Rusty

Watch this clip from Ruse Entertainment featuring Jayke Sharp and Marlon Gerber.

Jay Davies answers some off the wall questions and speaks about competing in a Pipe contest…

Congratulations to 15 year old Rusty Team Rider, Jake Halstead, for taking home the Silver Medal at the ISA World Juniors Surfing Championships in New Zealand! Click the image below to check out the video highlights from the final day on Surfline.com …

You are invited to come paddle with Rusty, demo his custom SUP boards and find out about his TEC models coming soon from Boardworkds. Meet us at La Jolla Shores on Wednesday, Feb 3, 8-10am. Click here to enlarge the image below…

Josh Kerr tests this small wave riding machine…

The last few swells have brought the Pacific Coastline to life and local SUP stand out, Andre Niemeyer, was turning heads everyday as he stroked his Rusty Stand Up Paddle into some solid, offshore, waves…

What about guns? They’re narrow. They go fast.

A gun, doing its job at Waimea Bay. Photo: Jeremiah Klein

They are narrow on the ends but in the middle they are wider. In building quivers for riders and customers, usually the “performance shortboard” is the narrowest one in the bunch. Sometimes I’ll make the next one or two up a little narrower but not by much. Maybe an 1/8″ or so.

As I work my way up from 6′2″, for example, center widths will hold for a couple of steps up the ladder and the ends will pull in. But at some point, the center width, or widest part of the board needs to start increasing.

So for a 175 lb rider his quiver might look something like:

6′2″ = 18.55″
6′4″ = 18.45″
6′6″ = 18.45″
6′8″ = 18.55″
6′10″ = 18.6″
7′2″ = 18.65″
7′6″ = 18.8″
8′0″ = 19″
8′6″ = 19.5″
9′0″ = 20″
9′8″ = 20.5″

The longer boards need to be wider to maintain adequate outline curve. The ends are reduced in area for control in larger, more powerful surf.

It’s a common misconception that wide boards are slow. In most cases, inch for inch, they are actually faster. Shorter, wider boards, once planning, are far more efficient and ultimately capable of achieving higher speeds than longer, sleeker looking foils.

Short, wide, low rocker, thin, and finless is probably the fastest ride in terms of inherent speed — Paipo, Alaia, and bodyboards. Control is another issue, especially if you are going to stand up on the craft.

Derek Hynd spinning out, just for fun. Photo: Sean Rowland

Narrow boards are quick. Reaction time from rail-to-rail is directly related to width. Light, quick surfers are capable of generating a tremendous amount of speed by loading one rail, flexing the board, which tightens the arc, unweighting, the rebound or return from the flex launches the rider out of the turn, setting the rider up for the next turn. Narrowness reduces transition time from one rail to the other. By linking a series of tight arcs at a higher frequency, a more advanced rider is going faster by generating speed.

There are many different lines to be drawn on a given wave. One craft will find its way on a pure speed line, another, given the ability level of the rider, will cover more distance between the same two points in the same amount of time.

There is a lot of research about how things go through water and air, either self-propelled or by some external power like wind or engines. With surfboards, however, we are looking at planing hulls. We’re looking at ways to maximize performance of something planing on top of the water propelled by the waves energy and how the rider utilizes it.

Once up and planing, wetted surface becomes a big variable influencing the speed of a board. The more board that is in contact with the water, proportionately more drag is incurred. The entire surface area of a board isn’t so much an issue as the rail length and tail width. Narrow shapes, especially with narrow ends, cause drag and suction, and are inherently unstable and interfere with complete planing process. So a wider board, even though it may have relatively more area, allows the rider to go shorter. Usually one rail is committed at a time. A shorter rail line will have less drag, less wetted area, and accelerate more quickly.

Tow boards are short, narrow in the middle, and thin. Stating the obvious, lack of planing area and volume isn’t an issue because the craft is artificially brought up to planing speed. The primary reason tow boards are so fast is that they have such short rail lines and low exit rocker. They have low overall area but they have proportionately wide tails. The overall narrowness helps facilitate control. Narrowness also allows for shorter, lower area (lower drag) fins, which work more efficiently at higher speeds.

