfed all the way to second place in the world.
fought her way to the forefront before suffering a disappointing loss in the semifinals to Jennifer Smith, who would go on to win the event and clinch her second ASP world title. Surfing characteristically strong throughout, Smith demonstrated impeccable style and technical know-how with well-timed, powerful maneuvers and steadfast noseriding, posting the top single wave score of the event (9.25) and further consolidating her position at the pinnacle of women’s longboarding. But Smith didn’t have an easy run by any means; hot on her trail was dark horse Coline Menard, the virtually unknown 21-year-old from Reunion Island who emerged from obscurity to beat fellow countrywoman and 2007 Roxy Jam runner-up, Justine Dupont, in an unlikely semifinal. Quietly rising through the ranks with lightning-like, feather-footed surfing and mental clarity beyond her years and experience, Menard secured her best career result and the respect of her fellow competitors with a prestigious second place finish after losing to Smith in the final. For an event to be interesting and entertaining, there must be action, rivalries, upsets, unlikely finishes, disappointments and shining victories. The 2009 Roxy Jam had all of the above, set against the craggy coastal backdrop of historic Côte des Basques, the famous French beach bordered by aged, towering stone walls and La Villa Belza, the small yet stately castle perched on a cliff overlooking the contest area, which kept a watchful eye as another Women’s World Longboarding Championship went down in the annals of
1. Jennifer Smith (USA)
5. Kelia Moniz (HI)
2. Coline Menard (Reu)
Geodee Clark (HI)
3. Justine Dupont (Fra)
Kassia Meador (USA)
Chelsea Williams (Aus)
Julie Cox (USA)
Results
surfing history.
NextIssue WOW, It’s already October, time’s flying and you’re holding is our latest issue of morSURF. So what are we up to next issue?—read on. For three years we’ve been talking with our travel guide about this special trip and finally we’re headed to the Mexican Riviera. On this trip though, we’re not flyin’ nor drivin’, we’ll be aboard The Mariner of the Seas, a 138,000-ton, 1,020-foot long cruise ship, and hangin’ with the likes of Robert August, Mary Osborne, Kira Sheppard, the band “Pepper” and a host of other surf cruise crazies for a week of sun, surf, cervezas and a Halloween party second to none. Mat surfing’s next: Ken McKnight takes us on a “magic carpet” ride and likely one you’ll never forget. These vehicles reach incredible speeds, easily fit in the trunk and there are no dings to worry over. Size here matters; wave size that is. On the Eastern Seaboard, few would disagree that Ricky Carroll is a force, north or south, so we stop by for a chat with a shaper who has an eye for perfection, not only for his own brand but for Donald Takayama, The Greek, Surfboards Hawaii, Surfline Hawaii and a group of others as well. Loggers, what is it that this underground movement is all about? Our roving reporter Chasen Marshall get inside the loop with some of the best soul sliders from both sides of the country. Art today on surfboards is limitless, and we don’t mean going out and hiring a painter or airbrusher. Now all you need is a “file” whether it be a shot of Fido, your best girl, personal sketches or that sunset shot from a killer vacation. We’re even going to give you a look at an $18,000 inlayed wood surfboard. Whatever you want, it’s all possible. Throw in a Fall/Winter Gear guide, a Lensman and Artisan profile, an overview of Duke’s OceanFest in Hawaii plus a full report of the ASP Longboard World Championships in the Maldives and what you have is Vol1 #3 … we’re stoked.
Review
Picaresque DVD, by Mikey DeTemple and Dustin Miller $29.95, available at highseasfilm.com There's something poetic in simplicity. Maybe it’s in knowing that the product isn't overdone or feeling that the artist knew exactly what they had in mind. With that, the first endeavor by the East Coast duo of Mikey DeTemple and Dustin Miller found that simple symmetry. Picaresque is 40-plus minutes of well-executed elegance and beauty. It’s not a watercolor gallery and there are no ballerina slippers, but it is a demonstration of artistic talent, both behind and in front of the camera. Shot on three continents, featuring 15 surfers riding a plethora of boards, the flick is a gallery showing. It’s a look at the unexplainables: smiles after a good wave, post surf coffee talk, pensive looks in new places, and film canisters full of good waves. Picaresque is the sort of piece that makes you feel good about your decision to start surfing. Take a look and rediscover that warm and fuzzy first wave feeling. —CM
Zen and The Art of Surfing: A Collection of Short Stories by Greg Gutierrez $14.95, www.greggutierrez.com or www.amazon.com These autobiographical fictional and non fictional short stories are an amazing snapshot into the mystical, mythical and metaphysical spirituality that every adult can relate to, including those who are non surfers. This literary slideshow perfectly captures how and why generations of people grew up in the church of the sea. Amazing story lines and poignant messages can be found in each of the 20 tales. Rod Serling was said to have been television’s most talented writer of all time for spending few words to tell great stories. Greg Gutierrez must have that same writer’s sense. Zen and the Art of Surfing easily might be the handbook that any adult surfer could use for rearing young surfers in the “karmic etiquette” required in the water globally. A great read and a must have for every waterman’s library. —Trebor Recnarc