This is the latest foam and wood alaia I’ve made. There have been a few changes since the last one I posted. I brought the volume up a bit in the nose and tail for even better paddling and wave catching ability. The nose and tail are a bit wider, so the outline has a bit more curve in it. It seems the more outward curve you have in the tail, the better the board will set and hold in trim and turns. The rail stays stuck in the wave rather than curving away from it and releasing. The deck is bowed with reverse rocker to keep volume in the middle and allow the ends to flex. Also the wood on the deck has been cut in an hourglass shape to keep the panel flat. This avoids any compound curves in the panel that could stiffen the structure. I rode a similar board  recently at almost flat, high tide Rincon and had way more fun then I should have had. The board motored along great in the weakest of waves and I didn’t have to worry about nailing a fin on the rocks. Dimensions of this board are 6′8″ x 17″ x 2 1/4″. The widest points at the ends are 18 1/2″ and the rails are pinched to 1/2″ and squared off, with a hard edge almost the entire length of the board. The bottom has a full length single concave and 1/4″ of chine on the rail.The rocker is almost flat. This board is currently available at Wetsand surf shop. The one I rode is now my new favorite ultra small (I wouldn’t be going out otherwise) wave board.

I came across this article by Paul Gross in an issue of Surfer (Vol. 16, No. 5, 1975) recently and was struck by how relevant and applicable it still is today. These are exciting times to be a surfer, with board designers like Tom and Jon Wegener and Richard Kenvin (and the shapers he’s been working with like Joe Bauguess) taking a second look at concepts from the past and applying them to modern boards. Also Danny Hess, Burt Burger, and many others around the world are applying supposedly antiquated materials like wood into modern, high performance shapes, creating stronger, better boards. It seems we are in a new era that really is looking “forward to the future with a perspective of the past.”

“It’s an adventure to get on a surfboard and paddle out. Something is going to happen to you.” -Phil Edwards

Beyond that agreeable statement, ideas of what surfing was, is, and should vary according to experience, understanding, and personal taste. A common tendency is to believe that NOW is the most advanced period surfing has experienced, and that we are constantly moving ahead. To many, surfing’s past may seem archaic and foolish: muscle-bound jocks herding heavy, ridiculously long, sluggish hulks around, with little thought of what they could be doing.

“1949- 1954… was the period of the only true innovation of design concepts and riding technique the sport has ever endured.” – Mickey Dora

With few preconceptions, early creators developed understanding and methods that, for better or for worse, are still with us today. They were the ones to realize that such “absolutes” as the addition of a fin could improve their ability to angle; that boards should be longer than they are wide; that rocker helped to keep the board from hooking chop and pearling. They went further to conclude that goofy- foots were abnormal.

“Put one foot in front as you stand- preferably left foot forward, unless this feels unnatural.” – John Severson, Surfer Magazine, Vol. 1 #1, 1960

They were vary aware of the various rail shapes and how they affected the way a board felt. They fiddled with lengths, widths, templates, fin size and placement, square tails, pintails, round tails, and yes, swallow tails. They had the time and the waves to work out and understand a multitude of subtleties that most of today’s “designers” are still assessing.

“Compared to Simmons, we are still throwing paint at the canvas.” -Tom Morey

All of this was occurring with little of the benefit of mass communication. Word of mouth, while in the hands of a then friendlier crew, still traveled slowly. Films were scarce … there were no magazines.

With “Gidget”, foam, and SURFER Magazine, surfing was elevated to new levels of social awareness. With a new image, a new pack hit the water. Spots got crowded, fins grew into skegs, and boards became, as they still are today, handshaped, hand- laminated, white foam, wood- stringered, eggshell structures.During what is now referred to as the “longboard era,” commercialism and formalized heroism escalated to new heights. For the first time, experimentation and the resulting likelihood of progress had falsifying factors to contend with. Manufactures effectively unified appearance standards; and, at a snail’s pace, allowed things to change often enough to give the illusion of constant, uninterrupted (and non- disruptive) progress.

However, a handful of wave riders have stood out through more than one era, and are not opposed to telling us about how it was and what they see it becoming …

Phil Edwards, the man with the first signature model, the first surfer to ride Pipeline, winner of the first SURFER Magazine Reader Poll (the ultimate assessment of advertising effectiveness besides sales), and rightfully respected wave rider, gives much of the credit for his early development to Mickey Dora.

