The beautiful pipes of Surf Ranch coming to an unlovely
part of Australia. And next door, sorta, to the Webber pool! |
Photo: KSWaveCo
(Hot) Rumour: WSL to build surf ranch next
to Webber wave pool in Queensland crime heartland!
By Derek Rielly
One of Australia's unloveliest towns to be gifted
two wavepools! A Surf Ranch and a Webber!
Rumours are rarely as hot as this. From a
source ever so well connected with the WSL, it has been revealed
over the course of several long phone calls, that Logan, south
of Brisbane, will be getting its own Surf Ranch on the site of the
old Ingham Chicken factory – the second lousy town to be revived by
the fantastic Slater-Fincham device.
And, said the source, the WSL wants to get it
built…fast… as it tries to wrestle momentum away from
American Wave Machines and Wavegarden with their commercially
proven designs.
The name’ll be familiar because it’s where the company Tunnel
Vision is going to build a Webber pool. The construction
certificate, for that tank, is due to be passed within days. And if
there ain’t complications, in come the diggers for a build that
could take, in theory, as little as four months.
Greg Webber was in Thailand watching slow-motion footage of
Kelly at his pool when BeachGrit started
throwing lines at 4:53am, local time.
I wrote, “WSL building pool nearby, what’s happening with yours
etc, could Tunnel Vision have changed tech and we’re talking about
the same build?”
“Unlikely. They’ve asked me if it’s possible to make an unending
ride with a looped linear. I sighed, thinking my god, asking for
such a change so late but I went over it in my head and worked out
that it’s possible.”
Did he believe Tunnel Vision will go with the endless loop?
“Yes, since it’ll make for a really novel experience. Trippy
almost Going from a peeing point break stye with an acute ange to
the gradient then bowly almost ninety-degree angled wall with a
whitewash pal as you go around the end curve. Then, gradually
getting faster and faster as it goes back to peeling pointbreak on
the straight gradient again… No matte what there’ll be a wall where
it hits the curved end pool step. It might not offer more than a
cutback or two but who cars, you’ve just rounded the bend for your
next high-speed run. Imagine, rippable first wall, ride the bend,
then peeing pipe. Kind of fun…and…and exciting.”
How’d it change the design?
“Had to almost double the width of the centre island to do it.
Plus other hub angle and speed changes.”
Of course, with the secrecy surrounding the building of pools
and the millions of dollars involved, nothing is what it seems, and
the proof will be, as they say in the classics, in the pudding.
We are young. We are dumb. We are full of
adventure.
We, all of us, travel to surf. We go to the
ends of the Earth. We drive and fly and sail and let our hair grow
and don’t shower and feel the salt on our skin for days, even
weeks, straight. We adventure. And adventure narrative is always
clichéd, or almost always, especially surf adventure narrative. It
plays out awkwardly and causes reading eyes to glaze with
familiarity. Listening ears to bore. The same themes. Discovery,
hardship, discovery, the simple joys of sleeping on dirt and
surfing clean, uncrowded rights or lefts.
Always the same.
But, I will say, there is also something cute about it.
Something fresh and youthfully naïve. When we are on a surf
adventure we are the first people on earth to experience what we
are experiencing. We are the first people on earth to round the
bend and see the wave. To get barreled. To crawl through the cave
and climb into the light and really see. Even if the bend is just
past Huatulco and the wave is Barra de la Cruz. Even if the barrel
is Colorado in Nicaragua. Even if the cave is Uluwatu.
For when we adventure everything that happens, happens only for
us. When we go on surf adventures we are the first surf adventurers
on earth.
It has all become so easy, or easier than it used to be. We can
book our flights online. We can check spots, even watching
streaming cameras, thousands of miles away. We can devour
first-hand website information complete with tide, crowd, parking
information. But as soon as we board our flights we are still the
first.
Our cynicism falls away and we enjoy the uniqueness of our
situation. The clove smoke from the taxi driver smells alive. The
Mexican ditch digger looks quaint and we imagine, even if for only
a minute, that he has discovered the secret to life. He is
unburdened by material possession and lives just outside of Barra.
