Soundings: The Two-Board Quiver

The last decade has seen surfboard manufacturing develop in opposing directions. Bob McTavish’s dream of a standardized, mass-produced surfboard has largely been realized. Machines instructed by computer-aided design programs cut almost-finished blanks. The cost of lamination and sanding has been reduced dramatically by foreign labor. Uniform, regulated shapes are available globally through offshore retailers, and licensed outfits produce well-known brands locally. This environment has made for a “tough industry,” says master shaper Pat Rawson. “A lot of people with overhead in their business have gone under. Builders that have some legacy or have a story—who do a certain thing—are doing okay.”

This opposing track, as alluded to by Rawson, is the custom surfboard. Unlike almost any other activity, surfing is one of the few pursuits where the average practitioner can still get a one-of-one, hand-made tool for a specific purpose. Despite being pushed to the fringes by mass production, this vital and vibrant cottage industry is sustained by work going on in backyards, garage bays, and glass shops around the globe. The strangest fact about our custom industry, which includes the collective intelligence of generations of shaper-designers, might be that in many cases, if not most, the custom approach attracts a discount, not a premium. You cut out the middleman and deal directly with the shaper. A lower price point follows. 

Aside from a ten-year period during and after the Shortboard Revolution, which led to the hegemony of the thruster, quiver theory and reality have never been more diverse and more complex than they are today. The major difference now, however, is that modern understanding allows us to reverse engineer shapes and designs that were left on the vine in that first frenzy of discovery.

Quivers can now be adjusted for a specific place, approach, state of mind, and stage of life. Crowds might be a fly in the ointment in most surfers’ daily reality, but in terms of the development of tools to ride natural and even man-made waves, we’ve never had it so good. In the words of Rawson, “It’s a great time for design.”

What follows are several shapers’ opinions on what constitutes a pared-back, two-board quiver, drawn mostly from the custom side of the surfboard building equation. Some suggestions are for specialists, while some come from generalist starting points and templates. All offer insight into customizing and fine-tuning a minimalist board selection for different ability levels and wave types. Obviously, a certain shaper’s board choices will reflect the region in which he shapes. The East Coast of Australia, dragon slayers for South Pacific caverns, and high-performance speed rockets for J-Bay walls are discussed. Sleds built for California and time-honored selections for Hawaii also get a run. 

What stands out is the variance of the “modern” surfboard from shape to construction, to both the casual observer and the critical eye. Beyond the industry standard of coupling and marketing state-of-the-art designs to professional surfer’s performances, there’s an incredible richness of ecosystem for every surfer to wander through. 

1. Experimentalist Offerings

Bryan Bates 

Byron Bay, New South Wales

The East Coast of Australia remains a rewarding surf destination, especially for those with time on their hands. Anyone and everyone, from a 20 year old on their first road trip to a 50 year old in recovery mode from divorce, can find sanctuary in the nooks and crannies north and south of the hyper-crowds of Sydney and the Gold Coast. Numerous custom shapers found in regional centers and bush nooks offer freedom to stray from high- performance models. 

After fleeing the wet, cold winters and onshore winds of Oregon, Bryan Bates now runs a one-man, start-to-finish custom surfboard building operation in Byron Bay. He developed his style and techniques of board building under the wing of North Shore underground shaper Cort Gion. “He took me on as a polisher in Florence, Oregon,” says Bates. “There were no glassing shops there, so if you wanted a fin, you had to make a fin. If you wanted to shape a board, you had to glass it. Cort had a really unique, individualized style and way of doing things. He was very critical, very old school. It wasn’t exactly good for my self-esteem, but he really pushed me to make sure I was paying attention and learning the lessons that were there.”

Bates’ two-board quiver starts with a single-fin. “For most people, their turns aren’t that tight and vertical,” he says. “Single-fins are really appropriate for what they are going to do. I’ve been toying with a concept that engages a hull entry feeding into a slight single concave with a rounded pintail. It has a really down, fine rail at the back. The board can be surfed from the front and has that beautiful hold where it’s ‘steerable’ and it starts to sing if there’s a bit of a wall. When you step back, you’ve also got this powered up single concave under the back foot and a fine, edgy rail that makes it feel alive and ‘on.’ It’s got a real, responsive shortboard energy—you throw it into a turn and it’s right there.”

