Monday, May 28, 2007

Below are a few of the boards from Musica Surfica, or the Deconstructivist Adventures of DaDa Derek as I think it could be called.

Shot 1 has some of Tom Wegener's beautiful explorations in our older history, with the olo and the three smaller alaia. These boards surfed well, fast and were legitimate surfcraft. Give Tom a call for something very rootsy in your quiver.

At back, two of the more successful ideas. On the right a Bushrat finless round pin. So why did it work? Jed did his homework, talked to some yachties and they all said 'laminar flow'..ie: make the water wrap. So it's a round bottom, round deck, no edges,... and voila, it held a trim.

Next to it is one of Dane Peterson's boards. As you may be able to see, deep fluting in the tail and a long but shallow fin-like edge on the back quarter. This board worked well too, and you could do the gentlest of bottom turns. It also allowed spin if you could control it.

In the middle, one of Warren Pfeiffer's Dale Solomonson mats. Warren is rated up with Greenough as a mat rider, he's a pal of Georges and a lovely chap...talks a bit like Yogi Bear on valium with a soft Australian accent...if you get my drift.

In the second shot is, from left, Richards board adjusted in the DH style, another experiment in laminar flow from Mike Richmond, this time as a finless fish, and another Bushrat experiment, along the same lines.

Richard's board worked well, then snapped in line with the front fin boxes,and Derek proceeded to rip on it at the reduced length of about 5'1". Work that one out.

The other two were OK 'ish but the mistake a lot of people made was, I think, to do a lot of boards at fish lengths...as the most successful of all the boards, apart from Derek's discs, were the Dane Petersen's, some of these amended later in the DP style, and the old style Hawaiian boards of Tom Wegeners's and the Koko'o's from Sage and Paul Joske.

I will add that the bottom board with the striped deck, again from Bushrat, proved popular too as it had a split flex tail, with a slightly dropped rail, that everyone managed to get going pretty well.

On another note I found out why all Derek's boards have the red and blue stripes.

Seems he asked Skip Frye to do some sort of original decoration on a fish he made for DH and Skip, for want of inspiration, dipped his brush in a couple of paint tins and there you have it.

More boards later.



































3 comments:

pushingtide said...

AHhhhhhhhhh!

seamouse said...

ah, ooh, eee, mmmmm.
looks like a good time was had by all and once again we learn that all things good in surfing go back to the flow.
keep the good flow flowing!

seamouse said...

ah mick, you forget I'm half the world away. Its my lunch at your bedtime!