The best surfer is not the one having the most fun, it's the one surfing the best…
Dear Rory,
I’ve been surfing half my life. I started off on shortboards, but after an epic trip the Nicaragua a few years back I don’t even want to look at a board below nine feet. Our gutless waves here make for ugly speed pumps and flailing arms. I catch so many more waves than I otherwise would, the rides are longer, and I go out on the smallest ripple with my tanks. While I love loggin’, I fear the learning curve for my next trip with real waves will get pretty steep. Should I dust off the fish and grovelers and force myself to work with what we’ve got, or continue on with the log?
Self Loathing Log Lover
Dear Rory says: I adore longboards in barreling surf. Get in early, set a line from behind the section, jam that trailing arm in to pump the brakes and use the extra volume to float over turbulence. Easy as pie.
But expensive as hell. Pulling in on a big board is a costly habit. Fuckers snap like twigs, every blown section the recipe for a split down the middle. Flapping sheets of fiberglass, an expensive repair bill (I both hate, and absolutely suck at, doing my own repairs).
I struggle with my love of logs. Left long flat spell shores far behind nearly a decade ago, never really need one. Usually a short drive to quality surf when you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Actually look forward to those sheet glass doldrums days. Makes for great visibility, an easy swim, fish on the spear for din-din.
Little tangent here, gotta point out how weird it is that most surfers spend their lives floating around the lineup without thinking about what’s going on beneath the surface. Heck of a lot of cool shit going on down there.
Longboards are fun because they’re easy. Especially if you’re oafish enough (as I am) to duckdive the damn things. Really takes away the challenge factor. Fly out through the lineup, push under an oncoming, use that foam to rocket your way to the surface. Sit deep, outside, take your pick of sets. Remember to take a break once in a while. We’ve all be on the receiving end of a rapacious dick using extra planing surface to cheat his way into every wave. Super frustrating, totally rude.
I’ve been surfing my entire life. As long as I can remember. And I’m a pretty good surfer. Should be, after roughly three decades of trying hard. But, as I get older, I realize I really should be better. I can ride a hi-perf sled well enough, if I’m on. Slightly hungover? Rhythm a bit off? Then it’s hell. Flail and struggle. Mistime turns, bog rails, generally fucking suck.
There’s no point in making things more difficult. The waves allow what they allow, you surf how you want to surf. You could go shorter, ride a little mini Simmons or retro twinny. But I wonder if there’s really a difference, between them and a log. No matter how you slice it, it’s just about making things easier. And regardless of your cheater varietal, you’re always gonna feel like you’re surfing better than you actually are.
Which isn’t any fun at all. The best surfer is not the one having the most fun, it’s the one surfing the best. But I’m beginning to wonder if I really care whether I’m the best surfer anymore.
It’s hard to separate fact from delusion, especially if you spend as much time as I do inside your own head. I’m huge these days. Cultivated mass all the way up to 260, harvested my way down to a current 230. Which is fucking monstrous.
At 6’2″ I carry it decently enough, and I’ve converted a large amount of that blubber to muscle. But if I’m being totally honest with myself I know I could easily ditch another 20 pounds by eating healthier and doing some, ugh, cardio. And if I kicked my ass into tip-top shape I could probably hop back on my low volume rides and start blasting fins out again.
Am I gonna? I don’t know. It doesn’t sound very fun.
Recent visitors were on some crazy health kick. No sugar, no carbs. They look great, but their diet looks like hell. Constantly eating, always hungry. Don’t know if there’s a middle ground, but if there is I’d sure love some directions to it.
Anyway… I guess I’m starting to believe that there’s no honor in making things difficult. If you’re not looking to do airs, or win contests, riding an unforgiving board in lackluster conditions is dumb. Sure, when some guy who’s a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than me surfs circles through the lineup on a small day I feel like a total kook. But it’s all give and take. Yeah, he can blow up a waist-high section, but I can reach shit on the top shelf.
There’s no point in making things more difficult. The waves allow what they allow, you surf how you want to surf. You could go shorter, ride a little mini Simmons or retro twinny. But I wonder if there’s really a difference, between them and a log.
No matter how you slice it, it’s just about making things easier. And regardless of your cheater varietal, you’re always gonna feel like you’re surfing better than you actually are.
Maybe that’s the secret? Just embracing the lies we tell ourselves?
Ride what you want at home, change equipment as conditions dictate. And when you find yourself with butterflies in the belly on your way into a offshore, top to bottom, foreign barrel, do what I do. Heave yourself over the ledge a few times, use the beatings to chase away the nerves.
Do a little mental exercise or, if of mindless imagination, reenact this: Go around the street doing the same moves a longboarder does – tiny little steps, fairy arms wailing, sped up pirouettes with ballet pivots…
Now look around and review yourself in the despising looks of bystanders. Longboard as a graceful exercise is a construct by surfers.
I did a similar exercise to someone foreign to surf: showed a video of some guys shredding and another one of Joel Tudor riding his log and to my “of course this is very elegant and classic” she replied, to my astonishment, it was ridiculous and asked me why the hell would someone try to make their movements look so stupid! It was an eye opener…
P.S. She loved the shredding clip.
Unfortunately where I live nobody surfs in bikini otherwise I would’ve been out there surfing a log not wasting time here…
I think riding a really good fast short board has become easier and easier for me as time has passed, not harder. I was over-stretched and flamboyant as a kid; over the years a lot of the crap has cleaned out of my style. I bet this is pretty common among surfers of my era and younger, as the best surfers — the ones we’ve watched and earned from — have got better and better.
