Dan, left, early version of Cymatic, centre, and Kelly talk volume, planing area, rail line and the miracle ingredient that gets average surfers moving.

Watch: Kelly Slater and shaper Dan Thomson talk surfboard voodoo. “Look at usual things with unusual eyes!”

Derek Rielly

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Lennox Head shredder and shaper Daniel Thomson introduces Kelly Slater to the Cymatic… 

Three months ago, BeachGrit introduced you to the Slater Designs Cymatic via the words of Stephen “Longtom” Shearer.

As he wrote at the time, “The learning curve for the Cymatic is steep, very fucking steep. But somehow it started to make sense. The hull is so sensitive, even finned as a quad that the body riding it must develop a corresponding level of relaxation and sensitivity. Any tension or inappropriate body positioning is brutally punished. You don’t push to get where you need to be, you think it and the board will go there.”

(Read that here.)

In this fifteen-minute video from 2017, we find the Lennox Head shaper Daniel Thomson introducing Kelly Slater to a surfboard prototype that would become the Cymatic. Fifteen minutes is a hell of an investment, but the natural flow of conversation that covers volume, the relative unimportance of length (in a surfboard), the placement of channels and the depth of concaves will place the surfboard-design nerd in a state of ecstasy.

Take the blinkers off and watch.

Koa Rothman has the power to wow!

Koa Rothman in “The best way to replace those calories is with sugar and carbs!”

Derek Rielly

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Dietary advice (and fluid surfing) from exciting Hawaiian Koa Rothman…

Koa Rothman is the likeable and cheerful younger brother of Makua and the son of that eternal breaker of men, Fast Eddie Rothman.

He is a twenty four year old whose short life has already been plump with drastic moments.

This, for example.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWLKoq1A7lh/?utm_source=ig_embed

And this, of course.

Over the course of the last four months, Koa’s has made twenty-one episodes of his blog series This is Livin. In this episode, which is three days old, Koa travels to southern California where he surfs Newport Beach (56th street), visits the online legal marijuana community Weed Maps, is awakened by a four-shot coffee, goes into a heavy trance after eating two large doughnuts, comes out of that delirium in time to surf okay-ish Wedge and so on, so forth etc.

Vigorous with undiminished flair.

 

Long-disappeared Andy Irons Footage: “Full of raw torment!”

Derek Rielly

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Andy Irons' surfing throbbed with exertion, passion etc.

Andy Irons brought the thunder when the world was wilting under the heat of Kelly Slater. For three consecutive years, he owned the world title.

But, sometimes when you bring the thunder, you get lost in the storm: courting trouble, fits of temper, madness, the burden of it all.

Why bother with the modern world if it spawns so many poisons?

Therefore, ain’t it a nice thing to peel ourselves away from the anguish of Andy’s death almost a decade ago and melt into a bonus extra from Taylor Steele’s 2001 film, Momentum Under the Influence, a film populated by surfers under twenty three.

It’s a joy, an honour to watch.

The Bali-based surfer Dylan Hayllar hoists backwards into the lap of a Desert Point wedge.

Watch: Flap your wings inside pretty and blue and user-friendly Desert Point pipes!

Derek Rielly

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Five-ish minutes of easy backside tubes… 

The Bali-based surfer Dylan Hayllar took a puddle jumper (plane, not board) across the Lombok Strait recently to ride a wave that puts everyone in a good mood.

Desert Point.

Is it ok to say its name now that it’s populated by surfers of all race and nationalities, stand-ups, lay-downs etc?

In this five-and-a-half-minute short, Hayllar whittles easy-looking four-foot Desert Point tubes down to toothpicks. His face, I imagine, is frozen in a tube steak shine after so much shade.

It ain’t John John’s Space but, in some ways, its accessibility and how makable the waves are, even for everyday mutts, gives it something you might love even more.

Meola's cold-cocked airs cushion the trauma of all the slow motion.

Helicopter-boy Matt Meola in “Wave your hands up in the air Johnny!”

Derek Rielly

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It might slo-mo you to death but wait until Matt spins like a top! Seriously primped!

Here’s a four-minute short that ain’t what you’d call feisty. It cups an ass-cheek real slow, gets you ready for harvesting time, in this case, a hit of Matt Meola spins that gonna make you spit a gob of your tobacco.

Slow motion, slow motion, slow motion. It kills me

But then Matt, who is twenty nine years old (oh don’t the time fly) and from Maui, awakens what I thought was dead from the waist down.

There is a flint and steel in Meola’s surfing that is impossible to ignore. He opens his housecoat and we can only stare.

The music of Hawaiian multi-instrumentalist Tavana gives it a pleasing fuzziness, like the cool air in your face from a just-opened window.

I would suggest, watch.

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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