your last surf for a good while

[steve shearer]

Dain Thomas from Sea surfboards.

[alakaboo]

dimensions?

[steve shearer]

7'1" x 21" x 2 5/8".

Foiled out rails. Very bladey tail with lots of tail rocker.
Deep spiral vee.
Flat nose rocker.

[alakaboo]

interesting.
the wife's is 7'2" by 21 1/4 by 3"
The board is from California, was perfect for 1ft summer swells.
very foiled out front 1/3rd, no nose rocker.
tail quite pulled in with shortboard edges.
2+1, with smaller sidebites than yours and a smaller more raked center.
But the rails in the guts are very soft longboard rails with volume to the rails. Surfed from the tail it's very sensitive to weighting, but from the centre is very stable.

Can't remember the concave setup to be honest. It's had so many head and knee knocks it's almost a dimple bottom.

[dUg]

How do you deal with fruit fly Steve?

Of course... they're not a problem in SA... thanks to my ingenious grandfather.

Fongers... what's going on? What's all this "last surf" talk?

I had a fun "last surf" back in 2009 on my busted ankle, knowing I was going in to have it pinned the next day... and that I'd be out for 2 months. I strapped it up and was bashing every closeout section going "come on! snap properly ya bastard!"

[PeepeelaPew]

...

[Nappy]

Your motto will be "I used to be a surfer, now I'm just someone who surfs" Thats mine now days.

[mustkillmulloway]

well....i'm suprised....one week in camp....AND I"M GOING BLOODY MAD.....i thought i'd last at least a month before the no surf withdrawals took hold


just got suck it up and think the money i guess

[crabmeat thompson]

well....i'm suprised....one week in camp....AND I"M GOING BLOODY MAD.....i thought i'd last at least a month before the no surf withdrawals took hold


just got suck it up and think the money i guess

From experience Fong, the first 3 weeks to a month are the worst with the withdrawals.

Then you find you can block it out the lingering feeling you're missing out for 5-6 months as you adjust and get use to your new life.

Just when you think the year is going quick ... You wake, middle of the night. Bolt upright, and wonder to yourself.

What the fcuk are you doing and why are you wasting these mobile years of your life, all for a few fcuking dollars. This discontent rises until you've alienated your family. Then you make the choice to move back to the ocean long before you're meant to.

I tell you, we're all tainted and damned by the bloody ocean.

[damo666]

From experience Fong, the first 3 weeks to a month are the worst with the withdrawals.

Then you find you can block it out the lingering feeling you're missing out for 5-6 months as you adjust and get use to your new life.

Just when you think the year is going quick ... You wake, middle of the night. Bolt upright, and wonder to yourself.

What the fcuk are you doing and why are you wasting these mobile years of your life, all for a few fcuking dollars. This discontent rises until you've alienated your family. Then you make the choice to move back to the ocean long before you're meant to.

I tell you, we're all tainted and damned by the bloody ocean.

Wow - after almost 4 years in Canberra, that one pretty neatly sums up my life.....well put.
There is only so many times you can go skateboarding/wakeboarding or something similar, and even then its not nearly close enough.

On the other side of the coin, the pretty cruisey 38 hour Mon-Fri week, and a paycheck almost double what I was getting back home working a 50+ hour week make the decision on when to leave here a much harder one. It does make everything else in our life so much easier...all but for that nagging voice in the back of your head.

['llo-and Behold]

Not all of us. I know heaps of blokes who've just walked away. My brother included. He still talks of getting another board though.

[crabmeat thompson]

I wonder why some can walk away, and others can't?

I've been through hell and back to keep surfing. One critical injury where docs said I've never surf again. Family and home pressures, nearly cost me my wife at one point. My parents at another point when I turned down a massive job with an astonishing pay packet. Just to struggle along and live by the sea.

I always - and I really mean, always - wonder why I can't just walk away. I got a bunch of mates who have walked away, a lot of them were way better surfers and possibly even more committed than me too.

Is this some addictive personality thing, a dna thing? I'd love to know. Like Damo said ... there's just that nagging voice in the back of the head. It won't shut up.

[bookster]

I call it my saltwater addiction - and regular doses avoid any nasty withdrawal symptoms Having said that, I can do without if needed, guys that have to surf every day are pushing the obsessive thing a little too hard. If I get out twice a week at the moment I'm stoked (with two kids under five it can be a juggling act)... and as Braithy said you do the things you have to to continue your affair with the saltwater. I'm sure Fongs time away from the water is to enable more time in the water later...

[Yuke Hunt]

They say absinthe makes the heart grow fonder ... it also gets you really pissed ...

[damo666]

The one good thing about being 2hrs from the nearest surf is just how good ANY waves are...

I'm pretty much averaging one surf a fortnight over the last few years, and out of desperation I'll pretty much paddle out in anything. I go out with my coast-based mates in 2ft windblown sloppy crap, and they whinge, whine and moan about how they should have stayed in bed.
Meanwhile I'm smiling and cheering, like a 35 (++) grom!!

Its the silver lining that gets me through, and I think also reckon a really big factor in my love for high volume funny looking boards.

[ajohnsen]

There's no pattern to my surfing habits. I get in when I get in. I work full-time, have two kids under 5 and my wife works hours that make the early difficult and the late impossible. It hurts but it won't last forever and experience tells me that, while you might get rusty, you don't lose it.

Not so very long ago, if I didn't surf at my best, I'd nearly have a fcuking anger-driven heart attack. I've stopped that now and have a very simple, achievable goal - to get at least one wave that I surf well enough to remind me that I can surf. That and to enjoy being in the water.

It's been a couple of months now since I've been in. The planets keeping missing each other.

[mustkillmulloway]

ants

we meet up around 4 am, drive the boat ramps , cracking jokes as we sit on each other on the bench seat the ute.

" i hope thats your phone i can feel....etc "

its a lot like surfing...we drive and check all the ramps, i'm not quite sure why, but as a non paying guest dont ask...i'm finding more and more....it's just easier in life not ask. eventually we select a ramp and launch....into blackness.

skipper carl is interesting....he loves his electronics but boat has no lights

he turns on his gps....plots the course....opens it up full throttle and follows the display like some crazy game. its blackness all around...u cant see a thing

i don't ask whats going happen if we hit something or the sand has changed....like i said, nowdays i don't ask many questions at all.

2 hrs later ....with the sun partly up we arrive at a island and proceed best part a hr up some water way.

this is when the tide fever starts.....they start plotting holes into the gps as we come over em, after a stretch river is cover and plotted, we return the mouth and put the traps out over the area we just covered....by now, they are just freaking about the tide and when it change.

we fish for a bit, than the tide turns....we panic and bolt the closest hole we had pre reccon. the river drains.....we sit....and wait.....4 hours in a boat....u tend bond with ppl

the crocs on the now exposed mud flats hold my attn.....i'm watching them while i throw berley into our pool water keeping us a float

" keep ya hand in the boat"

i don't ask why.....the 18 ft moving log on the fish finder shows we have a visitor

singalongs.....don't happen despite my best efforts....its a long hard wait....punctured all too not often enough with a bite and a fish

the tide turns..it's like escaping jail or some seedy sad relationship...suddenly we have a future beyond the mud croc filled flats and our small fishless hole..traps are recovered....crabs captured....winds up makes for a long painfull 4 hr return trip

get home..a typical 14 hr fishing trip....i swear never do it again than i get drop off accept the offer to be collected next weekend, apparently i'm good luck... come home to find my bedroom and bed covered in ants

the build up has begun

[crabmeat thompson]

Sure makes surfing onshore slop sound good, Fong.