Slater, Greg Webber & Shane Herring

[foamy]

Swellnet has an interesting thread going about Kelly Slater very recently contacting Greg Webber to get some of the banana boards that Shane Herring rode back in the day. Includes a very good Shane Herring video and Greg Webber (GregW) being very engaged in the comments section.

http://www.swellnet.com/news/design-out ... cker-ships

[Hatchnam]

Boards THAT rockered are only gonna work overhead bowling waves, and just bog and push water on anything fat or small.

The skinny banana boards of the early nineties kept more people being bigger kooks for longer than probably anything else has in the last 30 years.

But anyway, Let's just stand back though and watch their resurgence and the mass flurry of dipshits who will soon buy them for their everyday go-to board.

[el rancho]

they're the anti-hypto krypto

[Hatchnam]

I'd take a Hypto over a wafer thin banana board a million times over

[steve shearer]

I highly doubt Slater gives a flying fcuk at a rolling doughnut what a few kooks on the internet think, present company included of course.

It's probable that quiver specialisation might still be in it's infancy this could be a shot across the bows.

[Hatchnam]

Look . In certain applications those boards worked great . And with more R&D there's nothing to say that they wouldn't excel again even better in the particularly narrow paradigm of their use.

Gold Coast circa early nineties. Saw some of the most critical high and tight jamming turns ever on those boards, but adversely also the biggest ugliest amount of bog bouncing and hopping.

The wave has to be a non stop start to finish bowl for it be useful.

[foamy]

Boards THAT rockered are only gonna work overhead bowling waves, and just bog and push water on anything fat or small.

The skinny banana boards of the early nineties kept more people being bigger kooks for longer than probably anything else has in the last 30 years.

But anyway, Let's just stand back though and watch their resurgence and the mass flurry of dipshits who will soon buy them for their everyday go-to board.

Possibly, but I think the average surfer has a lot more knowledge about board design than they did 20 years ago, pre-internet. Helped in this instance by the board designer considering it a freak board for a freak surfer in very specific conditions.
Slater, in this case, just keeping himself entertained with a weird board to see if he can do some Herro turns, for his own fun and interest.

[Nick Carroll]

It's probable that quiver specialisation might still be in it's infancy this could be a shot across the bows.

or possibly that GW is finding a bit of PR space for the re-born Banana that he's now beginning to market in a slightly newer form.

[steve shearer]

well my first reaction is always scepticism but unless Webber is blatantly lying he said Slater approached him to get the boards, so that scotches that theory.

There's no way Webber could've forseen that coming.

[foamy]

or possibly that GW is finding a bit of PR space for the re-born Banana that he's now beginning to market in a slightly newer form.

I softly whimper as another pleasing illusion dissolves.

Someone once opined that a cynic is a disappointed idealist.

[Roy_Stewart]

just make them wider

[steve shearer]

bingo

[Davros]

If these became trendy again then there should be a psychological study on surfing and mans desire to be a nob.

Someone made the comment that Herrings style on those boards looked JJ Florencesc, has Kelly seen the future and thought about the past? JJF is awesome to watch and KS no doubt agrees.

[godsavetheking]

From the horse's mouth:

"Greg knew I was surfing well and that I was fit and so he came up with these Banana Boards. And in good waves I was just going up and down, up and down. …. I could surf them because I was super fit.

Anyway, at first I liked the Bananas because I could do so many turns in the pocket. But the problem was the boards didn’t work if the waves weren’t punchy and hollow.

And you know what I did wrong? I took the wrong boards to France. That year was a very small-wave Tour, so if I’d taken my Coke board to France there would have been no stopping me. It was a flat 5’10” single concave, very flat simple, simple, simple, outline. A very good small-wave board. But I took the Banana Boards and they just didn’t work. "

and a bone for the McCoy riders who always seem to want some external validation of their board choice*:

"In 98 Geoff McCoy started giving me a few boards and they were wonderful surfboards, beautiful. Figure eights all day long. I’d known Cheyne Horan but I’d never known Geoff. Those Nuggets were beautiful surfboards."



(* calm down, I'm a McCoy tragic too)

[Cranked]

I was waiting for that bell to ring

[Cranked]

Rejuvenated Kelly Slater wins world title on McCoy nugget... surfing world aghast and disgusted, Geoff McCoy gives finger to the press.

[steve shearer]

"In 98 Geoff McCoy started giving me a few boards and they were wonderful surfboards, beautiful. Figure eights all day long. I’d known Cheyne Horan but I’d never known Geoff. Those Nuggets were beautiful surfboards."

[pearceD]

I thought David Wenham gave a stellar performance as the other Herring brother in that clip.