Lachie Rombouts: Speak Softly And Paddle A Big Stick

Let's play a word association game. I'll say a name, you answer with the first thought that enters your head.

The name is: 'Lachlan Rombouts'

Don't worry, there's no right or wrong answer, though I'll venture a guess the vast majority of you are thinking 'big surfboards'.

The first photo I saw of Lachie was taken at North Avalon early on the morning of the Black Nor' easter swell - 06/06/16 - where he was knifing into a huge wave on an equally huge board. After that, photos regularly appeared of Lachie knifing into all manner of waves, the one common feature being the twelve-feet of fibreglass he was using to paddle into them.

In recent years, Lachie, who's 32-years old, has moved from his Northern Beaches home to the south coast of NSW. He's worked as a laborer and lifesaver, and is currently kicking off a new venture. Ocean Love is an ocean coaching gig where he can use his years of experience to teach ocean skills to others

Since moving down south, photos have emerged of Lachie tackling local waves, and always on a big board. Sometimes the waves suit the craft, other times they're near-dry drainers with square edges and thick lips. Not places where you'd expect ten-foot boards to work, and perhaps it's this defiance that caused me to assume his whole big board thing was a challenge of sorts. A personal test to ride less-than-ideal equipment in dangerous-as-hell waves.

As the following interview demonstrates, that assumption is incorrect. Yeah, it's a challenge, riding big and dangerous waves always is, but the path that led Lachie to riding over-sized boards was natural and unforced - just very different from most of ours.

Above and below in sequence, Lachie on a patched 9-footer coming from behind the fang at Deadmans (Craig Brokensha)

Swellnet: For over eight years now, at least since the 2016 swell, you've ridden very big boards; bigger than what the rest of the pack are on. When did you begin looking at longer boards as a method of getting into big and hollow waves?
Lachie: Yeah, the origins...the origins of it begin with longboarding and riding 9-foot longboards. My dad started longboarding when he was forty, and then we started going to Palm Beach Longboarders where I learnt how to longboard from some of the crew. After a while, my dad snapped this big 9'6" nose rider, so a friend, Andy Dovell - Fraser Dovell's dad - put it together. We donated it to the club but no-one rode it, so Dad said, "Go on, have a ride."

I started riding that board and I liked it. It had a lot of volume, good paddle power, and I'd seen Dad paddle into some big slabs on that board in Samoa.

A few years later, I was riding a 12-foot longboard that belonged to my friend's dad. I snapped it, bought my friend's dad a new one and fixed the snapped one. Being on a longboard conditioned me to ride bigger boards, like 12-foot long, 4-inches thick. When I started getting barreled on that longboard, that's when I got that gun, the 12-foot gun that you're talking about.

I was like, "If I can get barreled on a 3-foot wave on a 12-foot board, then I can get barreled on a 10 or 20-foot wave on a 12-foot board."

So it wasn't so much a challenge as a natural path from longboarding?
Sort of. I also spent time riding shorter boards. What happened is I went to Chile when I was 18 years old and surfed some big waves there which conditioned me to bigger oceans. I came back and I was surfing Little Avalon again, only 4 or 5-foot waves, even though they've got steps and things, and I ended up tearing my MCL on an airdrop that took me out of the water for ten weeks. I didn't get it diagnosed properly, didn't do much rehab, just young and naive, and when I thought I'd recovered I was surfing at Palm Beach on a little beachy and snapped my MCL during an airdrop.

Fortunately that didn't need an operation; I got lucky as it was going to reattach itself because it was in a good position. So I got a post-op brace, and then I got a DonJoy extreme sports brace to return to surfing. I was wearing that at Desert Point and I took a big airdrop and I buckled out my brace. It took all the pressure off my knee, but my brace was broken.

At that point, I knew that if I took another airdrop without my brace, that my knee would be cooked because my alloy knee brace was all bent out of shape.

I was on a 6'2" or 6'3" at the time, so I paddled in and I got my 6'9" Simon Anderson. On that longer board I started to knife into the barrels so that I didn't have to airdrop. And then pretty much ever since then, I've been knifing into them.

So you arrived at this point - riding large boards - out of necessity? You had to do it out of self-preservation?
Yeah, yeah. To begin with, for sure.

But then self-preservation just became a feeling I preferred. Riding big boards definitely has its pros and cons, but in terms of feelings, it excites me, so my personal preference is to go for the bigger board.

For the last few years you've been living in an area that has many waves where bigger boards appear to work well.
Yeah, there are plenty of waves that I enjoy surfing on the bigger boards. A lot of them are usually surfed on shortboards and stuff, and then some of the waves maybe a bit less so.

It's interesting not being from an area, and not really having to fit in too much or worry too much about what other people are thinking. As it's happened, I've made lots of bodyboarder friends. They're pretty hardcore.

Speaking of...about six months ago you were filmed surfing what's predominantly a bodyboarder wave down the South Coast. Not huge but breaking very close to dry rock. That's not an obvious fit for a 9-foot board.
I suppose I've just adapted my style to that style of wave. The real challenge is just keeping the nose out of the water. Once you keep the nose out of the water and you put the weight in the right position, the board does the rest of the work for you. 