“Mickey … just didn’t stand up; he actually moved around on the board … he made something of it … he made the rest of us look like idiots … I copied him. Just straight down the line copied him … sometimes I feel I’m a two-bit version of Mickey Dora.” -Phil Edwards

“Dora’s surfing, like that of many other knowledgeable surfers, is always done in the terrain of the wave … he is high on the wall, trimmed up on the board as far forward as possible without stalling the board’s speed, looking to be in a position of no escape. The wall throws out, Dora drops both body and board down, taking all the speed into the eye. What does he do? He goes flat on the board, lying down, vanishing inside exploding white water, and (did you expect otherwise?) comes squirting out the far end onto the green, stands up, and rides into the shorebreak.” -Dale Herd

Dora is not the greatest surfer of all time. That is a title without a holder. However, what he and other knowledgeable transients of past to present have to say should be listened to, as it stands to reason that a participant/ observer of some considerable dimension would have a more objective, learned view of today’s “state of the art” than the average guy out in the water. What they are saying is most likely not what you would like nor expect to hear.

“To the unenlightened eye, things have constantly been progressing; however, close scrutiny reveals the modern world to be a mere illusion of opulence, grandeur, and good feelings … I now publicly state the some kid from nowhere … is going to come forward and thrash any and all matinée idols.” Mickey Dora

“No matter what people say about the short board being faster, I’ll never believe it, because with the longer board, you just end up further down the beach.” -Phil Edwards

“Now is a generation of very handsomely equipped, well- suited trashmen surfing very slowly through garbage waves … I am looking at your surfboards and thinking they are junk. You know, really, it’s the basically the same as before. In actuality, a guy paddles out on one of these ‘modern tools for total involvement’ out to the lineup at the stupendous speed of about one mile per hour. He rides in at perhaps 10- 15 m.p.h., occasionally he may hit 20, even 25 m.p.h., on really good, really large waves.” -Tom Morey

“I would say every surfer hungers for speed.” -Nat Young

Speed? Twenty-five miles per hour? Kids on skateboards can go faster than surfers do on the biggest, hollowest, waves ridden. (True, the illusion of speed while surfing is tremendous.)

“Imagine boards which will maneuver super well and which will paddle at 10 m.p.h.!” – Tom Morey

It might seem strange that the most disruptive thinking is being done by individuals who saw their “youth” in a time when acid was something in your car’s battery.

Ignorant rejection of the concepts put forth by Dora, Morey, Edwards, and those like them is not surprising. Innovators often are forced out of the limelight (assuming they got that far … or wanted to), labeled as “eccentrics” or “out of it,” and dismissed.

“The true surfing frontiersman who create in obscurity are so far advanced over the rest of the regressive rat pack, it’s absurd.” – Mickey Dora

Rather than rejecting the manner of surfing we now enjoy, these people are trying to show us that our enthusiasm for what we see as new is ill-founded, and our lack of comprehensive vision is clogging the development of new feelings we could be enjoying.

“Don’t sock yourself into fads and fancies; go develop a board that will take you where you want.” – Wayne Lynch

“How, pray tell, will we ever improve if guys don’t try out their ideas?” – Nat Young

Surfers from every “era” have a common ground of understanding, one that transcends equipment, maneuvers, and style. It is something that cannot be lost, no matter where you go with your ideas. Look forward to the future with a perspective of the past.

Joe Quigg recalls Rabbit Kekai with his toes wrapped around the nose while completely in the tube at full speed, riding a short redwood board with a V-bottom and no fin … at Queens … in 1947.

Something else I do besides making surfboards is make art. My good friend Joaquin Trujillo was kind enough to ask me to be a part of a group show he is curating called Homesick. It’s going to be at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard and opening night is Saturday December 12th. So if anyone has the time they could get in a session at Point Mugu and then see some great art that night.  For more info see this: trujillopaumier.com/homesick/

This is recently finished board # 2 for Mitch Coleborn. Ryan Thomas let Mitch try out his 5′6″ RT Openface when he was here in the U.S. a few months back. He surfed it at Newport and liked it so much that he ended up ordering one. We made it an inch shorter and a 1/2″ narrower in the nose , width, and tail. I took the volume down in the rail as well, but it ended up being a little too much. So this is the second go around and hopefully he gives it a thumbs up. I’m pretty stoked and honored to have a surfer of this caliber feel the need to pony up the dough for one of my boards. Thanks Mitch! For some footage, check out Ryan’s stupendous new film BS!

This is a 7′4″ quad built for a guy named Joe who works next door to me. It has a relatively beefy foil, as Joe is a bigger guy. He used to play pro football in fact. It’s made with handmilled poplar, balsa and poplar rails, and has handmade birch ply FCS fins with the new Fusion system. Joe’s  planning on traveling with it, so he opted for the fin system. As a side note, Joe gave me a tour of his shop where he restores WWII era bomber engines. The level of difficulty of what he does is mind boggling. Imagine trying to restore an engine the size of your living room and with 21 cylinders to boot. It sort of makes what I do look like child’s play.