He can surf it whenever he wants! Of course, he has never surfed
it, nor will he ever, but we can still naively dream.
When we arrive back home, regular life sets in. We go to our
office jobs or back to school but we are tanner and leaner than we
were before and our eyes are hungrier. When the receptionists asks
about the tan we tell her, “I was in Indo…” and “Indo” has been
done to death by surfers but it hasn’t been done to death by the
receptionist and she coos and thinks we are exotic, as long as we
don’t go on and on and on about the reef pass and the lost
surfboards and the barrels. As long as we keep it simple.
And we coddle our memories, chewing them over when the Northern
Hemisphere winter sets in and we are cold and miserable and our own
surf is flat. We go to the bar and, even if we don’t say, “I was in
Indo three months ago…” we know that, “I was in Indo three months
ago…” and that makes us better than every other person in the
bar.
Yes, we are the first surf adventurers on earth, all of us. We
are the first and we are beautiful because we keep the fires of
discovery alive. And the older we get, the more complicated our
lives get. They are shrouded in mortgages and bills and promotions.
But as soon as we book another surf adventure, as soon as we board
our flights, we are still the first. We are young. We are dumb. We
are full of adventure.
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From the locals-only Department: United
Airlines declares war on California surfers!
By Chas Smith
A wild horde is coming to your favorite wave,
wakeboards and paddleboards in tow!
Trigger warning: I woke up grouchy this
morning. My computer informed me, throughout yesterday, that today
would be the start of daylight savings and I was cherishing that
extra hour. Not for sleep but for work. For you. I woke up
realizing it was a lie, maybe daylight savings started in
Australia, and now have one less hour for writing masterpieces.
Also, I read that United Airlines is waiving surfboard airline
baggage fees for people flying to California in order to celebrate
surfing being officially designated California’s state sport.
It’s fucking bullshit and would you like to read the official
press account?
Surfing is now the official sport of California, prompting
United Airlines to reduce its fees for checking a
surfboard.
The $150 to $200 service fee will be waived for customers
traveling to or from California. They will have to pay only the
regular checked-bag fee.
Wakeboarders and paddleboarders — the service fee is waived
for your boards, too.
“California made it official: surfing is our state sport,”
Janet Lamkin, United’s president for California, said in a news
release. “We want to make it easier for customers to surf our
beautiful beaches, whether they’re visiting or call the Golden
State home.”
United is also donating $50,000 to Sustainable Surf, a
California-based environmental nonprofit.
Damn them. Damn them all with their wakeboards and paddleboards
and mostly their surfboards flooding in to California, crowding our
beaches, crowding our breaks. How is that a celebration? How is
that a bonus for us? What they should have done is waive fees for
surfers traveling from California.
Now that would have been a gift.
Fuckers.
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Gooooo California!
It’s a Surf Battle Royale: America’s West
Coast vs. Australia’s East Coast!
By Chas Smith
Which is the greatest of all?
Every coastal nation has a best coast, north,
south, east or west. One coast trumps the other. In France, the
west coast is better than the south Mediterranean coast. In Panama
the east Caribbean coast is better than the west Pacific. In the
United States’ California west is better than the urbane Eastern
Seaboard. And in Australia the urbane east coast is better than its
wild wild west.
But when California is pitted against Australia’s Gold,
Sunshine, Sydney coast which wins? Which is best of all?
Australia’s east coast features one very fine town and that town
is Sydney. Some will say Byron Bay or Nambucca Heads or Forster
(pronounced “Foster”) are equally fine but they are wrong. And
Sydney is dreamy. There is shopping, dining, delicious models and
surf. Australia’s east coast also features the Gold Coast and while
Surfers Paradise is both a grammatical and architectural travesty
the surf is amazing. There are waves for every desire.
California features two very fine towns, Los Angeles and San
Francisco. Los Angeles may be perfect. It has everything including
the film industry and all the actresses who come for it. Everything
except good surf but good surf is easily accessible via automobile.
San Francisco is called the Paris of the west and it, too, has
everything except attractive women. Australia’s east coast has
Snapper Rocks. California has Trestles.
