The smart surfer’s guide to buying secondhand surfboards

It’s not about high-performance epoxy wizardry. It’s about connection. Flex. Flow. Fibreglass and foam with history.

Boards loved and lost since my last confession: not that many. A move further north to a notionally more ‘surf’ environs has conversely delivered a dearth of secondhand boards on the market. Probs to do with less people living around here or something, but it sucks. I miss the thrill of the chase. There’s still been a few, though. There’s still been a couple.

A Haydenshapes Holy Grail. Purchased for a boat trip long ago. Was “as new” when I plucked it from the surf shop racks but still qualified as a secondhand buy. Took it on the trip but then lost interest soon after. It sat in a dark corner of the garage and was only dusted off for boardriders and the odd shorey session.

A funny board. Standard big boy shorty dims with a fat ol’ hip and pulled in through the tail. Vaguely organic outline that is the Hayden trademark. Went well in good waves, but so does anything. I’d go through stages of loving it and then have one shocker of a surf where I’d hurl it back into that dark corner whence it came and swear to never ride again.

But I always would.

Buckled it just recently, duckdiving a chunky beach break. So it goes. All in all, a life well lived.

Unknown backyard shaper. A marketplace find. Not FB marketplace but an actual market. Homegirl model but with a Rusty logo (unsure if commissioned and/or paid for).

I watched this thing sitting at the local monthly flea market with $150 on it for aboutsix6 months. Put it under the arm a few times. Didn’t say no to the board, just to the price.

Finally, one day I went and offered the stall owner 50. We both knew he wasn’t getting anything else.

“Nah mate,” he said with the trained earnestness of a master salesman. “I couldn’t do that. This thing is already a steal.”

“No worries.” I turned and walked away.

A moment later he came running after me.

“Mate, mate. Come back. $50? Yeah, righto.”

It wasn’t his first rodeo, but it wasn’t mine either. In the end, the deal was done.

The board? I dunno, like a late 80s performance profile. Boxy rails. Vicious square tail. Beautiful board on the backhand. A bit of a dog going the other way. But we had some fun times. It too, snapped just recently. Took off on a suddenly dredgy little left that seemed innocuous enough until I came up and it was in two.

Lost Rad Ripper bought off my brother. Very similar to the Holy Grail, come to think of it. Modern day shortboard with a throwback nod to earlier outlines. Also snapped on a solid day out the front for no particular reason. I dunno, maybe I’m a fat cunt.

I did like that one. So it goes.

My stocks are getting low though, particularly for shorties. All I have now is a bunch of boards that sit on the margins. A good fish for the point on big days. A long fish for small ones. A few step ups. A couple of beauties for my 40th which I’ll write about properly one day. Just not everyday riders.

I need more boards. Or to clarify: I need more money for boards.

But, damn. There are that many outgoings currently I can’t keep up. Electricity bills. Water bills. Insurance. Kids sports. Car registration x 2. The car’s sick and the baby’s at the mechanic. Again. Costs pile up.

Work is busy as always. Any spare time I have not with the family is spent trying to sneak a wave or three. I’d like to be writing more, too. Ideas appear and disappear before I have a chance to explore them.

I don’t have the time. I just don’t have the time. So it goes.

On a whim I decide I could ask Chat GPT to help me. Pump out an article and see where it lands. That’s the holy grail for AI, right? Free up our time spent on creative endeavours so that we can pursue the fun things in life. Like doing our tax and washing the dishes.

The prompt: Write an article about buying second hand surfboards in the voice of BeachGrit author surfads.

Three seconds later, a semi-coherent story pops out. Impressive at first glance. Structured ok. Syntax there. Sticks to the brief enough. But a quick dig reveals the errors.

An excerpt: Buying used also opens up your surfing. You stop caring. You start trying weird shit. You ride a 6’6″ thruster with one fin missing because it was $50 and you’re late for work. You bottom-turn like a wounded seal but somehow stick the landing. You hoot yourself. You remember: oh yeah, surfing is supposed to be fun.

It’s still nothing more than a cheap imitation of a human. A replicant. Full of simple red flags any of us could spot. Who is gonna ride a thruster with one fin missing? Who “sticks the landing” on a bottom turn? Who the fuck said surfing was supposed to be fun?

Every day we are ceding more of our lives to the algorithm. Big tech. Those pencil necked dorks dragging us all into a techno feudalist dystopia at an every quickening rate. This is all they can give us back?

And yet. They are learning computers. Improving every day. Surely it won’t be much longer before they are as good as the real thing. At least, to the undiscerning eye.

Will consumers really care about the difference between machine pop out and hand shape stories?

Do they now?

Let me tell you about my mother.

Anyway, I digress. I did buy another McCabe. Something too beautiful for a machine to ever conceive. A stinger style twin. 6’3″. Snapped up off an old surfing mate for a right steal. Thick has a bitch but can paddle into anything and still holds a rail as long as you like. It won’t be snapping anytime soon, Allah willing.

But a standard shorty it ain’t. Truth be told it’s one of three similar boards I have and should probably be first against the wall if I’m looking to free up funds.

Maybe I’ll just pump some Chat GPT stories out instead. Start writing like this:

So here’s to the secondhand stick. The old dog with a few good tricks left. It’s not about high-performance epoxy wizardry. It’s about connection. Flex. Flow. Fibreglass and foam with some fucking history.

Whatever, cunt.

So it goes. What are you riding?