Foiled by the foil

The problem with picking up a board on Ebay is that you can't pick the board up and feel it before you buy. I was looking around for a smaller fish a while back. I came across this little 5'10" fish built by a backyarder down at Phillip Island. Beautiful foiled birchwood ply fins and cedar nose and tail blocks. It was hard to see the rails in the picture and I asked him to list some more so I could get an idea of the board. They looked like what I wanted so I bought the board off him. As soon as I picked up the board I knew the rails were way to foiled down. The board was a fish template with your standard short board rails. I rode the board 3 times in good surf. It had no flow and surfed like a short board with the center fin missing. Nothing like a real fish. Sold it straight away. Fish need some volume in the rails and the right bottom shape. I think rolled V to flat to panel V for a twinnie, or to a double concave for a quad. I don't know why guys like those type of boards. They have no flow and the rails stick.

Pigs: Do they work?

I've been getting interested in Pigs. They seem to be where the whole Hull thing took off from. With Greg Liddle, under the radar after the short board thing started. Narrow nose, soft concave up front, rolled bottom to V through the tail. Pinched 50/50 rails. I thinks they would be a pretty fun board to ride. Snappy off the tail, light swing weight, ridiculous glide and you could get up on the nose in the steep sections. Such a nice plane shape too. Anyone ridden one? Seems to be two schools of thought about which fin suits them. Either a Greenough or a D fin. I'd get one with a box and try out both.

Mining the Stoke: Pirate Surf films Rule!

Singel fin Eggs: lessons learnt

I got this single fin made up for me by Ian Chisholm down at Southcoast longboards about 5 years ago. I wanted a board to take over to Scotland. I wanted something that would paddle like a longboard but which I could take on a plane easily and which would fit into a little hatchback. He made it 7'0" x 22 x 3. 17" nose and 17" tail. Soft eggy rails, no edge in the tail and a flat bottom. Soft rocker. This board was great fun in mushy beachbreaks or in small point waves, but in anything with any power was a handful. It needed some role or concaves to loosen up the bottom and let it go rail to rail more easily. The volume in the tail helped in small surf but hindered it when the surf got bigger. That said, I had some great waves on this. Mostly in France around Biarritz. You should go. I got waves but nothing great in Scotland. It was so cold you had to gimp up even in summer. The north sea is all short period wind swell. Really short as in about 9 seconds. It comes up in a few hours and goes just as quickly. Plus the tides are huge, so the surfing window is very very limited. I did surf Thurso though. It's like Winkipop but meaner. I got smashed. Wrong board and out of condition in a heavy wesuit and 2 degree black water. Its a story though. I kept this board for ages when I got back to Oz mainly because I loved the colour! Ended up surfing it at Meanos around at Flinders. I put a 9' Greenough 4A in it and it worked much better. A flex fin will normally make a single fin work a lot better. It was fun there. Meanos is a usually a pretty fat wave, but you get fun sections. Sold this board recently too. I saw the guy out at possos a couple of weeks later. He was liking it. Stale for me, fresh for him.

New Orleans post Katrina

I visited New Orleans about a year and a half ago for work. I had to go over for a work conference. It was at the Mariott, but after the meeting each day you could wander down into the French Quarter. Bourbon St is a complete tourist trap full of happy hour bars and seedy strip clubs, but if you go to the end you'll find Frenchman's st. This place is full of jazz clubs that are totally unpretentious. They are a basically the size of milk bars, only serve beer in bottles and have no stage. You grab a Micky's Big Mouth or a Rolling Rock and the band plays on the floor right next to you. One night I saw a young guy playing Sax in dungarees and dreadlocks. He looked like Jean Micheal Basquiate and played like Coltrane. You can drink on the street and walk from club to club until about 3am every night. No wonder they call it the Big Easy. In the morning you can get a cup of filter coffee and bingnets (little donuts in icing sugar) from a place nearby that sits next the the levy of the Mississippi river. On the last night we caught a cab home and it started snowing! The two big black guys driving the cab were so happy and flipped out. Above are some photos around Jackson square just up from Frenchman's. You couldn't really tell there had been a hurricane. They had fixed it all up pretty quickly. Everyone was talking about how bad the economy was though, and on the drive out to the airport you could see all the wrecked houses still waiting to be fixed. America is a tough place. Australia is no longer the egalitarian utopia we used to think it was, but we still have more opportunities than most.

Tom Wegener Model A

This is my Tom Wegener Model A. It's 9'8". Soft rolled bottom and super eggy rails. Got it made up as a present to myself after two years in Edinburgh, Scotland. Didn't like it at first. It's a begginer model and I thought it would improve my sketchy noseriding skills. Almost sold it a while back but the sale fell through. Pulled it out the other day and had a magic surf on it. It has no concaves at all and paddles amazingly fast. Feels like much longer that 9'8". After riding a hull this year, I'm warming the feel of full round bottoms. The guy who shapes Gato Hatero over in Cali thinks concaves go against nature. They create lift by generating drag. Still can't noseride very well but am loving the glide. Surfboards are like painting. Sometimes you have to turn them to the wall and come back to them after a time with a fresh feel.

Garage sale gems

Picked this little sucker up about 2 years ago at a garage sale. 5'10" x 23 x 3 six channel twin fin knee board. $20! It was shaped by Springer in Torquay god knows when . Spent $8 on spray paint and gave it the Point Concept spray (My favorite hull maker from Santa Barbera California). Wanted to test out the size before I commited to a Mini Simmons and try out a bit of Greenough style action. Surfed it in Phillip Island shorebreak and over at Flynns during the summer. Good Fun. Offloaded it for about $40 recently to a new enthusiast. Cheap way of experimenting and keeping things fresh.

Tom Wegener Quiver

This is the quiver that got me into logging. The red noserider was the first Wegener I ever bought. I gave up on surfing for years after being frustrated with 6'6" thrusters. Then I picked up a crappy OAK longboard down at RPS in Elwood and started surfing the Pines down at Shoreham. What a revelation to have a 20+ wave count in a session. After a couple of years on the OAK and a second hand Wayne Dean I walked into the now defunct Rip Curl longboard shop in Torquay and saw the red Wegener on the racks. The fin looked massive and they couldn't fit it into the racks properly. The guy working in the shop turned out to be a great friend of Toms and had been in the film Siestas and Olas with him through Mexico. He was raving about the board and called up Tom on the phone in the shop to talk to me about it. I was sold. Walked out with it and rode it alone for about two years. It's still the best Wegener I've got. A keeper. The other boards are a 10' signature model with a D fin, a 9'6 Cruisader that trims like nobody's business, a 9'6" woody that I've never mastered and a very rare board, a 9'0" Joker model. This board has a flat to very heavy double barreled concave bottom and some very subtle 50/50 tucked under rails. They act like piched 50/50 rails in small waves but when it gets to a certain speed on bigger waves the double concaves give lift and the rails ride up to a tucked under edge. Two speeds. Donald Takayama invented this type of rail and Tom learned to shape them when he worked with him. Who said Tom Wegener couldn't shape a modern board!