Australia’s east coast has Nicole Kidman. California has her
too. Australia’s east coast has beer. California has wine country.
Australia’s east coast has Splendor in the Grass. California has
Coachella. Australia’s east coast has that harsh, unfiltered east
coast light. The sort that makes a man feel bad about his past and
not dreamy. The same sort as New York City.
California has golden light filtered in that way that all light
is filtered on west coasts. The past is forgotten. Only the future
exists.
And, therefore, California is better than Australia’s east
coast. California might be better than anywhere else on earth.
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Ryan Lovelace: “You get a hair up your butt
to go do something weird!”
By Jen See
Come meet a man who builds beautiful boards!
When he surfs, Ryan Lovelace stands with a
casual slouch that belies the deep interest he has in the boards
under his feet. Lovelace is well-known for his hand-built boards,
and in particular his speed-loving midlength designs. He began
shaping in college, because he found out it was cheaper to make a
board than to buy one. Since then, he’s been rummaging around in
surfing’s attic and playing with the assorted elements of surfboard
design he’s found there.
We hang around the same town, the same coffee shops, and the
same lineups. I have a fish he made and it glides along to a groove
of its own. A few months ago, I caught up with Lovelace to ask a
few questions, which is a thing I do sometimes. Here’s an excerpt
from our conversation.
How did you get started shaping?
I grew up building stuff, so that was just how we got the things
that we wanted. If you wanted a bicycle or a go-kart, you fucking
built a go-kart. That was our option. And so I really wanted a twin
fish, but I couldn’t really afford one. And my buddy was like, ‘oh
I made a board once.’ And I was like, ‘what? you made a board?’
Like, I hadn’t even thought of it. So that just kind of hit me,
like, if he built one, I can for sure build one.
I asked him, ‘well, how long did it take you’ And he’s like,
‘only like six months.’ And I was like, ‘sweet, I can make one way
quicker than I can save up the money.’
Turns out Fiber Glass Hawaii, the materials spot was barely two
blocks from my house. So I just busted down there, and saw
everything, just like, my eyes lit up! Then I went back the next
day and bought all my shit. The first one was a birthday present to
myself. It was something I’d wanted, something I saved for, it just
took me a while to get it together, and then off I went on the
first one.
What was it?
It was like a 6’4” twin fish, a keel fish. It was pretty big,
but it was blocky. I wanted something that was easy to shape and a
lot of foam so I could for sure surf it. It took about seven days.
Something like that. I was pretty amazed. Oh, this did not take me
six months! It was like, ooh, okay!
And then the second one, building things is what I like to do.
So I was like, fuck, I want to make a better one. I’d see pictures
of all these cool boards, and it was like, ‘I want to make a board
like that! and I want to make one like that!’ So I basically just
got carried away and built another one the next month. The rest is
a fucking blur.
How did you get your first order?
I put an ad on Craigslist. Something like, “Custom Surfboards,
$400.” I got my first order that way. The guy that got board has
been my best friend ever since then. Making a board for someone
else became much, much more than just making a board.
Unlike some guys who apprentice in factories along the way,
sweeping up foam dust and the like, you’re essentially self-taught.
Are there shapers that inspire you?
George Greenough, for sure. I don’t think you can shape in Santa
Barbara without the Greenough influence. There’s just no way. He
mastered our waves. You’re trying to surf the same wave, you’d
better take a page out of his book, because he did it right. So
definitely Greenough.
The foil of what Greg Liddle really perfected is something else.
The way that he lines up a bunch of the different elements and the
way that he connects them resonates with the way that I like to
surf. I haven’t surfed a ton of his boards but a few of the things
that he put into his are big components of my boards in terms of
balance and the foil. But I’ve flipped it all backwards — the
relationship of the curves — and how it translated.
What makes Greenough such a towering figure, in your
view?
Anything that he touched, he changed. For me, his stuff is just
such fucking spaceships. Free of any, ‘this is what a surfboard
looks like.’ They just don’t have that. They’re what he wanted to
make and it’s totally of his creation and they’re out there.
