Saturday

Im Knackered.... ran the super-nova chapionships today and we were short arghh...... but we managed ok.... but I'm knackered

No photo today but a few thoughts on surfboards:


Having made a couple of boards over the years, I am still amazed that design can still throw up some real oddities. we've come across them all over the years : remember the Stinger? W.A.V.E. hollow board, dial a tail... some worked others were just something that where a few moments looking at the thing, you just knew the guy was out to make a few bucks off the gullible or the termianly fashion adicted.

As a scientist I was taught that unless it could be measured, assessed and duplicated... you just did not make claims or attest proof. I still laugh at all those womens health care ads we get... outright lies. But I digress.

When you consider a surfboard, in it's natural element, doing it's thing, then that surfboard is the only measurable parameter in the whole equation, everything else is essentially an unmeasured [or unmeasurable] variable, which nullifies any claims for that board beyond the empirical. Move a fin a few millimeters and even that constant has gone.

So what's my point, you say.

It's this very fact that designing a 'perfect' board is like catching smoke, is what gives me hope that big business will never put the shaper/glasser out of a job.

Crafting surfboards is like hand building a car, house or table, it's fit for it's job and a thing of beauty because the maker has put a little bit of himself into ever one he finishes.


Remember a board is for life, not just the summer

I might come back and expand on this tomorrow, but then again, maybe not.