Can a kook finally reach nirvana if given enough pool time?

I’m an intermediate surfer, lower intermediate for the sake of precision, and will never be anything more.

This isn’t a new revelation.

It’s a truth the has been demonstrated to me at various times and at various places, Cloudbreak Teahupoo, Ours and, twice last week, at Australia’s first commercial wave pool, which can be found just a mile-and-a-half from Melbourne’s international airport.

On Monday, I enjoyed Urbnsurf’s hospitality from one through til six as part of a media reveal. The catering was excellent, Cliff bars, Poke bowls, spring water in plastic bottles, beer and coffee from an on-site van. I discovered the CEO of Urbnsurf, Andrew Ross, and I grew up, in the same era, lived roughly one mile apart and attended neighbouring schools. Eerie.

Waves were, mostly, a three-foot ledge called The Beast, although there were waves in some sessions where turns could be employed. It was very hot, one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the wind was a northerly offshore and I surfed, first, in trunks, but was soon forced to dress in a short-sleeved steamer as the water was cold. With fourteen surfers in the water and eight-wave sets every two minutes only one wave was caught every four minutes. There was no paddling in between to keep heart-rate up, body warm. An estimated fifty waves snatched.

One head injury was sustained. Stu Nettle, a very good surfer and editor of the Australian surf forecast site swellnet.com, was sucked up the face of a lefthand tube and into the concrete bottom when a layback went awry.

That same week, on the Friday, I joined the party of an old friend who had hired the joint from nine am until eight pm, although the pool was switched off at seven, much to the chagrin of the two surfers left out the back and who were forced to paddle in.

I spent seven hours or thereabouts in the water and caught, at a conservative estimate, one hundred waves. It was cold (eighteen degrees C or sixty-four F) and the wind blew onshore from the south. A four-three was the suit of choice although my Rip Curl 3/2 sufficed. Over the course of the ten hours the pool was open, I sustained myself by taking hot showers and eating handfuls of the protein balls supplied.

One head injury was sustained. David McArthur, a very good surfer and newspaper cartoonist, was sucked up the face of a righthand tube and into the concrete bottom. The way he staggered out of the pool suggested a mild concussion was also included in the deal.

What did I learn from the experience of two days, of one hundred and fifty waves under my feet? That I suck. Yes, that, but that is hardly news.

I learned that all those elements that I can disguise in the surf, the indecisive takeoff, the mistimed turns, the habit of staying ahead of the pocket, the back foot refusing the plastic of my tail-pad are magnified ten-fold in the pool.

And, yet.

Ah, yes, there’s a yet.

It is only through the reveal of our flaws that we can improve.

What good is it to tell a child he’s clever if he’s stupid?

Or a painter that she has something unique when her work is derivative and poorly drawn?

I find my best moments when I’m overtaken by an anger at the repetition of my mistakes and the slap in the face of being reminded of my inability to surf. Usually, I’l rectify on a wave, get my back foot on the tail-pad, actually locate and hit the lip, then go in, mission complete although new approach not ingrained in muscle memory.

At the pool, I was there for an extended period – what was I going to do, sit and watch? – and there was no escape from the truth.

In the Monday session, I couldn’t understand why I was missing the tube. I sent an email to the professional big-wave surfer Mark Mathews who, perversely I suppose, has been to the pool five times. He told me to forget turns, stomp on the tail on the take off, sit in the one allowable groove, and you’ll be caved from ass to mouth, as they say.

Even if it sounds straightforward enough, it took me all of day two to understand what he meant and to…see…the groove. It was only on the last wave of the day, at one minute to seven, I completed a ride satisfactorily.

Backside, less successful, although I’m starting to see the line on that side, too.

I won’t bother you with my philosophical take on pools or whether you should spend eighty Australian dollars on a one-hour visit there, that’s up to you.

What it gave me was a reminder of my frailties and an extended period to, finally, address these multiple errors.

I’m back, I believe, next Thursday.

The success of this modern performance twin fin design is as a bridge between the hard-core shred and the anyone-can-ride alternative “crutch” board. A certain type of shred lord for whom the thruster is too jock and the quad too macho will find solace in the twin fin.

You ride a twin fin, your Mom rides a twin-fin, your Mom’s girlfriend rides a twin-fin. The twin-fin is the ubiquitous piece of surfing equipment at this juncture: December twenty-nineteen.

The Dolly Dagger by Panda surfboards gets filed under performance twin, to distinguish from the traditional twin-keeled San Diegan fish and it’s offspring. The performance twin is almost always a direct replica in outline to the Mark Richards twins he rode to four World Titles 79-82. Balanced outline with width in both the chest area and tail block and a single flyer, which both breaks the outline curve at the point of primary fin engagement and helps to reduce planing area in the pod behind the back foot. Swallow-tail mandatory.

To that formula, the Dolly Dagger adds a modern (neutral) rail, compared to the hard down rail with tucked edge of the Richards Twin and a very dynamic bottom contour. Single concave under the front foot with a pronounced vee through the aft area housing concaved panels either side.

