Congratulations to Nate Yeomans for scoring the cover of the newest issue of Transworld Surf! Go out and grab a copy of the new issue and be sure to root for Nate as he competes in his first CT event, the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast, which starts today!
February 26th - March 10th
The Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast is the perfect ASP "Dream Tour" location. Warm water and white sand, sunshine and sun tans, people and parties, all combined with some of the best sand-bottom pointbreaks in the world, makes the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast the most eagerly anticipated of all events among both professional surfers and fans alike. This also marks team rider Nate Yeomans' first ever event on the WCT - Good Luck Nate!
Click here for live coverage which starts TODAY!
3/1 UPDATE: Nate is set to compete in his Round 2 Elimination heat which you can watch live by clicking here!
Photo: Brody
Josh Kerr and Asher Pacey go on a road trip down the Oz Coast with epic waves along the way...
It's no secret that surfboard design requires a certain bit of hydrodynamics. And while some of you were snoozing in physics class, early board-builders were figuring things out so today's modern shapers didn't really have to. Leading that early charge was Bob Simmons -- an eccentric dude, who didn't care much what people thought of his off-the-wall concepts. However, Simmons single-handedly looked at the board's planing surface and made it the forefront of shaping.
Richard Kenvin on a Simmons-inspired model. Photo: Scott Sullivan
San Diego surfer Richard Kenvin is making a film about Simmons called 'Hydrodynamica' and offers the following:
After the longboard era ended in the late sixties, surfers pursued a performance ideal focused on deep tuberiding, tight-radius carves, controlled slides, and finally, vertical turns in and above the lip. This performance criterion has dictated the evolution of the shortboard over the past 40 years. The desire to perform precise vertical turns and make controlled micro-adjustments on the face and in the barrel brought about a narrow, stiletto-like board with continuous outline curve, lots of rocker, and a canted fin cluster designed for holding power and instant release up the face. All of these design innovations make today's incredible shortboard performance surfing possible. The dreams of the late sixties have come true, and there is no argument that the modern shortboard is a functional waveriding machine that allows for spectacular surfing.
That being said, this shortboard performance ideal comes with a price, and the currency that pays that price is drag. Quick lift, paddling power, glide, planing speed, and trim have all been sacrificed on the altar of maneuverability. For the strong and agile or for those lucky enough to ride clean, powerful surf on a regular basis such drag-inducing design elements as ample rocker and narrow curvy outlines have more benefits than drawbacks. Even so, surfers are always looking for new sensations, and in recent years many of us have been exploring designs from the past that originated long before the contemporary shortboard. Wide, low rocker, high aspect-ratio designs like the fish don't allow quite the same performance levels as shortboards, but they do set us free, more or less, from paying the debt of drag associated with ultra-rockered, narrow designs.
This growing movement towards experiencing "alternative" boards like the fish is evidence of a widespread desire to be freed, at least occasionally, from the shackles of over-specialized contemporary design. In fact, these "retro" boards are now influencing shortboard design as rockers mellow, outlines get straighter, and boards get wider and shorter. As the design pendulum swings back in favor of wider and flatter, it seems we are in for interesting times. With minds opening along these lines, shortboard performance is about to take a leap forward in a new direction. Relaxed trim and planing speed will be possible on very short and maneuverable boards, and the dreaded "Huntington Hop" will be eliminated from our repertoires. All along the surf history timeline the prophets of width and planing speed have appeared and blown our minds: the Paipo riders of Hawaii, Bob Simmons, George Greenough, Steve Lis, and though we try to deny it, bodyboarders like Mike Stewart and Danny Kim have all brought us a message we too often fail to heed. With evidence of the virtues of flat and wide (and finless flex!) displayed right before our eyes our tendency to stubbornly deny those virtues in favor of convention is quite remarkable.
When considering wider, high aspect ratio board design it becomes impossible to ignore the work of Bob Simmons in the late 1940s and early '50s. By the time of his death in 1954, Simmons had brought his dual-finned hydrodynamic planing hull design to a state of fulfilled refinement. But planing hull surfboard history really begins with the traditional finless boards of pre-contact Hawaii, particularly the short, wide Paipo board and the longer and slightly narrower Alaia. These ancient surfboards are extremely fast due to a hydrodynamic design that allows for subtle flex, very efficient trim and planing and hardly any drag.
In the mid 1940s, scale models resembling Paipo and Alaia type planing craft were tested in Hawaii as part of an effort to improve military powerboat performance. And in 1946, naval architect Lindsay Lord published the results of these tests in a study titled The Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls. Lord proclaimed the performance benefits of wide hull designs and also acknowledged the challenge of incorporating them into a seaworthy vessel. Modifications and compromises were necessary to achieve this, and the same holds true for surfboard design. Before long, Simmons obtained a copy of Lord's report and referred to it when designing his first planing hull surfboard in 1948. He also studied the work of the Daniel Bernoulli, a mathematician from the 18th century who had articulated the basic principles of hydrodynamic lift in a study published in 1738 under the title Hydrodynamica. Simmons then began effectively combining ancient planing principles with modern hydrodynamic theory to arrive at an entirely new type of surfboard.
