preferential differences

everyone is different really. sometimes i like a board that my brother doesn't. sometimes he likes a board and i don't. I have several boards that i have picked up along the way that i don't like riding and therefore they don't get used. sometimes they don't receive the care and repair that they need either...

this post is to mention a few boards i have around that i don't use. these are the kind of boards i hang onto in case anyone is prepared to swap for something they have but don't like which i might like. i think you get my drift...

i'm hoping to make some more blog entries in the near future about each of these boards and where they came from. they are all available for swaps too if anyone is interested???

Southernman, Neil Marsh, Sky (Gary Timperley), McGrigor, No Name.

seedy green shorts

i have this old pair of bright green 70's style boardies - Platts Surfriders. they have a lovely gold stripe down the side of them and bright white velcro in the fly. this means that when the pants are tight the white velcro is highly visible. very flattering.
Andrew gave me these boardies years ago. i'm not sure why he had them, why he gave them to me, nor why i accepted them. either way, they are sporadically mentioned within our family and friends and we share a laugh.
one night when i was about 24 i decided i would shave my beard off. i have often enjoyed drawing out this process and keeping bits of facial hair for humour's sake. i was at my parents' house and left a dirty moustache with a soul patch or lip goatie or whatever you want to call it. i thought it looked a bit 70's so i grabbed the green boardies and an old Kevin Williams single for a quick photo to show my brother. 
Trent loved it.

would probably have looked better if i was actually outside...

magnetic

My friend Andrew is a board magnet.
He seems to be constantly picking up classic boards. We have been friends for many years now and have shared and swapped some great boards. A few years ago i took a couple of pictures of him with some boards he had at the time. Some used to be mine and we swapped. There are also a couple that he doesn't have anymore as he gave them away, sold them or swapped them.
The deep red board is a classic. It's a Sea Rider and i borrowed it about 10 or 11 years ago. I remember getting some great waves on that board and really enjoying it. I have since picked up a Sea Rider of my own although i snapped the fin out of it about a year ago and haven't fixed it yet...

The little board with the white deck and yellow rails is a Joe Larkin Ski Free that was shaped by MP and is a great little 5'8" s-deck.

PURE JOY

I haven't had time to post in a while. now that i am posting i'm using someone else's work. i saw this a few years ago and loved it. it is such a cool little movie. the music matches pretty well too...
these are the sorts of stories i love.

i would have been bummed...

back in about 2004 or 2005 i picked up this yellow board pretty cheap in a recycling centre. it's a Nicol single fin i would say from about the mid 70's. it has a nice template with plenty of area left in the wide pintail. the deck was in pretty good condition although the bottom was a little browned with some decent damage. the fin is a little small considering the board is about 6'10 with plenty of foam in both width and thickness.

i had this board sitting around for quite a while. i took it to school in 2006 and had it hanging in my classroom and would often look at it and think of how it would ride. i always liked the outline of the board and after watching it for a long time in the classroom, i eventually decided to take it home and fix it so i could get it in the water.

it took quite a while to complete the repairs as there is always so many other things that need doing but i finally finished patching it up. again the board sat around as i kept going for boards i knew as reliable not wanting to waste a surf on an unknown board.

i watched that yellow board for a long time.

at one stage i decided that i would see if my friend Craig would be interested in a swap. he had snapped a couple of his old singles and seemed a bit down about it and i thought we might be able to get him back on some boards that suited his surfing. i looked at the yellow Nicol and thought he may have liked it and decided i'd swap it with him. i mentioned a swap to Craig and emailed him a few times but we didn't have time to catch up and he wasn't sure about it all.

one day my friend Andrew visited our house with his family for dinner. he was busting to get into the shed and look at some boards as there were some i had picked up that he hadn't seen yet. he had seen the yellow Nicol before but he asked if he could borrow it after i mentioned it was a potential swap. i said he could borrow it and he thought i should ride it before swapping it anyway.

after a few days i got a message from Andrew telling me he rode the board in some little waves and it was great. he said it trims beautifully, turns easily and paddles like a dream. he wanted to get it back to me so i could use it. i got the board back but it still took a few months to get it to the beach. there have been plenty of boards that Andrew and i felt differently about as we surf differently.

