Ask Carroll

[still here]

Alain Jourdan - the Frenchman , guiness book of records world record holder of "spit the winkle " shot/spat 10.4 m !
What is your own PB ?

[Nick Carroll]

Hi Nick,
Who out of the Newport crew in 'the day' possessed the greatest ability in being able to spit the winkle? Did yourself or the little Goblin ever display such a talent?

I don't think any of the Newport crew were as truly gifted as the Maroubra crew at Spit The Winkle. We tried, but didn't really have the same flair. Maybe it was just practice. We mastered other skills though, like sticking a lighted match in the end of your cock and running around with it on the dance floor, often setting fire to our pubes in the process - that sort of thing.

^^^^^^^^

Is that in the book?
I looked in Big wubblwwoo today.
Wasn't on show.

Just a massive table of Ricky Ponting's tome taking pride of place. <:

There is a lot more than that in the book.

Sorry trev, neither I nor Tom play cricket, so we probably don't make the quality cut for Big W.

Natho I don't care if people pay $4 for it if they read it.

BA perversely, in perfect barrels you can ride pretty much anything as long as it fits in the tube. But you can tell a lot about a board's qualities in takeoff and post-barrel slash mode.

[Yuke Hunt]

Nick why don't pro surfrrs have hair
And not just on there heads

Im constantly amazed how grown men in there late 20's too 50's can not have a single male hair on their chest or back
Is there some sort gene that good surfers have that stops them from being hairy
Or are they all just very, very into self grooming ?

Holly crap ... I think little Timmy's onto something here. I've never paid close attention ... but now that you mentioned ... it quite obviously a diabolical fact ... that the pro's are going the back-sack-n-crack. Thats horrendous.

[Nick Carroll]

Nick why don't pro surfrrs have hair
And not just on there heads

Im constantly amazed how grown men in there late 20's too 50's can not have a single male hair on their chest or back
Is there some sort gene that good surfers have that stops them from being hairy
Or are they all just very, very into self grooming ?

They DON'T?

I dunno, maybe some of them are a bit young yet, lots of people don't get much body hair until they're in their late 30s etc

They're athletic and pretty vain, some of them, and they're on constant very public show wearing not much clothing so maybe some of them shave down? I know a lot of younger men nowadays do that, pro surfers or not. It's odd, they will grow bushy beards in an attempt to look masculine but then shave their chests etc. Look at coops for god's sake.

But yeah can't say I pay that much attention fongy.

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[Topher]

Hey Nick,

I read TC yesterday almost in one sitting (I'm bed ridden for a least a week after a fcucked up vasectomy left me with one gonad the size of a large avocado )

It's a great read, an amazing story well told and I am envious of the great surfing environment you boys found yourself growing up in.

Were Tom's bits dictated by you from recordings or did he write it all down? And did they come before after or during the time you were writing the rest?
Have you ever soaped up the deck of his SUP or unscrewed the paddle from it's Gondalier pole?

[Beanpole]

Hey Nick,

I read TC yesterday almost in one sitting (I'm bed ridden for a least a week after a fcucked up vasectomy left me with one gonad the size of a large avocado )

[Shaunm]

Hey Nick,

I read TC yesterday almost in one sitting (I'm bed ridden for a least a week after a fcucked up vasectomy left me with one gonad the size of a large avocado )

Might need that seen to or removed

[Nick Carroll]

Hey Nick,

I read TC yesterday almost in one sitting (I'm bed ridden for a least a week after a fcucked up vasectomy left me with one gonad the size of a large avocado )

It's a great read, an amazing story well told and I am envious of the great surfing environment you boys found yourself growing up in.

Were Tom's bits dictated by you from recordings or did he write it all down? And did they come before after or during the time you were writing the rest?
Have you ever soaped up the deck of his SUP or unscrewed the paddle from it's Gondalier pole?

All Tom's bits are extracts from about six or seven months' worth of interviews I did with him. I did that first, then transcribed it all, then sorta sat around thinking about it for a while, then began writing my chunks and seeing how they sorta fit together.