Raimana, hoping his tow board goes as fast as this Teahupoo mutant.
Photo: Sean Collins

Experimentation with extremely narrow boards in the late ’60s and early ’70s produced some memorable surfing. Reno Abellira was the quickest surfer in the World Championships in Puerto Rico in 1968. (*See footnote at bottom of page.) His sub-seven-foot, very narrow, Brewer mini-gun was the most advanced surfboard in the comp. Reno’s board was 6′ 7″ x 18.75″ x 2 5/8″ single glassed round-pin, weighing 8 lbs (inc. fin) — a real mini-gun. He also had with him (but did not ride) a 5′ 4″ x 17″ x 2″ (!!!!!!). Keep in mind, most of the other competitors were riding boards in the eight- to nine-foot range, 21 inches wide, give or take.

The winner, albeit controversial, Fred Hemmings, was on a short (8′6″) longboard and satisfied the judges ‘biggest wave, longest ride, most critical part of the wave’ criteria. His large planing hull had its advantages. Reno was lightning-quick, not just down the line but also from rail-to-rail. While his rides may not have been as long, the actual amount of distance he covered per wave was far greater than the other competitors. A comparison could be made to Kelly Slater early in his professional career, competing on boards around 17 5/8″ wide. A few short years later, in the mid-’70s, Reno and Brewer were instrumental in transitioning the fish into the MR twin-fin.

In the early 70’s, Barry Kanaiaupuni rode boards that even Kelly Slater would call ridiculously narrow. He’s remembered for late drops at big Sunset, his trademark rocking from rail-to-rail, and setting up for his definitive single-fin bottom turn. The narrowness translated into control and quickness while the majority of the surfers out at Sunset on any given day were struggling to control their speed because their boards had too much overall area. Paddle power was critical to get in, but what to do with all the excess planing area and resultant speed after the wave is caught?

BK laying into one of his trademark bottom turns. Photo: Leroy Grannis

So, depending on conditions, appropriate width comes down to a balancing act of catching and control.

Some of the early ’70s surf movies took a generation of surfers on a fantasy ride that may as well been called “Romancing the Rock” (Hawaii). The surfing on early modern guns (post-longboard) on the North Shore was nothing short of amazing. The imagery in the magazines and movies was so powerful; it seduced a large percentage of the general surfing population into trying to ride completely impractical equipment. But the boards sure looked cool.

As they always do, corrections happen. In the mid and late ’70s, MR helped popularize twin-fins, which were a much more practical ride for the majority of surfers and their hometown conditions.

Tom Curren, coming off a competitive hiatus in the early ’90s, turned heads by competing on a vintage early ’70s twin-fin and having good success in small gutless surf. Everyday surf. I don’t mean to dwell on the twin-fin thing, but it’s the width, length, thickness, and relaxed rocker of the 5′5″ Rick Twin-fin retro board that gave him the planing speed to liven up his surfing in the mediocre waves for that particular contest.

A little Internet searching plays out a pretty consistent timeline on the Fish fascination and reintroduction into mainstream consciousness. On the topic of Searching, Curren riding the short, wide, Fireball Fish at huge Bawa is seared into the memories of anyone who watched the video in 1996.

Throughout the early 90’s Kelly Slater was redefining performance surfing on ultra narrow, heavily rockered 6′1″s. While about 1% of the general surfing population could actually ride these types of boards, the other 99% struggled. …Lost’s video, 5′5″ x 19 1/4″ (1997) helped to shift the momentum the other way.

Ironically, in the last year or so, Kelly is helping to spearhead another correction.

Left: Kelly on his Glass Slipper in the ’90s; and Right: at the 2009 Snapper Rocks event on a wider, fatter board. Photos: Divine, Rowland

On the Base Surfboards website, Darren Handley discusses what’s different about Mick Fanning’s 2009 title board. He calls it “The Cut Down” — a 6′1″ cut down on the ends. A little wider. A little thicker. Fascinating.

