Ask Carroll

[Davros]

Nick, do you think you would ever ride a long board on a regular basis as you move into your 70's etc...

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, forgetting the whole 'but-kooks-buy-them' complication, what do you think of the Hypto Krypto as a wave riding vehicle?

Seems like a really good effective simple design to me. I don't have any weird cultural issues around it.

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, do you think you would ever ride a long board on a regular basis as you move into your 70's etc...

I don't really know but I suspect not as such, I actually think it might be a bit counterproductive. Longboards are wide and irritating to paddle, hard to move through white water, and pretty insensitive craft all round, and I don't imagine they'd be too easy to handle as you grow frailer. I sorta picture riding slightly longer and more volumey boards but designed so they still do good turns and shit, maybe more in the outline than the rocker though. Oh and quite light, not heavy clunkers.

I think what you would want to feel in a board at that age is a good sense of your deeper surfing DNA, something you could connect with instinctively without any kind of a struggle. Maybe for some guys at that age a longboard would be it, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be for me.

The whole question of growing older as a surfer feels like a bit of an unexplored country to me, I mean I am really fcuken old now, but I didn't expect to be surfing the way I am at 56. There wasn't anyone doing that when I was 20. So who knows.

[el rancho]

Skip Frye looks like he has fun and he's ancient.

[crabmeat thompson]

i love getting on a longboard when it's small.

just makes you look at surfing in a completely new perspective. drawing new lines, looking at a wave differently, finding and being on areas of a wave which are completely foreign to you.

get a wave with a bit of push and getting right back on the tail of the thing and swinging it around. next time you're on your shorty you'll be doing dane hacks (well not even close, but you get my drift).

[rmb]

As a surf writer I've had a range of experiences around the issue, I've had the most success with it when I've been guided by my own surfer's sense of what's appropriate. Like if I am visiting a spot or surf zone at someone else's invitation and it's kind of unknown, and the person is concerned about publicity etc, then I respect that in reportage etc. But I also want to inform the reader and explain a place, give a story context etc, so most of the time I just do that, and don't get too tangled up in all the secret spot bullshit. Because, like really, most of the time it is bullshit. I'm interested in that bullshit because it's so human, but I've only got so much patience for it.

Its kind of interesting how when you start to surf a stretch of coast that's relatively unexposed to crowds and takes a little bit of learned knowledge to understand whats required to get decent waves in that area how those who are regular surfers react to a new face in the lineup and how it takes a few surfs before your presence is accepted at the break/breaks. Travelling alone helps how have you found your interaction with surfers at lesser known breaks? How have you found it if they become aware that you are a writer.

[foamy]

Yep, long board vs short board. The wave is very relevant.
Like when I read an interview with key short board innovator, Bob McTavish, being accused (quelle horreur!) of being a longboarder.
He replied, if I'm surfing The Pass, I ride a long board. If I'm surfing Lennox Head, I ride a short board.
I don't think Sydney has a classic long board wave.

[Nick Carroll]

Skip Frye looks like he has fun and he's ancient.

well yeah, because thats where his DNA resides

and he is surfing in San Diego where there is no white water.

We're all different kinds of surfer living in different parts of the world, and the more we surf and the better we get, the more individual we become. Or we quit. A lot of surfers quit, the vast majority actually. Many of the remainder decline. A tiny fraction of people who surf remain skilled and committed into old age. I cannot tell from my perspective what truly connects these people, and by them I mean people who go in the water almost every day, not people who trade off some previous surfing life, or who learn to surf at the age of 60, or whatever. I kind of feel some of that lifelong thing, it feels almost like a pearl growing in me somewhere, but I haven't lived it into existence yet.

[Nick Carroll]

Travelling alone helps how have you found your interaction with surfers at lesser known breaks? How have you found it if they become aware that you are a writer.

Well perhaps you have read the piece I posted in here that I wrote about surfing the big Californian secret spots

The only place I've found unbearable on that score is Lunada Bay, a place I consider an embarrassment to surf culture.

