The future of surfing and surfboards?
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.
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.
After reading that great article http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14075&start=18
It got me thinking back at how much both surfing and surfboards changed and improved from say the late 80,s to the early 90,s, over that period the jump in the quality of surfing all round was huge, i never thought about why until i read that article, but it makes sense, yes it was mostly about bottom shapes, going from V bottoms to concave bottoms, that probably along with the thruster and short board revolution are the biggest turning point or bar lifting period in surfing.
Over the last 15-20 years yes sure surfing has still improved but nowhere to the extent it did in that period, guys are doing more tricky kind of things now but the real base of surfing, bottom turn, top turn, cutback carves, are just as goods anything these days in say that Herring vid, but its not just herring vid take the surfing from Kellys black and white (1990), 99% of the surfing still holds up, even if the boards kinda look long.
Then take surfboards, yes sure they have also improved since the 90,s but its been mostly about refinement, now you can pick up a board from say 5 even 10 years ago and the board can still be totally relevant and a great board.
So the question is are we close to the limit?, the ceiling in both surfing and boards, people can say there is no ceiling, no limit, but i think like many sports there is.
In surfing there is physical limits on how fast you can go, how high you can get air, how many rotations are possible, even how deep you can get in a barrel, i honestly think we are close to those limits, i guess it will just be that more people will be at that level and more consistent at that level, which say for watching pro surfing almost makes it more boring to watch.
For example when the first rodeo clown or true 360 airs were pulled, we were blown away, now its lost that wow factor you see the top guys pull proper 360 airs almost every comp where the waves allow.
Then surf boards, we have gone longer/shorter, narrow/wide, three fins to four, but surfboards also have there physical limitations especially when using the materials we are using now, even refinement wise i think we are reaching the limits.
Maybe we are near the end of a golden age?