I drafted each part by itself before going on to the next because they all felt like they needed to be a bit self contained as well as fitting into the general flow.

Actually wrote the prologue and the last few lines of the book before beginning the fitting together process, sometimes you can see the start and finish of something before you see the rest of it.

I did a couple of shorter interviews with Tom later, while I was working on the main body of the book, to get him to explain a couple of things that felt like they were missing.

This is a very simplified explanation for a much more complex process that mostly felt like it was being driven by instinct, I felt like many years of writing training were right there to draw on throughout.

Re the soaping up, well no I haven't yet but what a splendid idea.

[Topher]

Cool, thanks. I was wondering how the two totally different styles of writing came together, it ended up pretty seamless.

[Topher]

Hey Nick,

I read TC yesterday almost in one sitting (I'm bed ridden for a least a week after a fcucked up vasectomy left me with one gonad the size of a large avocado )

Might need that seen to or removed

Oh it's been seen too, usually by the Dr in the rubber gloves who likes to squeeze the buggers.

It is slowly getting better, just gotta wait it out.

[Nick Carroll]

NC, when you're testing boards, do you get time to play around with different fins in various boards to try and tweak the performance?

Yep. Sometimes the boardmaker sends a set of fins along deliberately chosen for the board. But we always go on tests loaded up with a wide range of fins and most of the boardmakers trust us to select the right set/s for their boards. It's not that complicated really. You can't screw up a good board with a slightly off fin set and you can't turn a normal board into something crazily fabulous with a fin set either. Probably the most interesting thing is switching five-plug boards between quads and thrusters, that really does change a board.

[Nick Carroll]

OK well different experiences I guess. I have fine tuned the shit out of my personal boards with subtle fin positioning and the right set of fins can perfect what is available in a board. But they can't make up for deficiencies in a board, and they're only gonna enhance an already super sick board. The difference between a more or less OK set and a perfect set in any given board, I would think, is no more than 5% in performance and probably less.

Re five plugs, well it just allows a boardmaker to cover more bases. It doesn't hurt a board's performance to have a couple of empty plugs. There's only one board on our current Test that works equally well as a quad and a thruster, most of the others are better as thrusters. I'll do the explaining on this in SL.

[spork]

I wonder if the quad faze has levelled out. I talked to a local sponsored surfer today who has gone to quads, then to quads with a nub and then back to HPS in the last 18 mnths. He seemed to think that transitions where compromised too much and that the thruster allowed far more freedom to change trajectories and lines and you where less locked in to particular styles.

[Nick Carroll]

Within reason, yeah.

Like for most normal thrusters the FCS 5 template is fine. JJF's Futures fin likewise, that's a pretty generic outline.

You can have a lot of fun messing around with fins, and if you know what you're doing you can get that 5% with a truly accurate selection based on the board and your own approach. That's worth it, 5% is a considerable difference, but you've gotta know what you're doing and what you're feeling in the board and on the wave. That takes a lot of surfing time, a lot more than most surfers have to spend. If not then you might as well keep it simple I reckon.

[el rancho]

if surfers spent half as much time thinking about and practicing actual surfing instead of talking endless shit about equipment/fins/rails etc there'd be a lot more competent surfers in a line-up.

in Indo, the locals rip on absolute hunks of shit that have been snapped and repaired, yet just the other day I overheard some retarded older guy out at the point raving on about his quad-fin longboard in one foot surf.

[Natho]

Well I have to agree with you to a degree when it comes to the average punter/ weekend warrior el rancho.

Ive always found a good chunk of the fin marketing blurb a bit of a con job to be honest.

However I don't think a good understanding of board design is going to hurt a persons surfing. At the same time its not going to make most people surf any better. Neither will changing around endless fin combos.

[Beanpole]

Now if they had said BP is a lej, eh?
Fins are massive marketing ploy for sure.
The amount of money you would need to spend to have any grounds for comparison puts them up there with yokeo cards.