That along with his approach, if you want it, make it. That’s
how I was raised, too. So for me, what resonates there, is like,
oh, you want this kind of engine in that car? Fucking it put it in.
Go for it.
The more I learn about him, the more I learn how many fucking
things he built. He built all kinds of crazy shit that no one knows
about. I went to one of his friend’s houses and he had like a 16-
or 17-foot, it looked like a kayak, but it has a massive fucking
giant, big edge bottom on it. Craziest fucking thing. And I was
like, oh, what’s this thing? It’s a windsurfer. Apparently, he
built it, to windsurf from fucking Leadbetter Beach out to the
islands.
Like, what the fuck? Are you kidding me? That’s insane. But
that’s what’s up. You get a fucking hair up your butt to go do
something weird, like windsurf to the islands, then you make the
appropriate craft to do that. Like, what a great pursuit. So cool.
The thing is so funny-looking, I love it. I have a pictures of it,
I was looking at it the other day and I was like, this thing is
stupid.
You’re probably best known for your midlength designs.
What do you like about those boards?
I remember watching Endless Summer 2 when I was little. And I
thought I had to decide right then and there if I was a longboarder
or a shortboarder. And I was like, ‘what am I?’ Am I Wingnut or am
I Pat McConnell? Who do I want to be? I could never fucking decide.
And thank God, because now I don’t have to. I really thought it was
a black-and-white choice. And it was for a long, long time.
I don’t like longboards and I don’t like shortboards. I just
like midlengths! Because in Santa Barbara, that’s the thing —
there’s that big gap in the crowd between the longboards and the
shortboarders. You can clean up so many good waves just right in
the middle of all those guys on a midlength. You’ve got no
competition.
I think you’ve maybe converted too many
people.
Yeah. It’s kind of blown up. Whoops! Wait, Ryan doesn’t surf
well, but he’s getting waves? What the fuck. Blew my own cover. I
had it dialed for like a year.
You do a lot of cool vintage fabric inlays. Where do you
find the fabrics for those boards?
There’s something about them. I just like them. Making something
the way everyone else makes it, is never enough for me. I just
started messing with it and I really enjoyed it and the medium.
It’s a whole different challenge to take something that’s already
created and figure out how it can enhance what you’re making. And
there’s so many fucking cool fabrics out there that are just lost
in people’s collections.
What do you think makes your boards unique?
I think that the fact that I do hand-shape them is unique. The
more, I learn about my peers, the more bummed out I get. The more I
realize how alone I am in my age group in doing this. Nobody. The
other guys that were doing it by hand, they’ll look like they’re
doing it by hand, but nobody fucking knows. It sucks, because so
many people aren’t honest about what they’re doing.
Guys, when you say that nobody cares if you machine shape, I
think maybe, what’s hurting your business, is maybe that? Maybe if
someone is spending a thousand dollars on surfboard, they really do
want you to make it. Like, that’s a lot of money. That’s no joke. I
just always figure that customers actually do care and that all the
shapers that tell me, oh nobody cares anymore, are just jaded and
lost. I think people really fucking care.
If I was riding shortboards, I would want them machine-shaped.
Like guys, the machines are an amazing tool. Super valuable. Super
complex and super impressive. Tell people about how cool the
technology is and how great it makes your job. Tell them about the
stuff that you’re doing. Don’t just hide and be scared of the
repercussions. Tell people machine shaping is awesome. Because it
is. It’s fucking gnarly.
What keeps you going back to the shaping
room?
That experience with [that first customer off Craigslist], like
making a good friend, building a relationship around creating
something, and building a surfboard, and having a surfboard be the
crux of a relationship — that was really fun for me. A lot of it,
was me, like when I decided to really try and do it, and keep
pursuing it, was basically after the experience with him. Just
saying, that added value to my life.
It’s a really cool way to get to know another human. To me, the
building of a surfboard, became a lot about that. Who can I meet,
what I can do? Like it’s been a crazy ride.
One of Ryan’s works of art in action! Featured
surfer named Lucky Rabbit.