Bates’ second board comes as a result of his extensive building and testing of finless boards with Derek Hynd. He calls it the Drifter, which translates to a board with fin boxes for small, keeled finlets. The finlets emerged as a result of Bates feeling like he “wanted something that would engage a little more, but still feel free and have that beautiful skimming feeling that’s so cool about finless surfing.” For the full mind-expanding trip, a twin-fin or a “twinzer” configuration can be set up in the boxes.

The board has a complex hull, which Bates calls a catamaran-style design—a deep central channel, a reverse vee concave, and vee panels on either side. “When you get up to speed,” he says, “there’s no water touching it because the central channel is so deep. So you reduce the wetted surface area, and therefore reduce drag.” ×

2. Scaling For Speed And Wind Resistance

Marcio Zouvi 

San Clemente, California

Whether you think the World Surf League is the spawn of Satan or the Holy Bible of performance surfing, it’s undeniable that Filipe Toledo has completely rewritten the playbook for what is possible at J-Bay over the past two years. Marcio Zouvi, the Brazilian-born, San Clemente-based owner of Sharp Eye Surfboards, has been the man responsible for putting the blades under Filipe’s feet on his era-defining rides. 

Zouvi started a surfer-shaper relationship with Toledo when the latter won the U.S. Open Pro Junior in 2011. After Toledo spent his first couple of years on tour riding Firewires, he wanted the more reliable handling of traditional polyurethane boards, and the two rekindled their working relationship. 

For a competent or advanced surfer on a long, extremely fast point like Jeffreys, Zouvi recommends that their first board be an inch shorter than their height, with volume sized accordingly. For the second board, he says to go an inch or two taller than your height. 

Rather than a difference in shape, Zouvi prefers to adjust small details on close-in-size shortboards. Toledo’s J-Bay quiver, for example, is based on a defining continuous rocker curve.

“You want a design that has a pretty good amount of rocker, but no abrupt curves or flips,” he says. “You want a continuous curve. For [Toledo’s] particular designs, the concaves were shallower. You don’t want anything catching too much. I really wanted to work on the outline and rails. All the boards for J-Bay were round pins, and the rails were pinched. They’re what you call ‘fast rails.’ They engage the water and generate speed through turns. J-Bay, and waves like it, are so lined up that most of your turns are elongated carves. You definitely want a round pin, and the kind of rocker I described to fit those types of turns into the wave.” 

Another understudied design element Zouvi recommends for this type of two-board quiver is weight. “When off-shore winds blow on lengthy, drawn-out waves, light boards don’t work. You need something substantially heavier. We tweak the weight using higher density PU blanks and S-glass.” 

Following the closure of Clark Foam, the future, so we were told, was composite construction based mostly on EPS blanks and epoxy glassing. As it turns out, the majority of construction still rests on materials developed in the post World War II period, like polyurethane. Customization of the ideal surfboard now rests as much upon the selection and application of materials as it does shape. ×

3. The Reliability Theorem for Heavy Conditions

Gunther Rohn

Ballina, New South Wales 

The GoPro angle emasculates the total ferocity of his position, but the grim smile on the face of Anthony Walsh as he pilots a yellow 8’8″ through the bowels of a Cloudbreak bomb gives silent expression to the gravity of the situation. His board was designed and shaped by long-term Ballina shaper, and South African-by-birth, Gunther Rohn. 

Rohn cut his chops in the factories of Byron Bay before a stint in California. By the time the Pro Tour was in its mid 80s, fluorescent-powered zenith, he was embedded as a high- performance shaper to the hot kids. That culminated in a zesty channel bottom he designed for 16-year-old Nick Wood, who rode it to victory at Bells Beach in 1987. 

Travel boards for large, hollow waves have long been a Rohn specialty. With a test pilot like Anthony Walsh, who in any given year is possibly the most barreled human being on the planet, he’s well placed to decipher the shifts in theory and design for boards made for waves of consequence, and then apply it to the recreational surfer. 

He believes the increase in nose area and thickness repre-sents the greatest recent advance in surfboard design, showing me a pair of two needle-nosed blades from 20 years ago as examples of how far we’ve come. Kelly Slater changed common thinking, according to Gunther, “six or seven years ago, when he surfed big Pipe on a 6’5″.” That pulled the nose out in relation to the wide point, he explains, and shifted it forward. “And that’s where it’s gone—shorter but a lot wider and thicker.”