So what’s up with the retro thing? Simple: shorter, wider, thicker, flatter. More efficient planing hulls.

In the last few years it seems, more and more so, the general surfing population is on to the shorter, wider direction. Most shapers with a little experience have a decent 6′2″ x 18 ½ x 2 ¼ in their bag. In a machine age, little is left to the imagination on this type of board. It’s sort of senseless for surf shops to go deep into this type of inventory because it’s such a commodity item. What’s fun is exploring all the different ways to go shorter and wider. It doesn’t get judged or need to be validated with a rating or ranking.

In earlier blogs I have touched on fins and how multiple fins have enabled designers to go shorter and wider.

To my knowledge, Bob Simmons was the seminal influence on modern surfboard design. His scientific approach to building surfboards was groundbreaking and a lot of the principles he applied still have strong merit 60-plus years later.

In the next blog I’ll explore some of his theories and have a look at how his incredible influence is manifested in some new-old designs…hydrodynamic planing hulls.

It’s all about putting the glide back in the ride. Less work, more fun.

Happy Surfing.

[Special thanks to: Dick Brewer, John Elwell, Richard Kenvin, Stan Pleskunas. And: George Orbelian and Paul Holmes for research details on the Reno Abellira and Mark Richards boards from their upcoming book "Shaper of Surfing: Dick Brewer."]

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*Competitors and media alike went to Puerto Rico expecting it to be a showcase for the new, progressive shortboard style. Vee bottoms, mini-guns and still-experimental surf craft were the order of the day. Fueled in part by psychoactively-induced imagination, there was a collective desire for something radical to take place. It did, but not in the way that was generally expected. Hemmings read the rules, studied the conditions, figured out his game plan, rode a board he describes as “a short longboard” — an 8′6″ wide-back, thick, heavy squaretail shaped by Ben Aipa — and surfed to victory in the finals by riding the five biggest waves the longest possible distance. To many of those who considered themselves on the cutting edge at the time, it was a downright travesty of justice.

Just after Hemmings and Margo won men’s and women’s divisions in the ‘68 World Champs. Photo: Leroy Grannis

“They were looking for rock ‘n’ roll and I was a waltzer, and I think what a lot of the other competitors missed was that the judges were all from the waltzing school of surfing, too,” says Hemmings. But he also adds, citing his already considerable contest record, “Winning the World Contest was not a fluke. I went there to win. I trained hard. I didn’t smoke or drink. I went out with a strategy and I beat those guys fair and square. So it hurt when some pundits in the surf media denied me the recognition that was my due.”
–Paul Holmes/Fred Hemmings, interview from Longboard magazine

Photo from Transworld Surf

Lulu Erkeneff has been getting a lot of media coverage lately. She recently made the finals in two separate divisions in the Steamer Lane stop on the Surfing America Prime Series. Check out all the photos from the event over at Transworld Surf. She also found time in her busy schedule to sit down for an interview with Jetty Girl.

Interview and Picture from Australia Surfing Life

Jay Davies has the complete package. His high flying punts are among the best in the business and this big lad can throw bucket loads of spray. After he scored the opening spread of our current issue’s Hawaiian feature, we sent Jay and mates Mitch Coleborn, Ry Craike and Brent Dorrington to the middle of the Pacific for an upcoming magazine feature. We caught up with Jay to find out about the trip, his plans for the WQS and why Dusty Payne didn’t give him 25 grand.

Hey mate, what are you up to?
Just wasting time on the couch in Hawaii.

So you’re over there for the Volcom Qualifying Series event? How are the waves?
Yeah, it was fun this morning. It’s pretty fun right now actually, it’s like four to six foot Backdoor and Pipe. The wind is a bit funky but there’s still the occasional barrel. It’s been good to get my feet wet and get into the swing of things.

You’ve made a name for yourself as a freesurfer over the past few years; does entering this comp mean you’ll be having a dig at the WQS this year?
Ahh not really, last year I did a few QS events, I pick the ones that I wanna do and that suit my style. I don’t want to be labeled as a freesurfer for my whole career, that’s just kinda how I’ve gotten my face out there. I still want to compete and challenge myself, that’s why I’m here. I know this is going to be a good event with good waves and to surf Pipe with three other guys is just unheard of, so I couldn’t really turn it down. It’s just a five star, but in quality waves, it should be a six star prime. But what the hell, it’s just good to be able to get some waves at Pipe.