I suppose I might be a bit more comfortable than your average person because of the years I spent on a 12-foot long board...on a really big, thick 12-foot long board that got repaired three times so it was really heavy.

Once you start riding those day-to-day, then the 9-foot and the 10-foot boards feel actually quite manageable.

It's all relative hey?
Yeah. And big waves have a lot of power, so the power actually makes it easy to move big boards around. To some degree, the more power, the more you just have to point and shoot that thing, even though you still have to ride the board dynamically, shifting your weight here and there when you need to.

Think the bigger board limits the waves available to you?
Not really, because when you've got the bigger board you can enter the waves in more positions. I think the challenge is similar in all big waves: just being patient and getting the right wave, from the right spot.

OK, because you've got increased paddling speed, do you tend to sit further out or hang on the ledge?
Fine lines. Ideally, I'd paddle into the ledge. Ideally, I'd time it to enter into the ledge at maximum speed.

So to answer the question, sometimes. Sometimes I'll sit further out. Sometimes I'll end up paddling further in too. It's all about how the wave is hitting the ledge and where has the most potential for a connected take off.

'Connected takeoff'? You mean you're not air dropping?
Yeah, that's right.

Between that and 'keeping your nose clean', how have your big wave boards changed over the years? More rocker..?
I'm actually going flatter...flatter and wide point further forward.

Really?
Yeah. I'm just going for paddle speed. And I've also been experimenting a fair bit with how flat I can go, and then maybe even hit the boundary in some ways. It's all just a trade-off though; what might not work in one wave, in one situation, might be perfect in another wave and another situation.

I guess I'm looking for a board, I suppose, that's a really good all rounder. But still, I'm basically playing with the sweet spot, and how flat, and how low the rocker can be.

Who's making them at the moment?
So Dylan Longbottom made the 9-footer I rode at Deadies and he's also made me a 10-footer and a 7'2" that I really enjoyed. And then Kirk Bierke made me a 9-footer, and Johnny Gill at Keyo has made me two 9-footers that are really interesting, amazing boards. Dave Howell from Misfit Shapes makes the boards that I usually ride out at the bommie. I've had the most boards from him, and his is the 10-footer profile that we've been working on and keep refining. Pretty much every board I'll get a tiny bit flatter and the wide point pushed a little bit further forward.

Why is that?
I'm trying to maximise my paddle speed. If I can paddle into the spot as early as possible, then hook into the wave as early as possible, then I can trust the rocker that's there - the boards still have a beautiful amount of rocker. They've still got the rocker that I need.

Once, I did get one made super flat, and that had its own benefits. You could get into the wave really early and you could shoot a much faster line, but it didn't actually grab the wave as early. The flatter board is harder to grab and pull up high straight away. Whereas a board with more rocker is able to do that. But when you start putting too much rocker in a board then you're pushing water.

So that's why a lot of these really good shapers, they make quite nice flat boards like Dylan and Kirk.

How are you finding their durability? Short boards are often stout due to their size while longer boards are ten-feet of brittle foam. Are you going through boards a lot?
I usually get all my boards with double six/double six glass job. So that helps a little bit. I snapped a couple of 10-footers in one session this year. All my 9-footers have just been repaired. Two of them have been snapped in half, and then others are just forever getting their noses and tails destroyed on the rocks and stuff.

But yeah, basically, they break a lot but when you have a big board and a big solid frame, you can just keep fixing it. My 12-footer has been fixed a few times, and my 9-footers, I put them all back together. That Dylan I was on at Deadies got creased twice. We did a heavy duty fix, put some new cedar stringers in beside it and then just glassed it up. Now it's going better than ever.

Interestingly, sometimes the weight may not even be a negative. It can help it and can give it a more grounded feeling in the water.

We've talked a bit about challenges and new frontiers. You're heading towards tow surfing territory, getting into waves earlier because your paddling speed is so fast. Do you foresee a day when someone, either yourself or someone who stands on your shoulders, could paddle The Right or could paddle big Teahupoo, or paddle one of those tow only waves?
Ha ha ha ha...

Not possible..?
Let's just say that anything's possible - it always will be possible.

So what would it take?
You need the imagination. Let's just say that, thinking and questioning is the start of it. Like, I've been questioning myself my whole life.

I suppose everybody's going to find their own way, but anything is possible. In the simplest sense, the faster you can paddle, the more things that become paddleable. But you also have to have the skill, patience, timing, and you have to have the willingness, not just the paddle speed.

It was pretty inspiring to see people like Sam Jones handling those monster barrels on a 6'3". If you took his skills and mind set, added it to a bigger board and dialled in all the requirements then I think you could see some things that haven't been done before.

I think we're going to see that as time goes on anyway.

It's exciting though, isn't it? It's opening up a new frontier.
Yeah, it is very exciting. It's exciting for new lines to be drawn and things like that.

Super exciting.