A two-board quiver for a stint at a freight-training reef pass like Cloudbreak involves a serious change between the two pieces of equipment. A tube- hound like Walsh will ride a 6’8″ in most wave sizes up to nearly the maximum, knifing in under the ledge. 

“Then when the waves get up to their absolute limit,” says Rohn, “it’s just a whole different realm. The waves move so much faster. When it gets really big, boards should start with dimensions around 8’8″ × 22″ × 3 1/4″. The size jumps dramatically because you need the hull speed to get into the wave. Even an 8’8″ can be small in certain circumstances. You might even want something like a 9’6″.”

Aside from a more single-fin oriented outline with the wide-point forward, the other notable specifics in board design for a wave like Cloudbreak is the type of drag employed. “You need to ride a four-fin now,” Rohn says. “Two fins on a rail hang in better than a thruster, and it keeps a bit of freedom there—a bit of looseness.”

Rohn doesn’t see any major design changes on the horizon for an increasingly surreal wavescape. “Anything out of left field will do left field things,” he says. “You want reliability in serious waves. You just want to harness the power, not play with it too much.” 

For the recreational surfer looking to step up their wave range and tube time, he sounds a note of caution. “A wave like massive Cloudbreak is nothing to be sneezed at. It’s amazing to me that fatalities aren’t higher. Fuck, better to be over gunned than under gunned. My advice is to go bigger than you think you should be getting.” ×

4. Biomimicry, Flex, and Rocker

Mitchell Rae

Raleigh, New South Wales 

Mitchell Rae has spent his career concentrating on low-number, labor-intensive custom board building that’s focused on advancing the use of flex, as pioneered by George Greenough. Biomimicry—using natural forms with clear functional parallels to wave riding—is his overriding philosophy. Carbon-flex tails, V stringer blanks, complex concave hulls, and custom glassing techniques are part of the Rae oeuvre. Indonesia has been the main testing ground for these designs for the last 30 years. 

For a two-board Indo quiver that can handle anything the archipelago dishes up, Rae sees, like other shapers, a clear generational distinction in approach. “Young guys think of a gun as being 6’3″ or 6’4″, and are riding a 5’10” as a regular shortboard,” he says. “There are merits to riding such short boards, but I see that approach as being largely contest driven. I tend to think you make a lot of sacrifices riding such a small board. There’s a real beauty to riding slightly bigger boards with longer lines.” 

A pioneer of concave bottoms, Rae has increased the efficiency of the planing surface by lowering rocker and increasing planing area. “I have a model called the Moonraker that is a great small-wave rocket ship, but because I stick to small numbers and specialist content, I’m shaping the vast majority of my boards to suit the individual.”

It’s his use of flex that marks Rae out as a rare bird in the surfboard game—and the pinnacle of his development ties to the first board the shaper recommends for his Indo package: a standard, not-too-stubby shortboard that combines a V stringer and a carbon-fiber flex tail. The V stringer blank “gives a more rigid entry, which holds a really clean line and doesn’t flap, wobble, or belly out,” he says. “That holds a controlled line off your front foot when you’re driving. And I like flex out of the back. That’s my own personal taste in a perfect board. That keeps about a third of the board alive with flex in quite a subtle form.

“Those carbon-flex tails,” Rae adds, “have an extraordinary amount of whip and projection and variable curve in them. When you combine those two things, the V stringer with the carbon-fiber flex, the board is as close to being alive as anything that is made by man at this point in time.”

For surfers interested in serious waves, like maxing Outside Corner, Rae has a strong view on what constitutes a good second board. “A big day often comes with strong offshores, even in Bali. It’s often less perfect the bigger it gets. I find that rocker is absolutely key—the overall dynamic of rocker coupled with outline is crucial. My boards tend to have really easy wave entry. I’ve been going down the path of overall lower rocker, even in my big boards. If you measure the rocker on my guns, it’s considerably low and that reflects in the wave entry. When guys are paddle surfing in maximum-sized waves, the board wants to get over the ledge and down the face. It wants to get going. Often, it’s very subtle differences that draw the line between boards that are doing the job extremely well, and ones that are not. Overall, rockers are so important.” ×

5. A Fish and a Dove

Tim Bessell

La Jolla, California

Stalwart of the La Jolla scene, shaper to professionals and everymen, and collaborator with Andy Warhol, Tim Bessell has seen the many shifts on the frontlines of the American surfboard industry. He remains one of the rarest commodities, a shaper who is equally at home foiling the curves of a high-performance blade as he is a fish, a hybrid, or a longboard.