Simmons was able to harness the planing powers of the traditional finless boards by designing a Bernoulli-inspired elliptical rail that, when guided by a shallow keel fin, allowed his boards to accelerate out of turns and carve on a rail with unprecedented control. The Simmons rail generated dynamic lift and required a fin to function properly. He kept his tails very wide for planing speed, and he placed a keel on each outboard rail near the tail. He used minimal rocker to reduce drag, and minimal curve in his outlines to maximize trim speed. He broke the outline slightly in the back third with a "bump" for release, and he rounded the noses of his boards and tilted them upwards in order to create lift through displacement when paddling into waves and negotiating steep drops and chop. This innovation became known as a "spoon". The lifted angle of the spoon is sometimes mistaken for rocker, but the actual riding surface of the board is quite flat.
Simmons' boards are perhaps more relevant today than at any other time in surfing history. With the advanced CAD design programs now available it is possible to reference the original planing hull concept and blend it with contemporary designs to make better boards. Fin placement and bottom curve can be tweaked and adjusted until a happy medium is achieved, with the goal being a very short board that paddles well, skates, glides, and trims, all without sacrificing maneuverability or control in the tube. Riding a Simmons-inspired planing hull and discovering its place in surfing's past and its relevance in the present is a rewarding experience for surfers of all ability levels.
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John Elwell was friends with Bob Simmons the last five or six years of his life. He was in the water with him at Windansea the day he died. Elwell has a book called "Surfing in San Diego," which is a great historical overview. Elwell elaborates on 'The Coming of Simmons':
First, we heard rumors of new boards that were the rage of Malibu in 1948 and early '49 and of Simmons. He showed up here at IB in '49 when I met him. This guy had power of "presence". You could feel it when he walked in the lifeguard station. I once felt like a wind passing and he went behind me unseen. The guy wore a glitter of fiberglass dust and clothes of resin. His plaid wool shirts were faded and well worn, and he wore deck shoes -- never any socks or underwear. He was poorly groomed and shaved and spoke in short, hard one-liners, snarling or cackling laughs. He was no nonsense, almost unfriendly at first. He was all business and a busy person about to die young. When something was bad...it was a disaster!
Chris DelMoro, using his hull. Photo: Peterson
We wanted some of his boards but he was not ready to make boards for everyone. We had to get the wood and he would shape for $15 and we would sand to his directions and supervision in glassing. It would take a while -- like almost a year. The good times were watching him shape and carefully asking him questions. He would like to tell special stories of surf experiences. He would blurt out stuff that we would have to think about.
After his death, Morgan and I would talk about this. He said we wouldn't ever know what he was talking about and what all those calculations were on his hydrographic charts. He talked about a sea break off SF called the Great Break. Then, at times, talked about 100-foot waves off Chile that he would need special rubber suits that were not yet developed and small bail out bottles of oxygen.
At 16, it was like talking to someone like Buck Rogers. 'Is this guy for real?' Then there were boomerangs -- that he called deadly weapons -- and ping-pong championships. All connected again, we would find out later through Bernoulli. My relation to Simmons is that we became good friends surfing together and watching and listening to him shape in the station. I admired him, not knowing he was a brilliant math student, engineer at Douglas, a machinist, master boomerang-maker and thrower, ping-pong champion, and power bicyclist. He was an accomplished athlete of special skills and endurance sports. He had a badly injured arm from a bicycle accident that almost killed him. He almost went down at Hermosa from a blow from his board. But he was not a cripple, or a "surfer who could hardly swim," as Quig described him. His arm was wired together without being able to rotate it and it slashed the water. He made mile swims off the Sloughs and no one worried about him.
I was surfing with Simmons the day he was killed and was the only one with him when he took off late on a big wave and slipped on a new, poorly-waxed board. He was surfing brilliantly that day after returning from the North Shore in the winter of '53. He made a new board in '54, the same configuration but improved the attack angle so he could take one-stroke and no-stroke take-offs. His boards were just about perfectly balanced and he would check them on a sawhorse and note the center of gravity. I think this is very important! When Morgan told me that we might never know what he meant, I started to turn over stones with his family and friends to put the puzzle together. Simmons was indeed way out there. Even back then, he talked about predicting surf from sun spot storms that heat the equator which causes the El Nino.
Check back next week for part two of this subject -- Aspect Ratio.
Rusty wake rider Sean O'Brien recently organized the Ride 4 Relief fundraiser event at OWC in Orlando, FL to help aid the recovery efforts in Haiti. Sean assembled an impressive group of wakeboarding pros for a night time wake show and managed to raise over $5,000! He plans to also set up an Ebay auction page later this week and if you want to donate right now, you can do so by visiting Ride 4 Relief's Habit for Humanity site.
Click here for more photos from the event on Alliance Wake's website.
Every so often, between adventures with his family, Shayne McIntyre will stop by the Rusty Surfboards factory to score some new boards. Recently, Shayne dropped by and left a very happy man. Here we see Shayne with three new boards: The Predator, The Slayer, and the all new Screamer. Keep your eyes on Fuel TV and On Surfari to see Shayne puting his new quiver to the test...
Photo: Brody
Watch this clip on the making of the new surf movie Way of the Ocean featuring Josh Kerr.
UP IN THE AIR with JOSH KERR from WAY OF THE OCEAN on Vimeo.
Jayke Sharp makes the most of a rainy day by putting his Rusty Redline to the test in some chunky beach break surf on Australia's East Coast...
Photos: Brody
Team rider and artist Karlee Mackie recently stopped by Rusty OZ headquarters. Check out this photo gallery and the video below of the new mural she painted in the front office. As a bonus there's also a video of her customizing a Rusty surfboard that was auctioned off at the Yallingup Surf Film Festival for Surf Aid. Head on over to Karlee's blog if you want to see more of her artwork.