If you surf a log then switch to a shortboard in the same session you feel like the best surfer on earth. Added bonus.
Logs are unacceptable.
Get back to us after the third bastard child Wigg’s…
https://vimeo.com/160040351…. Need I show more wig???
At first glance I read FISTING…
You’ve sold me. Getting a log for summer on Oahu.
Awesome segue into The Little Mermaid. Didn’t see that coming until Ariel’s soft voice struck up in the background.
is that 2.5% Filipe? It must be Filipe.
Not sure why the board I choose to ride (long, short, lots of fins, one) is an issue for anyone else but OK.
nah, its the waves you take from whoever else is out there. never had anyone sit way outside on enough foam to float a dock? it sucks cause they can’t do a goddamn thing once they do stand up. You can go Skip Frye it at outside Casa’s or WIndansea but it hurts watching guys pearl on good ones cause their tongue depressor shape can’t hold the wall.
“tongue depressor shape”
lmao. heart.
nah, he’s Zoltan Torkos of logs
like Coke can
the surfing I grew up with.
Occy at the Beaurepaires Pro?
Ok i just watched the video, I’m sorry but that wasn’t that impressive,corey calipinto fucking wrecks this guy like just destroys it throwing carves noserides to floaters, to fuck it has to be seen, most the guys in FL kill it harder than mr. Banks, which is where I’m assuming his trust fund lies,I have a van, because I live in it, not by choice. Your telling me this guy couldn’t afford a razor and a sprinter he is what’s wrong with longboarding.
i want a Sprinter but the ones with the MB motor are pricey
I think captain banks can afford one, he probably over bid someone who actually could barley afford that van, just to get it. “I look poor, am I cool yet?”
Agree Colapinto is the boss
You also probably live in a wave blessed area, live in Florida for a year straight, I’d rather be a logger than a costa del mar wearing mad hueys fishing dueshe.
what? with all the redfish? i’m in the Costa’s and Buff
That’s the ultimate cop out from being a surfer. “Yeah I surf but the 3 days it’s glassy and overhead I’m in the river doing what i can do every other day.”
nah, you don’t fish those days. i remember before they ruined the Inlet getting a few fun ones, a hot dog from the shack, then catching snook off the bridge
If it’s over head high I know a bunch of dudes that cop out and fish. “Oh I put the boat in ” it’s head high and glassy? ??
I’d kill to get a ‘poon like you guys get ’em there
prehistoric looking aren’t they? cobia too
we got plenty of big cobia here, just not those tarpon.
no snook either, or redfish.
yeah, big croakers, black drum too
Nothing wrong with riding a log in small conditions now and then, but actually making a switch from a shortboard to a longboard is just giving in. Quitting. The older I get the more committed I am to not making the switch.
quitting what?
Amen, brother. fuck all that “foam is your friend” shit. that’s for fattys, get on the bike if you need more than 35liters
32 litres at present. Probably should get the bike out of storage to see if the tyres are still inflated…
When you spend your 20’s and 30’s chasing it.. You hit next decade.. Career stressed! Putting one through college now and trying my best to get him out debt free and another soon to follow. I have put my time in the line up and I will ride what ever the fuck I wan’t to ride. If I really start blowing drops when its pumping I will be the first to paddle down the beach. Until then don’t under paddle, no snow balling, you see me going, I’m going..
P.S. I had one this winter that Hynd would have cheered! Frye would have exclaimed “He put that board where?”
somebody’s gonna out-foam you eventually, they’ll probably have a paddle in their hand. its the road to a bad place, goat boats and everything.
not going disagree. There use to be this old guy that would surf well past the boundary into off limit zone onto military base, good surfer.. he would scream profanities if you paddled to his peak..even as he’s going down line if he saw you paddling his direction. As i get older i understand his position. Their are moments I can still hold my own but fat lady is warming up. If ever go to SUP “I will remove myself from rotation here I promise.”
I live in Florida, logs are essential, but everybody wants to ride fucking wavestorms. I ride a mean low rocker 9’6″ and I’m able to even piss off guys on SUP’s so yeah.
Low rocker is where it’s at.
I call the ones I make “evinrudes” thick but 5050 rails bladed out square tails low rocker but still with some mostly in the back so you can just whip off the bottom and run the shit out of the nose, with a pivot fin it takes a lot to slide out. The best sensation in the world is taking off before a donkey on a 1800$ SUP and just standing on the nose past him while he stares with his rashy and sunglasses stunned.
I’m a fan of the too hard high-five drop in. It can take the unsuspecting SUPer off his boat.
There’s also the grab the nose and throw him over your shoulder, then they get mad, it’s like ” wait you tried to burn me and I didn’t let you so your mad now?” happens more than you would think, being up there also gives plenty of inertia to just shove a motherfucker as well.
Howzit Dick. You shape these puppies? Sounds intriguing. I too live in Florida and would like a craft that I can use to piss off the SUP overlords. please respond
Yeah I do my real name is on my profile. So pissed or not enter my first name on IG and you might see my work, not a plug, I just don’t hide behind the diqus ID
I genuinely love riding a log when it’s small. I get some stink eye now and then, usually from old guys who’ve persevered with shortboards for too long . They kick furiously as they paddle, get into waves late, bog rails and try to hop their 100kg frames through flat sections. What’s the point?
keep telling yourself that