Bessell’s opening board for a two-board quiver is one he thinks can handle most of what the West Coast of North America likes to dish up: a modern take on the classic San Diego fish. “I call it the Barracuda, which is basically a rocket fish,” he says. “It gives you all the advantages of a wide board with the split tail, which is what I love. It’s asymmetrical to a very slight degree. I’ve married a high-performance rail and an ultra high-performance bottom with a lower rocker and more volume.” 

The idea for the high-performance rail came to Bessell in a dream, after watching Slater at Pipeline riding a tiny board. “He was side-slipping in the barrel,” Bessell says. “That night I dreamt of a particular bottom. There’s a channel cut out around the rail, and it adds way more lift.”

Bessell’s second board deals with the problem of all-too-often crappy surf, by way of a classic Californian longboard model he calls La Paloma. “I’ve been doing this design for more than 20 years,” he says. “When longboarding reappeared in the 90s, I wanted to make the highest-performance, lightest, strongest, most maneuverable longboard I could. I ride it as a quad. It has a modern bottom, rail, and foil.”

For Bessell, materials are at least as important in the custom process as shape—especially the core of the surfboard. “Styrofoam is a major polluter,” he says, “while polyurethane is so inert that they use it for potting mix. I’m always trying to make a better surfboard, not cater to the lowest common denominator. I ride polyurethane foam glassed with epoxy. Educating consumers about what is best on an ecological basis first, then performance and customization, is really where the enjoyment comes in for me.” ×

6. Posits for Island Entry

Pat Rawson

Oahu, Hawaii

A two-board quiver might seem a tough ask for the complexity of Hawaii’s North Shore. But for veteran shaper Pat Rawson, it harkens back to simpler times. “In the 70s, Tom Parrish was really cooking,” he says. “Rabbit and the guys from Australia would come over and get a 7’0″ and an 8’0″ from Tom, and maybe a Waimea board from Brewer, and that was it.”

Rawson suggests sizing a two-board quiver for North Shore winters according to age. “Let’s say there’s a young guy who’s 24 and a great surfer back home—he might want a 6’6″ and a 7’2″. An older surfer might start with a 7’0″ and then have a 7’8″, or even 7’10”.” Rawson keeps the bottom contours basic, “maybe a flat-bottom board with a double concave tail—I do a lot of those.” He advocates the versatility of setting up boxes for three- or four-fin options. 

“Thruster or quad, both work,” he says. “The three-plus- two setup. So if Laniakea is 8 feet, a guy should take his 7’0″ out and ride it as a quad, because the wave is down the line and he’s shifting gears, like in a sports car. Then there’s the West Peak at Sunset, where it feels good riding a three-fin. You don’t have to double turn it or anything.”

Rawson has seen the evolution of North Shore design from the longboards of the 60s, to twin-fins and mini-guns, to the “over-shaped and very extreme” boards of the 90s and 2000s, all based around Kelly Slater’s Glass Slipper shapes. 

What’s remained consistent in a good board for performing in large Hawaiian surf, he says, is its entry ability. “It needs to get into the wave properly. That doesn’t mean it has to paddle well. It just needs the right rocker, the right entry. I make them curvier for somewhere like Pipe, and then straighten them out as you get into somewhere like Sunset. The rounded pintail is always a good choice.

“The main thing that has changed is we’ve moved thicknesses forward, thank God, and we’ve gone to wider noses, thank God. Boards seem to me to be very sensible. After 52 years of shaping, boards look right now. Everyone who surfs a wider nose does more carving, which is a good thing. And they’re still doing all the airs and that stuff.”

The development of this far more sensible surfboard can be placed at the feet of shapers working with hybrid designs, meaning a “wider nose, but still a thruster” and the enduring influence of shapers like Mark Richards and Malcolm Campbell. “They are both doing extremely well,” says Rawson, “and have never shaped super narrow noses. They make a board that nine out of ten guys can surf, and the boards still look hot. I think that has helped usher it in.” ×

[Feature image: Photo by Morgan Maassen.]