one afternoon after school i drove to the beach to surf with Frank, a long-time friend. there were some waves out at Nobbys Reef so we headed out not expecting too much. i took the yellow Nicol to see how it would feel and the waves turned out to be better than expected. 

the right hand break seemed to be fast but really good and after one good wave on my backhand i was amazed. the yellow board flew. it was so fast down the line and when i leant into a cutback from high on the wave it just drew itself right around to the foam and bounced back. i was raving to Frank about the board and then proceeded to get a few more great waves.

to close the story, the Nicol is now a trusted board and i am so glad i rode it before swapping it and that i have been able to hold onto it. i've already had some great sessions on it.
 

Andrew at the Cowrie Hole with the Nicol

 

After a quick swim to retrieve the board

 

 

The Slug

Before my friend Andrew moved to Bermagui in January 2002, he sold some of his old boards. I bought a few of them and I happened to be on an s-deck high at the time and was stoked to pick up an old red 5'7 McCoy s-deck that was pretty rough as far as condition went, but it rode beautifully.

I always loved the blue spot around the fin and the well balanced, double-ender template. although it's about 6 or 7 inches shorter than i am it rides really well and for a good period of time i rode it a lot.

I had some great sessions behind the home at Stocko on it when there was a good winter swell running some nice lefts. I had some solid backhand heavers in the harbour on it one Easter and it held on well. I remember riding it at Newcastle Beach and getting some good waves on it one day. Zorro dropped in on me on one of my last waves and i just zipped along behind him with a great perspective on what a fantastic surfer he is on his backhand. I was a little embarrassed by the whistling fin when he looked back probably thinking I was calling him or something.

I discovered a couple of years ago why I caught so many barrels on this board. It doesn't let you in very early and quite often when you take off you really just pull in under the lip. I remember one little hollow off the middle rock at Newcastle in about 2004 that i felt like i sat in for ages before it swallowed me.

My friend Russell swapped with me one day out at Stocko. He's a great surfer but he didn't like the little McCoy cause he thought it was too slow. I was having a ball on it that same session. He called out to me "Luke - this board's a slug!"

such a great board - i'll have to take it out again soon...

that's the blue spot in the bottom corner

great outline

not the best shots but that's the McCoy out at Treach

The Bistro and Grover

In 2002 I started studying teaching and quickly made a good friend in the course who i spent most of my time with at uni. His name was Cameron and he worked fitting trucks with new tyres outside of uni. He knew of my love for old surfboards although he didn't know much about surfboards himself at the time. 

One day he arrived at uni telling me he had picked up a couple of old boards for me. Naturally I was stoked. I wanted to know all about them but he could only say that one was missing a fin and the other was really long with a fin like a shark tooth. He said he found them at a truck depot or something on the Central Coast when he went there to fit new tyres on some trucks. There was a ramp or something going into the shed and they were both under the ramp. He asked if he could have them and the guy said they could.

Apparently they had been used as signs or something at some stage as one had "Pipeline Bistro" written on it and the other "Kahuna".

Cameron lived about 50mins drive from me so I trekked out there one night to pick up the boards and he, his wife Amy and I enjoyed a meal of Apricot Chicken whilst there.

After dinner we went out to the shed and I was blown away. One of the boards was an old longboard from the early to mid 60's which has had the nose modified on a little (maybe a snap that had been fixed) and an old fin that has had the back cut out a little (hence the "shark tooth" shape). The other board was an old 7'8" Grove transitional surfboard from about late '68 early '69. It had a yellow deck with orangy-red rails and bottom and was in fantastic condition apart from the missing fin.

I was stoked and couldn't thank Cameron enough. Shortly after I had a fin-box put into the Grove and started riding it regularly when the waves were small. The Pipeline Bistro, or Bistro for short, was fun to ride but hummed from the fin really loudly on waves and sometimes you could even feel the vibrations through the board.
The Bistro was often pronounced Beast-row mainly due to my friend Russell (mentioned in an earlier post) and his American accent.

Bistro, Gordon, Grove, me

My nephew Jacob after i pushed him into his first ever wave on the Bistro.

Bistro, Gordon, Grove, Trent (my brother)

riding the Bistro on some little ones in 04-05?