The future of surfing might be levitation ...?
The future of surfboards might all be shaped by a computer ...?

IMO surfing will loose its soul.
Hand shaped with love, surfing a wave with feeling......

wellymon wrote:

The future of surfing might be levitation ...?

The future of surfboards might all be shaped by a computer ...?

IMO surfing will loose its soul.

Hand shaped with love, surfing a wave with feeling......

Loose its soul? generally speaking I thought that happened a long long ago.

But I think the beauty of surfing is its what you make it, for some its just about the act of riding waves like a sport or pastime, some its about getting better or winning comps and money and sponsors, and for others its an escape and an excuse to enjoy the ocean and travel etc, i guess you can call that a lifestyle?.

The hand shaped V,s Computer shaped thing, i respect and like both and i think both are here to stay, I see performance in new materials and computer shapes, but nostalgia will always allow a mark for a hand made product.

Levitation?…I had a dream once where I paddled something like a cross between a bodyboard/knee board then somehow i got up and the board split down the middle, my feet where attached like water skis and i carved up the wave like i was on big thick wide skis.

Yeah ID
I can't find the link but I have seen a French guy getting towed into big waves in Hawaii on skis..?

Welly . Chuck patterson does that at jaws . On skis .

If we're talking about snaps that changed the world.does anyone remember those insane snaps Ian cairns was doing at sunset somewhere between 76-78.board parallel to wave and body at ninety degrees.looked liked he was falling off.it was a yellow board and in one of the surf mags of the day

They were bullshit .........Kangas 'snapback' earlier than 1976 I think ,cover shot surfing world 74 or 75 .

Physically the top surfers have come a long way. The top guys are super fit, and significant improvement is not going to be there. Incremental progress up to a point.

Design wise, yeah, there's a whole world of new designs that haven't been thought of yet. Seems to me that this has only just begun. As mentioned before, the Tomo and similarly ugly boards may be the direction that it heads, but I suspect we are now in the punk era, in that things will splinter and we will be out there with guys on traditional craft and other guys on tomos, fat things, skinny things, longer boards and shorter boards. Finding that board that is just what you want is going to get increasingly difficult.

Technology is the next big step. The industry has gone down the road of new blanks, epoxy, firewire stringerless, all just more experimentation. I doubt there will be one 'best' type of board, just lots of options.

The early 90's was the nadir, where getting something different required imagination and a relationship with a shaper. Now you can pick up a huge variety of boards out of the shop.

I suspect that we haven't come close to working out what the bottom should look like, or what works best. Think dimples on a golf ball. These are intensively tested. You think that technology has come a long way in surfing, you should see how complicated it's getting in golf.

Surfboard bottoms have been smooth surfaced mainly because of manufacture. You can't sand and glass tiny dimples in a board bottom, but you could possible adhere a surface to the bottom to give that effect. Aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are not the same, but similar principles can be extrapolated.

Haven't scratched the surface in that regard.

But at the end it all comes down to the user, and at the top end it comes down to the imagination of the elite surfers. They are the ones trying new things, incorporating airs from skating, trying to think of new ways to get into parts of the waves that haven't been fully exploited yet.

Considering what they are doing now, it's hard to see revolution, more just evolution, continual improvement. What they do though has little to do with my surfing.

As for manufacture, the CAD designs and computer cut boards have generally improved the quality out of sight, depending on where it is being produced. If you want a cheap chinese made board you'll get that sort of quality, but the stuff that the big name shapers are producing out of Thailand, in my experience, has been brilliant. I know that my Simon Anderson boards haven't been anywhere near Simon, but the quality has been better than anything I have bought in years gone by.

The future holds lots of surprises in the coming years, in my opinion.

toneranger wrote:

If we're talking about snaps that changed the world.does anyone remember those insane snaps Ian cairns was doing at sunset somewhere between 76-78.board parallel to wave and body at ninety degrees.looked liked he was falling off.it was a yellow board and in one of the surf mags of the day

Seen him in mid 80's at Haliewa ,big pot belly. Awesome is an understatement , he used the extra weight to put maybe even more power into that snap. Pretty amazing to watch from the water, impeccable timing.

Ebay surfing magazines : surfing world 1974 ,kanga cover shot - snapback.

Thanks Udo.goin down to the shed to see if i've got that one.pretty well got every surfing magazine from 72 to 77.hope the mice have'nt beaten me.what makes that move even more impressive is that the board is a single fin

Oh,one more thing.i was on a train in about 72 or 73 on the Dandenong line coming home from work reading a tracks magazine that had an Ian Cairns interview.the girl beside me asked me if that was Ian Cairns.Isaid yes and she said he was his sister and had moved over from the west.blew me out

indo-dreaming wrote:

Reverse rocker?….Never heard of that but a quick google search comes up with a few hits including this one.

https://www.bushrat.com/flextails.html

Cool yeah he is onto it, amazing looking crafts those. Would love a go i bet they sell for a lot though.
Id like to hear more about how they go for airs.