The time for words is over. Action is now demanded.

Two days ago I stumbled across one of the most insidious throttlings of personal freedoms to ever appear on this green earth. No, it was not in some new edict issued by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un nor was it related to China’s Politburo. It sprang, rather, from the World Surf League’s very own rule book. From behind Santa Monica’s Wall of Positive Noise itself and let’s read Article 189 together again.

Individuals bound by this Policy shall not engage in any conduct which could cause damage to the image of the sport of surfing. For purposes of this Article, “damage to the image of the sport of surfing” is defined as any act, regardless of time or place, which casts the sport of surfing or WSL in a negative light.

The words seared my eyes as I read and forced a groan from my chest. Professional surfers, our professional surfers, are gagged, bound, held captive. Forced to head to Lemoore, California yearly and forced to say they like it and no.

No, I say for if one surfer is enslaved then all surfers are enslaved. For once, I decided action was needed, not just words, so baked the World Surf League’s President of Content, Media, Studios and Storytelling a cake demanding that he abolish the article.

Yesterday, I rode it to the post office on my bike and mailed to him.

He now has nine days, or maybe eight days to respond before the next act of civil disobedience happens. I was thinking of going old-school and picketing the World Surf League’s Santa Monica Global Headquarters this on Nov. 16th until I realized it was a Saturday so we should shoot for Friday Nov. 15th instead. Would you join me there? We’ll set a time that works for you and I’ll buy the cocktails afterward plus will provide light refreshments during the picketing so we don’t cramp up. Bananas and such. Maybe coconut water.

After that, if President Logan’s ears remain closed, what should we do? I’m running out of ideas and so you should join with me on Discord, a new social media thing that pokes the World Surf League’s evil partner Faceboook in the eye. A private link is at the end of the video.

And keep professional surfers in your thoughts and prayers today. Julian Wilson, Kolohe Andino, Kanoa Igarashi, Gabe Medina, etc. may look like they have everything; looks, skills, beautiful wives and girlfriends, money but without freedom it is all worthless.

All but filthy brass.

The modern shortboard has become more user-friendly in the last decade. The FRK, at least ridden as recommended by Kelly, is a return to a much more elite state of affairs.

I ain’t one for conspiracy theory, as a general rule. So when 11,000 scientists say we are in a climate emergency (today!) I tend to listen.

When I look around the normally verdant, sub-tropical paradise of Lennox Head and see something that looks more like Dustbowl Oklahoma than remnant Gondwanan rainforest I get twitchy. When the joint has been ringed by bushfires for two months before summer even starts, ash covering lineups, smoke-filled skies, air as dry as the Sahara I think, whoa, maybe we’ve cooked the goose here.

Hence the question: what the fuck can I do, what should I do?

Keep it local, according to American Author Jonathan Franzen. In an article for The New Yorker titled “What if we stopped pretending” Franzen said we’re probably fucked and we should do what little we can in our own spheres of influence.

A conundrum then, when I received the Slater Designs FRK, shipped from Thailand.

What if I kept that testing local? Reduced the carbon footprint per wave.

“The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle,” said the scientists and seeing as Kelly has one of the biggest lifestyles and a massive per wave carbon footprint at the tub, maybe I could offset some of his eco-footprint for the sake of future generations.

Kidding, but totally serious.

To do that meant some simple rules. No car travel. Obvs no flights, new keikis, or imported exotic foods. No new clothes etc etc. Walk or bike ride to the surf. Eat local foods. Easy crew.

The board itself. Is narrow, thin, foiled. Quite a departure from modern shortboard theory and a very big departure from the Cabianca DFK I was riding. That departure further exacerbated by the LFT construction, being EPS core and epoxy glass and following Kelly’s recommendation to go one size smaller than you would normally ride.

Yeah, right.

Been sucked into following Kelly’s board advice before, and I did it again. Mixed results, generally poor, as you might have guessed.

The 5’10” came in at twenty-seven litres, but felt far less under the arm. Very foiled rails. I walked past twin-fin doyen Torryn Martyn on the way to the opening session after a short bike ride to the Point and said, “Reckon you could ride this?”’

“Holy fuck,”he said, “that’s a pencil!”

Surprisingly, it didn’t paddle too bad.

The water was blue and I was in boardies, which always makes a board feel better to paddle. The easiness stopped there. “What do I get?” asked Pete Shelley from The Buzzcocks in the song of the same name.

In the case of the FRK: Nothing that’s nice. I kooked the first half-dozen or so waves I caught. Juicy, head-high runners, lots of bottom tension. With the thinness, narrowness, low volume and LFT construction I had very little of the things I like in a HPSB: drive and control. Stuck behind sections, mostly.

Late in the session I managed a little backside finner. Very loose in the lip.

Couple more surfs followed: local points, a longish ride and paddle across a shark-infested river to a wedgey left were conducted with low carbon footprints per wave but confirmed initial impressions.

I’d been sucker-punched by Kelly, again.

Taking advice off anyone on surfboards is fraught with danger but please, do not take Kelly’s advice and buy this board under-sized. It’s wizard level trolling if he’s done it on purpose.

Look, I made this board work. But the hit rate was low.

The Cabianca got me bangers nine times out of ten. With the FRK, I was back to four or five. The sweet spot is minute and requires precision to be millimetre perfect.

It needs a steep, bowling wave. Most of my local points have side-wave energy running through them as incoming swells rebound and run back through the line-up. That makes wedges and “knuckles” – but flatter areas where you need to run “up hill” to get into the next wedge.

The LFT/FRK hated any kind of lateral surfing like that. Stopped dead.

It’s a board for teenaged kicks or Peter Pans who can’t let go of their youth. Hardest shortboard I’ve had to ride. Sizing it up a little and a change in construction and this thing would probably work fine, for me. Changing up fins didn’t effect my ride much, because the problem was an undersized hull.

I wonder if Firewire might not start to embrace different constructions. Hayden Shapes, a fellow traveller on the EPS/Epoxy road has intro’ed PE technology, PU blanks with epoxy resin. Rusty has embraced the same. Polystyrene has come under environmental scrutiny and these headwinds as well as the ride might force a change back to PU cores. Or at least something a bit more solid, like their earlier builds.

Dan Mann has a pedigree of super user-friendly surfboards in the Firewire line. Notably, the Potato range.

He credited intuition with creating this board for Kelly, which he did on spec. It sat unridden for two years before Kelly shredded Trestles on it and it entered the Slater Designs range. And he does shred on it, just like he did the nineties potato chips that Matt Biolos claims “stole the buzz from surfing”.

By turns, the modern shortboard has become more user-friendly in the last decade. Rec surfers can easily ride pro-level boards, if sized correctly. The FRK, at least ridden as recommended by Kelly, is a return to a much more elite state of affairs.

Outlier or new beginning? I say outlier. Kelly’s equipment choices have never really suited anyone but himself, with few exceptions.

Although this board didn’t work for me, I do credit it with inspiring perhaps the lowest carbon footprint session since Pat Curren in 1959.

Pre-dawn at the base of the Point. Bagged a ten-pound Giant Trevally on a stick bait. Stashed it in a rock pool and went surfing. Rode up to the Melaleuca swamp and peeled off some paperbark. Came home and cooked it wrapped in paperbark with warrigal greens.

With carbon intensive industries and lifestyles in the cross-hairs if we all lived more simply we would, in effect, be allowing Kelly to live his resource hungry life for as long as he lives. Entertaining us in the process.

That’s a fair trade, isn’t it?