All I want for Xmas...

Comment Share Posted on Friday December 24th 2010 at 8:36 a.m. Tweet

With Christmas upon us and a summer full of waves ahead, 'tis the time to covet new surfboards! But before I let you in on a must have breakthrough in surfboard design that's really caught my imagination, can we have a little context please...

Kelly Slater has a lot to answer for. For being so unashamedly good at riding his surfboard, for being so acrobatically persuasive. Even ten world titles and twenty years later, we're all still very much under the influence, whatever he does.

In the early nineties Slater pretty much singlehandedly (in cahoots with shaper Al Merrick) redefined surfing's ride (no pun intended) with his low-volume aspirations. Surfboards suddenly shed their late-80's ballast (a la Carroll, Potter, Elkerton and co,) dropped sub-eighteen inches and banana-ed like anything.

Slats was amazing, unstoppable on this equipment - as were the rest of his Momentum posse, Machado, Williams, Robb et al. Like so many X-sports through the 90's, surfing went nu-skool. Punch drunk and deluded by what we were witnessing: the sheer radicalness of shape and the accompanying high-performance antics from surfings top shelf, it made sense that the rest of us would follow suit, only to be left sinking like submarines.

When your take on something you love so much gets so radically altered by someone you respect so much, the end result is change. For almost a generation, the Slater/Merrick slimline initiative blackmailed the surfing world. A Jenny Craig Effect for the surfing masses – thin was beautiful, the best you could be.

Of course during that time surfing's subversive didn't go away – the last twenty years have also featured the fish revolution, the rise of epoxy, tow-surfing, four and five-fin setups, hell, even the comeback of the mal – but if there's such a thing as a yard stick in surfing it's the pro-tour and what those in the limelight are riding, and Kelly had us all sewn up with his bag of tricks.

Unfortunately it meant that most of us have been riding the wrong equipment for years. The net result for me has been frustration at a lot of waves passing by underneath occasionally offset by sticking tailslides way beyond my abilities. It was a lopsided equation that resulted in a waning disinterest in surfboard design.

Not in surfboards mind you; it'd take a strong bout of death to dispel that sense of wonder one gets when walking into a showroom full of shiny new shooters, but I guess I settled into the frame of mind that the status quo must be right, that surely in this day and surfing age what the best were telling us to ride must be right, right? I mean, why would they lie to us?

The answer? They don't, of course. Surfboard shapers have been fighting a constant battle over the years, trying to ascertain and counterbalance the actual needs of the customer against said individuals adamant demands to “make me one like Slater.” Yes, the customer is always right, but god damn we're stupid sometimes! In the true anti-establishment style that defines our culture, it fell to the few to bring the system down from within. An inside job, to shift consciousness as a whole.

“Surfboards, you see, are nowadays approached basically as two separate halves” my friend Kevin was telling me. A good surfer, with slightly more capital expenditure on equipment than his wife is aware of, Kev had recently become an exponent of the newest trend in surfing – boards that actually work. “The front half,” Kev continued, “is to help you catch the wave. The back end is for surfing it.” Of course shapers have been moving towards the idea for years. But for me at last the penny had dropped. And as with all good design, the beauty lay in its simplicity. Foam, beautiful foam! Praise the welcome and most buoyant return of volume to the surfing world. But not in its former guise. Enter the hybrid shortboard revolution, spearheaded out of Australia by JS Industries and refined by the likes of Parko, A.I (R.I.P), Occy, Jordy and co. Boards with hip names like 'King Pin,' 'Blak Box,' 'Konfusion,' and ' Nitro' are the next phase of surfboard evolution, where fashion meets function, and an emphasis on fun without sacrificing performance.

The trick to these boards lies in a clever blend of volume versus edges, with intuitive bottom contours and tail shape thrown in. The 5'10” Blak Box I'm riding, at 19 ¾ x 2 3/8, would've been classed a pig a few years ago. Yet its' dimensional distribution is so well constructed, so well “hidden,” that you can't help seeing its voluminous curves as anything else other than sexy. Fat and sassy, if you will.

And of course all that foam translates, as you'd expect, into great paddle-ability. Which means catching more waves. Which means more fun! My first impression of the Blak Box once I hit the water was “wow, I actually CAN paddle.” As everyday life takes over and your watertime dries up, the first thing to go out the window is paddle fitness. I've been under-compensating for a while the extra weight of a full suit and the expanding waistline of a mid-thirties semi-sedentary lifestyle, persisting with too small a board in the hope of maintaining some fin-waft in the lip. But that's a flawed, counterproductive approach. In reality, truth was I'd been struggling to paddle into waves, and lacking projection on all but the punchiest of sections when I managed to get one.

The goal of surfing is of course to catch waves. From there, it's all about speed. It took maybe 5 waves on the Blak Box in decidedly average Maori Bay conditions for it to prove it's point. I was paddling into waves easier than ever, literally getting into bumps I'd usually pass up as uncatchable. With my head down, if I paddled smooth and hard, I'd get the wave. That's how it should be!

The surf was that familiar early summer westside blend of wobbly, quite pushy, junk. JS comments on his website that these groundbreaking designs make it possible to“surf a board three to five inches shorter than your normal shortboard.” A novel idea, but I must admit dropping down my first few waves I was concerned about the shortness of my board - the waves were steep and moving fast.

Frankly, the board rode like a fricken rocket. If you can stay on, you're in for the ride of your life. You quickly adapt to the lesser length by using legs and body tuck in combination to shock-absorb the extra speed and above-the-water buoyancy the increased volume provides. Get low, with a bit of jive – it not only works, but feels (and looks oh-so cool.

Obviously the board surfs 'shorter,' but the hard edges and performance shape through the tail mean it doesn't lose rail control on critical sections as you'd expect on a small, wide board. Basically you've gotta throw out your pre-conceptions about surfboards when you jump on one of these things. Looking at it, the Blak Box appears more fish than shortboard, and it takes a while to get your head around the fact that it's actually the other way round. You can drive the shorter shape through harder turns in a tighter radius than a shortboard. Somehow – and here my understanding of physics fail, hats off to Jason Stevens and his team for magiking this up – even though there's less physical rail available to actually turn with, you can hold and drive through that turns' arc longer, harder and deeper into the pit than ever before.

Wanna dump big ass turns on a little board without sacrificing plane speed or paddle power? Uh, yes please! The extra maneuverability that comes with having less board to shift in the lip, the greater stability of a wide, flat deck underfoot, not to mention (again) all that speed to burn – it's a great storyline. It coincides, not coincidentally, with Slater winning an unprecedented 10th world title riding just such a board. Again Slater and Merrick are top players in the new revolution, but it seems to be JS's “X-series” boards gaining most of the attention, particularly here in NZ.

Backdoor have the largest selection in the country of these crazy new sticks. Be warned however - it's a dangerous place to visit! Without even thinking about it, I visited their Takapuna store twice in one day, 4 times in a week, totally besotted with my little Blak Box sitting coyly on the rack. I had to have her! Honestly, seeing these boards lined up in all their glory at the store, talking shop and breaking down theory with Aaron, Hanna and the team, analysing the shapes, choosing a model whilst mentally projecting myself onto a screamer with such a fun-looking craft underfoot, was like a trip back to those fresh eyed days of grommethood when every trip tdown the local surfshop left you spellbound. It's been a long time since an introduction to a new angle in surfboard design – heck, in surfing – has really fired my imagination. Now all I want for Christmas is...

Check out jsindustries.com for an informative breakdown of which shape will suit you best. Then hit backdoor.co.nz to make your purchase or track down your nearest store.

Merry Christmas and happy surfing!

Rowan.