Midcentury Modern

I’ve been going to Hawaii since I was 17 and know how easy it is to drive yourself crazy trying to get the wave of your life at Pipeline. I’ve had a few memorable waves out there, but with how crowded it’s gotten, I don’t want to spend hours, days, and weeks sitting out at Pipe and Backdoor trying to get that one wave all winter.

That has led me to Sunset Beach, where there’s so much more room to breathe. I found myself looking at what people were riding there during the glory period for longboarding, in the 1960s, before the Shortboard Revolution. Sunset’s big, open faces lend themselves to a nice, long rail. Surfing has become more focused on the bowl section at Sunset and a top-to-bottom, maneuver-based approach, whereas in the ’60s there was more appreciation for drawing everything together so that a wave was one continuous line. You can see that in some great footage that Bruce Brown shot during the 1965 Duke Invitational at Sunset, featuring Jeff Hakman. While Hakman and I are such different surfers—he’s stockier and has a lower center of gravity—I think those nuances are what grabbed my attention.

My quest for the right Sunset board goes back more than 10 years, when I started trying to find someone to shape it for me. I first spoke with Bob McTavish, and he suggested I get a board from Randy Rarick. Randy ended up making me a 9’6″ single-fin gun instead of a longboard. He has a lifetime of experience at Sunset, and he might’ve thought that the board I was envisioning wouldn’t work out there. That’s true when Sunset is 15 foot, but there are still so many days when the conditions are more fat or open-faced that are perfect for riding a longboard. The Rarick board sat in my garage, collecting dust.

Then, a few years ago, I went to Bells on a good winter swell and borrowed a board shaped by Thomas Bexon. I’ve known Thomas for more than 10 years. We both live in Noosa. He’s definitely not the first shaper you’d think of for winter boards in Hawaii. He mostly shapes longboards for conditions under head-high. But the waves at Bells were double overhead. While my standard log wouldn’t have worked in those conditions, the board I borrowed worked great. Thomas has such a deep understanding of surfboard design and history, so I knew I could count on him to try and make me the specific Sunset board I had in mind.

I wanted a pretty simple, classic design: a single-fin with a reasonably pulled-in tail and enough surface area in the nose to still be able to do a stretch five, but not so much that it would feel like it was blowing away in the wind. There wasn’t an exact reference point that I could give Thomas for the board. I had heavily pixelated frame grabs from YouTube—screenshots of tails and noses—plus the footage of Jeff Hakman.

While the board is meant to be a nod to the ’60s, it’s still very much a modern design. A lot of the boards from that era were in the high 9-foot range, and you can tell they’re quite heavy from how low they sit in the water. The board Thomas shaped me wasn’t as thick or heavy. It’s a 9’3″ triple-stringer with more refined, forgiving rails than a true ’60s-style longboard.

Chuck Ames, who runs True Ames, made a custom fin to go with the board. We sketched a few different templates and used a Yater fin as one of the reference points. We ended up settling on a pretty simple, stiff 8.25-inch fin.

I finally got to ride it for the first time on a pretty classic day at Sunset. There was a bit of north in the swell, which typically means it’ll be better at Off The Wall and Backdoor. Still, I kept looking for my window to sneak out to Sunset.

I’m an active surfer, and I like to move around the lineup and chase down waves. As soon as I paddled out, a wave slipped under the crew sitting outside, and I swung into it. I could tell immediately I didn’t need to do much on the board in order to feel a lot. The whole session pretty much went like that. It was really easy to roam around the lineup and find waves that would have gone unridden. I had so much more fun that day than I did other sessions that winter trying to do a big snap at Rocky Point or waiting for a wave at Pipe.

The board has enough glide to slingshot from out the back into the bowl, and the speed on waves like that was second to none. It has enough rocker, and the tail is pulled in tight enough that if it gets semi-serious, it’ll still work. The board opens up new spaces. It feels like it’s been missing from my quiver for a long time.

In surfboard design, especially with longboards, there’s often a misconception that the traditional is completely separate from the high performance and modern. But this board demonstrates those don’t have to be exclusive categories. “High performance” longboarding isn’t a poor variation of how someone rides a shortboard. At its best, modern longboard surfing follows in the traditions of the ’60s while pushing them in new directions.