Abomination: SurfTech surfboards!

The worst ever invention?

I am still in Cabo and every day is like paradise. Margaritas chased by 86 degree nugget waves chased by more margaritas. My hair is so blonde and my skin is so brown and my smile is so wide. But there is one problem. I have a surfboard here, a gorgeous little Mayhem number dropped off a few years ago, but I can’t currently get it (complicated) and, thus, am forced to ride a rented SurfTech.

When was the last time you paddled one of those out? Mine is a 6’3 Merrick Biscut and it is absolutely hideous. The other day I rode a twinnie something rather else and today I also rode a 5’10 Robert August thing and they were absolutely hideous too. Because they were all SurfTech.

And riding SurfTech is not actual surfing I have come to realize. The boards, so plastic-y stiff, don’t respond at all. The best one can hope for is a general slide down the line. Putting it on a rail? Milking a section? Finding the sweet spot? Forget it all! SurfTechs are “like having sex with your pants on” a wonderful friend told me and is he ever right.

I remember the controversy, back in the day, about boards being rolled off assembly lines in Thailand, or wherever, and the shapers getting angry because no soul maybe or something and I remember being not interested. I didn’t have one and wasn’t going to get one.

Now I am interested. Because they are absolutely hideous! When water slaps their bottoms they make some weirdly annoying pinny sound and when you paddle for a wave they hold in the lip and when you finally build speed in an open section there is no slowing them down to keep pace with the wave.

Riding SurfTech is not actually surfing. It should be called water tabling. And water tabling on a SurfTech is sort of fun. It involves running over dry reef, people and other SurfTechs. It involves letting children throw rocks at them and smiling wide.