I don't have trouble with other surfers generally, anywhere, I'm pretty skilled and can give people room at the same time as enjoying myself. I just don't think its as big a deal as it's painted to be honest. The people who try to blow it up into a big deal are usually kooks.

[Nick Carroll]

i love getting on a longboard when it's small.

just makes you look at surfing in a completely new perspective. drawing new lines, looking at a wave differently, finding and being on areas of a wave which are completely foreign to you.

get a wave with a bit of push and getting right back on the tail of the thing and swinging it around. next time you're on your shorty you'll be doing dane hacks (well not even close, but you get my drift).

yeah I guess I went through that about 25 years ago.

[rmb]

The people who try to blow it up into a big deal are usually kooks.

Agreed will check out your California story.

[Davros]

Just on the Bob McTavish short board thing. I heard a story that he stole the idea off Neal Purchase Snr at Keyo when purchase had just started sweeping floors there. The surf industry is full or cloak and dagger stories it seems, but this person was adamant, I guess so what really, but if you were there during that time it probably does matter as it's the genesis of well kinda a lot of surfing. Saying that generally not one person invents something it's generally a collaboration of ideas.

I was up at Boomerang Beach and there was a guy well into his 60s surfing a DVS mid length like a 20 year old but with experienced style and pushing the board through figure 8 turns. I was blown away with the combination of style, grace and power. I will note he was built like a cattle dog, all rib and dick.

[el rancho]

Skip Frye looks like he has fun and he's ancient.

well yeah, because thats where his DNA resides

and he is surfing in San Diego where there is no white water.

We're all different kinds of surfer living in different parts of the world, and the more we surf and the better we get, the more individual we become. Or we quit. A lot of surfers quit, the vast majority actually. Many of the remainder decline. A tiny fraction of people who surf remain skilled and committed into old age. I cannot tell from my perspective what truly connects these people, and by them I mean people who go in the water almost every day, not people who trade off some previous surfing life, or who learn to surf at the age of 60, or whatever. I kind of feel some of that lifelong thing, it feels almost like a pearl growing in me somewhere, but I haven't lived it into existence yet.

Yeah well Wayne Deane rides a bigger thruster and I've been out at my current favorite north coast winter pointbreak and watched him sit twenty metres deeper than everybody and paddle into impossible heaving trumpet barrels and get smashed and come up smiling.
Then I was out at Dbah last winter in really packed but seriously good waves and Wayne Rabbit Bartholomew sat out the back on his Gunter Rohn and picked off the best wave of the day and got totally shacked through to the inside and come out clean. I was shrieking for him as he went by.

[foamy]

Just on the Bob McTavish short board thing. I heard a story that he stole the idea off Neal Purchase Snr at Keyo when purchase had just started sweeping floors there. The surf industry is full or cloak and dagger stories it seems, but this person was adamant, I guess so what really, but if you were there.

Don't know. Nick would know more. But McTavish never presents his history as being a lone ranger. In that period, he just presents as someone particularly obsessed with design improvement, rather than just surfing. He felt an urgency that wave riding could get so much better with some changes to these shitty boards. But how to change them?
He was looking and talking with everybody about their ideas and badgering folks with his ideas. It wasn't a case of trade secrets.

[Davros]

I really don't know Foamy, as you said "a short board innovator" just recounting a story.

[Davros]

i think I need a copy right lawyer.

[foamy]

I really don't know Foamy, as you said "a short board innovator" just recounting a story.

Yep, not arguing the point, but it's a bit like the argument that Simon Anderson didn't invent the Thruster because he didn't originate three fins on a board.
McTavish certainly perhaps uniquely put those short board ideas into practice in big surf. He really did kick things along, and he wasn't just copying.

Gerry Lopez talking about Bob McTavish.
http://youtu.be/Yo3Q5E7DcI8

[Davros]

Yeh no doubt.