I always love it when customers come back to tell me how their boards worked for them.  Even better when they bring photographic evidence.  These are some recent photos of a customer named Breen riding his 5′5″ quad in Fiji. The board was actually Ryan Thomas’ originally. It’s an early flextail experiment that didn’t have enough flex for Ryan. We brought it down to Cardiff for Anything But Three and accidentally left to go home while someone was still out in the water trying it out! Doh! Upon returning to the beach to hopefully retrieve it, we were told that this someone had left with it because he knew how to get a hold of me. I figured it was probably gone for good and this guy had just scored a free board.  But sure enough the guy, who turned out to be Breen,  called me a couple days later and even offered to buy it. It’s nice to know there’s honest people in the world still. Anyway, that was over 2 years ago and he still favors this board. I’m glad to see it’s going to good use. I think he’s taking it to Chile next. Can’t wait to see those photos. Thanks Breen!

This hull is 6′4″ and has very foiled rails.  Since the board is so bladed out I was able the bring the wood paneling all the way to the edge and leave off  the wood strips on the rails. This combined with the R.T. Openface method increased the boards flex. Normally I can’t get away with this because the wood is too thick to bend around the compund curve of the rail. You can only achieve that with really thin veeners as with Surftechs for example. Really thin veeners though don’t do anything for performance, as it’s basically like laminating shelving paper to your board. Instead of the ride being lively and springy it’s has a dull thud and slap against the water. Hulls are supposed to have a bit of flex in them, which is why the best of them such as Liddles are glassed so light and have thin 1/16″ cedar stringers.  This is also why they unfortunatly get beat up so fast. The rail less method, combined with EPS foam, a wood deck and custom epoxy glassing enhances this flex characteristic without the worry of the board going ‘dead’ or dinging if you look at it wrong.  The stringer has been spread over the whole board so it won’t get flexed out and the deck is way stronger to boot. No more mushy hull syndrome. This particular board is avaliable at Wetsand in Ventura.

This is a new 6′4″ hull I took up to Sacred Craft in Ventura. It’s made with the R.T. Openface construction for extra flex and spring, same as the Lil Macho board I posted.  Sam George took a liking to this at the show and commented on how it combined the old with the new. That pretty much summed up what I try to do with my boards. Striving to build a better board using common materials, instead of expensive and unsustainable man made exotics. Thanks to my good friend Church for picking this board up. Enjoy!

This is my newest alaia. It’s made using the openface method, with a 1lb. EPS core, 1/2″ thick 2lb. EPS bottom sheet, and 1/16″ handmilled poplar deck. It’s glassed with 4 oz. cloth and epoxy. Dimensions are 7′0″x 18″x 2 1/4″.  I’ve been having people ask if I could build an alaia that was more bouyant and would paddle easier, so this board has been running through my mind for a while now. I knew the straight outline and thin rails of alaias help with setting an edge and trimming, so I had to encorporate that into the shape. I ended up going with a peanut type outline similar to the ones Jon Wegener is making, as that template seems to be magic. I made it a little wider and added about an inch of rocker to compensate for the boards added stiffness. It had the same single concave and 1/4″ roll off the rail as the regular alaias and a hard edge almost the full length of the board. The ride at first was a little more slipery then a traditional alaia because it skimmed more on top of the water instead of settling in. I had to stay centered and on top of the board so it didn’t get away from me. Once I figured that out it felt pretty natural. It was really fast and smooth and still had a similar feel to a traditional alaia. My friend Graham, who hadn’t had a lot of experience on alaias, even caught a wave on it and went backside all the way to the sand. And that was on probably the fourth wave he tried it on. Also, this was on a day when the waves were small and pretty bad, but the board was just flying.  Basically this board was super fun and I’m pretty excited about it’s possibilities.

I made a Alaia recently for a customer who wanted a round tail. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work , but he wanted to try it. As I was making it, I was reminded of an article in The Surfers Journal, vol.15 issue 5 called Aloha Washington. The article describes the formation of a logging camp spearheaded by Ralph Emerson and Wilfred Dole (of the pineapple family).  Dole, being raised in Hawaii  was an avid surfer and knew how to build boards. So he built some, similar to the one’s he was using in the islands and he and Ralph surfed them in Washington. All of this happened around 1902, before George Freeth and it got me thinking, maybe this shape is a lost branch of alaia design.