When do you think you’ll have a full crack at qualifying?
I’m getting older, I’m 23 and I should really be giving it a solid crack this year because I’m young. Well, kinda young. I dunno, it hasn’t really crossed my mind. I’m still not sure if I really like doing it. I’ve had some good and bad experiences, but I think that’s what comes with competing. I’ve just gotta be more mature and suck it up. I’m not as confidant as I should be and there are some things I’d like to work on in my surfing, but hopefully in a year or two I’ve got it all worked out and I’ll give it a go.

The Kustom Airstrike has started back up. Weren’t you and Dusty meant to split the prize money last year? What happened to that?
We were playing golf at home and Taj or someone was saying that I was in the running with Dusty. I brought it up with Dusty and he was like “fuck, if one of us win we should go halves.” He ended up winning and I didn’t see any of the money, but I know if I won I wouldn’t have given him anything! So it’s understandable that I didn’t get 25 grand off him.

MOVE OF THE WEEK #2 from KerrAzy Productions on Vimeo.

How was your summer? What did you get up to?
It was pretty hectic, everyone comes home from travelling or working away and everyone congregates in Yallingup on the hill and everything turns pretty wild for three or four weeks span from early December to New Years. It’s all kinda a blur really. It was quite funny at stages and then I had to pull the pin on a few nights. I had a great Chrissy and New Years, but then got the bug to get back out and leave home because it was still all partying and carrying on, so I worked out a trip and got out of there.

Yeah we heard a rumour that you’re calming down a bit these days. Little less loose behaviour?
Yeah that’s kind of true. I try to hold myself back a bit, it’s hard though especially when all of your buddies are around and they’re having fun, but I’m sick of waking up feeling shitty and missing the first session of the morning. It’s not the best thing for your career being a wild prick. Don’t get me wrong I still get lit up every now and then but it’s slowed down a bit.

You just went Pacific Island hopping with our photographer Shieldsy and filmer Talon, tell us about the trip.
It was interesting, I didn’t know what to expect out there. I’d heard that there were heaps of set ups and some great waves and when got there and had no idea where the set ups were or what swell direction we needed. We were kind of like blind mice driving around this island.

We found this one spot across the road from a golf course and the airport that was called Socials. It was called Socials because that’s pretty much the only wave on that island, so we were surfing with everyone else. But the wave was pretty cool, it was a crazy right slab that kinda ran off and ended on dry rock, so it wasn’t the best for us. It’d give you enough speed to get out in time so it was really exciting wave, but we had one session out there and Mitch got some bark off him and Craiky got like ten urchins in his foot and we were like “fuck this wave is just too heavy”. We couldn’t do any turns or anything but get a little barrel and pull off. We were like this is sick that we’re getting barreled but there was no variety in the shots we were getting. We stuck it out there for a while and the boys called “let’s go to Raglan,” so we flew to New Zealand and had a road trip and got kinda skunked there. So it was a fun, interesting trip.

What else does the world need to know about Jay Davies these days?
I’m just doing trips that come up, I know I’m heading off the Mentawais during the Quikky Pro with a few guys for the Kustom Airstrike thing. Besides that I’m just doing photos and videos and gonna try and get some good waves this year. I’ll do the odd contest here and there and if I can do something great I could find myself sitting on the World Tour in three or four months.

What do you think about the one ranking system, a couple of big QS results and you’re on tour?
Yeah, I’m like “fuck, if I do good in like three or four events I could wind up on the tour.” It’s definitely on my mind. I’m just picking the right ones that suit me, so I’ll just have to see what happens but it’s definitely a cool thing for me.

So look out for Jay Davies at the Drug Aware Pro Margaret River?
Yeah no doubt.

Thanks for that mate, good luck this year.
No worries Will, thanks.