The future of surfing

In the beginning all surfboards were made of wood.

The advent of the foam core surfboard was a catalyst for innovative design and the proliferation of the sport.

Now its time for us to return to our roots and reclaim the soul of the surfboard.

The history of surfing can be traced back a thousand years or more. From Polynesian fisherman who used primitive craft to haul their catch to shore to Hawaiian kings who rode massive boards called Olo.

It was not untill much more recent times that the modern surfboard was born.

In the 1930s a man named Tom Blake invented the first hollow wooden surfboard. Blake’s design made surfing accessible to a wide range of people. This was the first step toward popularizing the sport and would eventually spawn the surfing sub culture that we all know and love.

As surfing became more popular, demand for surfboards grew. With increased demand came a need to produce surfboards faster and cheaper. Foam and fiberglass filled this need nicely. Fortunately and unfortunately alike, this construction technique lent itself easily to mass production. Boards could now be “popped out” by the thousands rather than having to be built one by one. This furthered the accessibility of the sport and allowed its popularity to grow unchecked.

This has had both positive and negative impact on surfing as a whole.

On the positive side, shaping a board from foam is much simpler than constructing one from wood. Liberated from the confines of woodworking, the shaper can turn his attention to more important matters of design. Concaves, profiles, rail ratios, were now limited only to the imagination. Shapers were free to discover what worked best and what didn’t work at all. A local shaper could design boards specifically for a local break while designs with mass appeal could be produced on a mass scale.
The down sides were many. When products are mass produced, quality often suffers. Now that boards can be produced by the thousands, supply begins to exceed demand. Manufacturers need a way to distinguish themselves from the competition and they often do so through advertising. The dreaded “commercialization” begins to take hold. This leads to marketing campaigns and endorsement contracts and big purse competitions that clutter our breaks with tv cameras and wannabe movie stars. That leads to localism and brand loyalty. Suddenly we can’t be sure if our favorite brand is our favorite because its the best or because it has the best ad campaign, or worse, because its the brand our favorite competitor uses! Ahhhhh!!!!!

What happenned to the pure joy of catching a wave when no one was there to see? What happenned to the quiet comeraderie of not being the only fool waxing his board at sunrise? What ever happenned to the layed back carefree surfer dude who was happy to be out on his board even when there were no waves? Big purse surfing competition? What?….

The truth is we owe much to the mass production of surfboards. Without it most of us would never have surfed to begin with. Most of the truly important design innovations would never have been possible. The problem is that the surfboard is in danger of losing its soul.

That’s where wood comes back into play. Now that we’ve learned what we’ve learned from foam we can take that knowledge an bring it back to our past. Back to the wood. We can build a hand crafted one of a kind surfboard that not only has all of the latest design characteristics, it also has something that no pop out board will ever have. A soul.