Lost In The Ether For Another Year

Dreamboard By Andrew Kidman

"The early development of the shortboard was actually hampered by a few things. I didn't ride stand-up boards  at all, so I didn't know what they were feeling. I could watch them and make suggestions and shape boards, but it was hard for me to get into the fine-tuning aspects of their boards. And that's what good design is. Just about anything will work if the handling is tuned in, but stuff like the fin set up is hard if you're just making a stab at it. You have to ride the same kind of board for years before you can understand all the nuances, and the shortboard thing was moving too fast for that to happen."

George Greenough

"It was one of those boards that you ride and you cannot work out for the life of you, and then you'll just get a wave and it'll be so unbelievable. Then it'll take 2 or three more waves to find that line again and it'll be unbelievable."

Garth Dickenson

Annual Report for 2015

First and foremost, our thanks for being here and looking at this currently so unfashionable 'blog' business. It's been a somewhat hectic year, even by the stupidly hectic standards of life today, and thus there were moments where it all took more time than it should have. This blog is still standing though, and will continue to do so and will be far more of a priority this coming year. There's going to be boards from Neal Purchase Jnr. and Andrew Kidman flowing soon (we hope) as well as the Mackies and Parmenters and a bit of a resurgence of the Hydrodynamica boards, and that may well just be a start. The obsession with surfboard design gets stronger as we focus in on what seems to work, and that too will be something that we will be trying to focus on over the coming months, and Kidman's 'Lost In The Ether' book/film is providing a bit of a jumping off point. It's the best film about the dark arts of surfboard design made we believe, and it opens some interesting lines of thought and discussion that seem to want to be followed. So, as a new year stumbles into gear, here we go again......

Swallow Tail Widowmaker by Andrew Kidman

Yes. Just simply, yes. There's one of these going to be coming up from Andrew as we will hopefully be getting some of his boards in the boxes coming from Purcho. If you're interested in something from either of them, let us know.....

Board Of The Week- 6'3" Mackie Stubb

Hard core s-deck Stubbie hull action here from Mick Mackie, and rarer than the proverbial Hen's Teeth given he pretty much just builds sidecut fish now. 6'3" x 21" x 2 3/4" with all the old school tricks- s-deck, rails pinched down nice and bladey with the foam under the chest and a custom hand foiled flex fin you could slice your camembert with. Not an entry level board at all, but it's going to be a rocket on a nice point wave. Price is at the original exchange rate level too, so a steal at $775. Email info @ foamandfunction.com for details.

Derek Hynd, Motorcycles, Dirt Quake and Surfing....

Dirt Quake IV from SIDEBURN on Vimeo.

"Bikes were ridden faster, boards the same. It's almost impossible to let kids know how important motorbikes were back then all over Australia- just rockets to death, but what a way to go. It was just huge."

Derek Hynd, master of speed and sliding turns, talking to Andrew Kidman in The Surfer's Journal Vol. 11 #1. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to make my annual U.K. visit and combine some surfboard delivery and action with a trip to Norfolk to experience the complete Experience that is Dirt Quake. Speed and sliding galore, Derek would have loved it. Here's a few of the craft involved, most of them as hand made and eclectic as any board you'll see here.

The Purchos are coming....

Right now, these boards and a few others are bobbing around on the briny deep, all cosy in bubble wrap onesies and a nice box, somewhere between Sydney and LA (with a stop in Korea thanks to the byzantine complexities of sea freight). They'll be here in the first week of the new year and will hopefully provide a lot of stoke in the post-Xmas doldrums. We've got this process fairly well figured out and we're ready to go on a new batch. If you're interested in one of Neal Purchase's really awesome surfboards, drop us a line at info @ foamandfunction.com and we'll give you the details.