I made a three-foot left my little bitch on this board…
Took this brand new CI Rocket Wide with Spine-Tek construction, unwaxed, down to Iluka. Iluka, if you live in America, Eurasia, or the UK is a regional shithole in sub-tropical northern NSW full of fishermen who love to get punchy drunk at eight am, sand dunes infested with brown snakes (true) and brown water surf probably infected with nuclear debris from Fukushima.
White sharks? Yes ma’am. My pal Abe got his JS snapped in two when an over-swoled goldfish with teeth launched him like a scud missile September 2 years ago.
“Fuck off,” he said, as it ragdolled him around the line-up. “Fuck off!”
White sharks? Yes ma’am. My pal Abe got his JS snapped in two when an over-swoled goldfish with teeth launched him like a scud missile September 2 years ago.
“Fuck off,” he said, as it ragdolled him around the line-up.
“Fuck off!”
I only go there because the spring flathead bite is insanely good, my wife loves the pub and it’s the last place on the east coast of Australia where you can find an instant coffee in a cafe served by a surly teenaged waitress with volcanic acne.
Placed on the marital bed, on an anniversary weekend away the board presented a very sexy combination of curves. Full figured nose, curvy outline and a tight-ish swallow. New boards are a problem like that. They disrupt the flow of sexual energy between a man and a woman, or a man and a man, woman and woman.
I know both Chas and Derek have experienced marital strife because of this fact. Also why I need to quit pro surfing coverage next year: it’s a major boner killer. The lady lies in bed naked while the man watches Keanu Asing throw a six at Pat Gudauskas and nothing moves, if you get my drift. Thats all fine for neo-puritans coming from the Oprah Winfrey network but not so good for worker daddies who need and want to keep a woman sweet.
Family friendly website and kids think it’s yuck, but it’s true. Surfboards are objects of lust, adventures in polyamory. You can love them. S’why grown-ups hide them from their partners. Stout Scotsmen build locked sheds to house them like mistresses. Nick Carroll leaves his lying about in the long grass, so a tryst might happen accidentally.
“Hello, fancy stumbling over you today, how bout a quick ride?” etc etc.
All of which is to say, like Jamie Brisick and his martinis, I approached this board with very high expectations. Tumid, even.
The first surf at Ilukan beachbreak was sizzling but short. I was so destroyed physically and mentally from pro surfing sleep deprivation and marital disharmony that a couple whacks on a running left and a shorebreak hit was about the size of it. Felt loose, very reactive, very whippy. Tight. I was excited, very, to surf again.
Placed on the marital bed, on an anniversary weekend away the board presented a very sexy combination of curves. Full figured nose, curvy outline and a tight-ish swallow. New boards are a problem like that. They disrupt the flow of sexual energy between a man and a woman, or a man and a man, woman and woman.
Then things went south over the next few days. I wrote the following on a US surf forum, after some very disappointing consecutive surfs.
Could not generate speed. Could not drive this board into or out of turns. Stopped dead in any dead sections. Felt weirdly like I could not engage the front rail in speed generating pumps at all. Felt like the nose kept wanting to rise up and I was left with this strange feeling of pushing water and surfing off the fins. I felt with the Rocket Wide like I was trying to start a secondhand lawn mower. I could not get the motor running.
Three surfs in a row went horribly wrong. I felt like LBJ’s “Jackass caught in a Texas hailstorm”. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide and I couldn’t make it stop. Well, I could make it stop, I just couldn’t make it go.
Helpful Americans including someone connected with CI California suggested the issue was with the rocker curve.
All those surfs were in shonky b/c grade pointbreak. Mid-period
swells, lots of dead sections. Picture high-tide Rincon Bells and
you’re in the ballpark.
The next go out went differently. The problem had to be me.
I reported it thusly: Rocket Wide in punchy two-to-three-foot beachbreak, mostly weird but steep little lefts breaking into a rip. The kind of low-energy swell but steep faced surf that is daily bread here in summer.
I think I figured it out. At least a minor breakthrough. I knew it was a rocker issue and it had to do with the front foot and the planing area around the front foot. That felt so bad. Clues were in the posts about narrow stances and boards that were stance sensitive. Probably in Indo, I got a bit too used to a little more forward stance for tuberiding and since I’ve been back I’ve mostly been fucking around on a six-foot foamy where you can stand wherever you want.
So, I just shuffled the front foot back… a couple of inches, maybe. Instantly the brake came off and the board lit up. Little top turns became fully whipped frontside wraps… the board started to feel really good turning. really good. Still didn’t feel gold-standard to me at generating speed as a groveller, and I’m deeply sceptical this board will plane in knee-high surf. But fun as hell.
From there, I made Tallows my little bitch on this board. Jumped-up little lefts got mown down. Three pumps into a section and I launched a little straight front-side air that caused a dutch chick to exclaim, “Whoa, nice board man”.
(Fins used, if you’re curious, were Futures AM1’s and AM2’s. I’m a heavy-footed clod who likes to push. And Futures is a superior fin box, no doubt.)
Hunter gatherers had no dentistry or iPhones but did have tremendous sexual freedom. Gals were often free to choose sexual partners. Agriculture and private property rights fucked all that up for good. As such, polyamory today is mired in risk and mostly doomed to bad feelings all round, Mormons and some Muslims excepted. Surfboard selection remains one avenue where an appetite for variety can be pursued in a morally risk free environment.
Is this a sled that would make a good partner for you?
Where and how do you surf?
Not why, that’s meaningless.
I’m an opportunist who roams a thirty-k stretch of coastline on the daily, sharing an ecological niche with an increasingly territorial white shark and a spectrum of surf spots that includes punchy breakwall wedges, ledgey little slabs, world-class and not so world-class pointbreaks and tons of variable beachbreak. With the Rocket Wide in the back of the car I had (mostly) the small-wave spectrum fully covered.
Backside on my local points I continued to struggle.
I think the materials factor in. Spine-Tek is a carbon strip that is routed into an EPS blank and stiffens and controls the flex of the board. With epoxy glassing it makes for an incredibly reactive and lively board. On my forehand in punchy beachbreak it was like a three am Ritalin buzz on the dance floor. If you like/love the feeling of EPS/epoxy; you’ll love Spine-Tek. If you’re a PU/PE kind of gal, it’s worth tuning in for zest in a small-wave board.
On my backhand, I surfed like a love child of Michel Bourez and Pat Gudauskas born with a genetic defect that caused epileptic fits on contact with saltwater. My spastic limbs made board control difficult.
On my backhand, I surfed like a love child of Michel Bourez and Pat Gudauskas born with a genetic defect that caused epileptic fits on contact with saltwater. My spastic limbs made board control difficult. Quietening everything down and throwing very simple shapes at the wave made everything happen. Not every wave, but I felt fins going out the back where I had been bogging or over-rotating.
This board will be a feel-good hit of the summer. Globally, I predict. It has Fishy DNA but surfs like a high-perf. shortboard in small surf.
My Bribie friend, best one in the world, and I, share a lot of things. We’re like Aboriginals in that respect. Common ownership, especially of surfboards, is assumed. And he’s been eyeing off and angling to get his hands on the Rocket Wide for a while now.
We both ended up down the inside of the Point, on Sunday, down near the hut.
“Hey,” he said, “give me a go on that board”.
“Um, later,” I said, “I’m keeping it”.