I got mine at 5’8”, coming in just under 30 litres, and the very first sensation, after coming off the Slater FRK was one of sweet relief. This is a very fine paddling surfboard, both from A to B in the line-up and into waves. Width under the chest and a relaxed forward rocker means this board moves through the water very nicely.

Do you get trapped by the rigidity of your own thought patterns? I sure do.

For example, I thought I hated twin-fins, and everything about them. My very first wave, in crumbly but longish period high-tide runners, like Bells Beach, so therefore perfect for a twin, ended badly. Squirrely pieces of shit, I thought.

A regular surfing pal on a mid-length twin went straight past, with that release/glide off the top. I always thought twins exerted too much rotational force on the hull, compared to the more hull-centric single or thruster feeling, where there is less rotational force from the side fins. Less pivot around a hypothetical fulcrum. It’s that pivot that always bugged me on the twin.

I was very, very lucky, in that a solution to the problem presented itself.

Chatting to an American chap who had paddled off the rocks and was sitting inside me on a soft-top and I was thinking there was no way he would have the hide to think he was going to paddle straight up the inside and have the next set wave, but he did.

That creates a comfort zone for the non-pro. Not having the back foot placement so critical as a thruster while maintaining the engagement of the fin cluster during turns. Parko copped heat for safety swoops but for a rec surfer not much feels better, and that greased soap around the bath tub high-line is a stoker. Both of which the Dolly Dagger does supremely well. It’s a very relaxing surfboard to ride. Lots of good feels. Compared to the FRK, it does not demand much to be ridden well.

So I took it. Sorry pal, if you are reading.

Which means I had to haul ass, as they say, and in that process I got two big pumps in that were more like top-to-bottom swoops and generated an insane amount of speed. My back foot was a little further forwards than a thruster placement.

That creates a comfort zone for the non-pro. Not having the back foot placement so critical as a thruster while maintaining the engagement of the fin cluster during turns. Parko copped heat for safety swoops but for a rec surfer not much feels better, and that greased soap around the bath tub high-line is a stoker. Both of which the Dolly Dagger does supremely well. It’s a very relaxing surfboard to ride. Lots of good feels. Compared to the FRK, it does not demand much to be ridden well.

I rode it mostly in crappy surf but just as Eskimos have lots of words for snow, Arabs for sand and Polynesian navigators for ocean there an infinite number of types of crap surf, rarely categorised. The type I rode mostly was a seasonal variety consisting of small mid-long period swell, point surf with a counter-vailing devil wind. Hard to ride. Hard to maintain speed, join the dots, find clean corners and do turns. Hence derided and uncrowded.

This Dolly Dagger ate it up. You get the speed and the safety swoops going and crack the corners; the flattish rocker keeps the glide going and the short hull and fin set-up gets the pivot. I think, a lot of waves break like that in the world with, what in ecology is termed, an unexploited niche.

I also rode little beachbreak wedges at Coolum and had a ball smashing closeouts, more typical beachbreak and could glide between sections. Rail-to-rail movements get water flowing through the concaves either side of the vee. It’s a very seductive bottom contour. Very easy speed, nice flow.

The marketing blurb says twin fin, one look at it and I thought twin fin but some minds- Derek Rielly, for example, saw three fin plugs and thought: thruster. I did put some JJF Alphas in the plugs but the board instantly lacked the drive of the big twins.

Back to the OG set-up, which was the Merrick AM-T’s. A big upright twin, with a small trailer.

The trailer might be considered cheating by some, but as a way of softening the rotation on my backhand it worked a charm. My beef with the AM-T’s was the Soviet grey colour. Twins need a beautiful fin. My Irish ranga pal at the Byron Equinor protest rocked a rainbow set in his twin and that looked amazing. Don’t snort Nick Carroll, you’re as prone to petty vanity as the rest of us.

The Mayhem Evil Twin set would also work fine, with a nicer aesthetic.

Cons? Some shred will be left on the table in good waves. A local breakwall turned on a rare day (for this time of year) of overhead wedges. There was resistance from the wider nose to going straight up into the bowl at speed. Hard to lever off the fin cluster to get really vertical.

Don’t get me wrong, still fun, but maybe just a tad restrictive, more lateral. I might add, most of this was backside surfing. Forehand, I think the control and placement of vertical surfing would be much easier, especially for those of an advanced skill set.

The success of this modern performance twin fin design, I believe, is as a bridge between the hard-core shred and the anyone-can-ride alternative “crutch” board. A certain type of shred lord for whom the thruster is too jock and the quad too macho will find solace in the twin fin.

There are many fine examples from Dave Rastovich to Asher Pacey to Torryn Martyn. The non-pro intermediate finds larger margins for error in foot placement, very nice feeling speed swoops and easy pivot surfing that feels better than it looks, in most cases.

Deferring to Dane Reynolds dictum that for the non-pro, if it feels good it is good, is a fair enough punctuation point.

PS. I rode a board with three plugs but the Dolly Dagger has options to fin as a twinzer, which is an enormously appealing prospect.