This blue surfboard was the first standup surfboard George Greenough made for himself, 1957, while he was still at high school and not yet a dedicated kneeboarder. He rode it as a stand up surfboard in small surf and said it went really well in small waves up to about shoulder high. George cut it in half to make it LONGER because he got too heavy to knee paddle it. 1959 saw the creation of his first kneeboard, made of balsa, then painted baby blue. Looking at this first blue surfboard with the pulled in tail, it looks really functional, like all of Greenoughs designs. This blue surfboard was almost a decade before the so called shortboard revolution of 1966 1967. By the time of 1966 George was on a lightweight fibreglass spoon and getting deep in tubes. Words & Image courtesy of Legless charger Jesus Fiochi Alonso had a recent trip to the Mentawai with his wife, he scored some fun surf at the famous wave park. Inlcuding Rifles, No Kandui and Hideaways and not to mention couple of no name breaks. Say g’day. Paul Mannix, more commonly known as Turtle, is a fixture both in and out of the surf on Phillip Island, as deep as you can get into Victoria’s South-East coast. Paul’s lived on the Island since childhood and knows its waves inside out. Legless.tv caught up with him recently on his return from a boat trip to a remote part of Indonesia that yielded great waves and a few photos to match. We started by asking how he got started. Paul picked up his nickname at school. A mate decided his green eyes looked like they belonged to a turtle, and that was that: “The name stuck like glue and even to this day there are a lot of Islanders who still don’t know my real name.” Around the age of 12, Turtle started surfing the beachbreaks at Woolamai on a boogie board. It wasn’t long before something slightly unusual got his attention in the water. “I used to watch the local Phillip Island kneelos: their speed, style and barrel riding got me stoked.” One in particular stood out: Neil Luke. “He had (and still has) awesome style and flow on the wave. Back then he had really good hair too.” The desire to emulate that style and flow was what first got Turtle started riding on his knees, but … “Only thing was that I still had a boogie board. I kept kneeling on the lid and finally bought my first kneeboard at 15 years of age.” The core attraction then was the same as it is now: the feeling. “The main thing is for the barrels. You have a compact, low centre of gravity, but still have all the speed of a conventional stand up board. PERFECT FOR TUBES! I also love the view you get. You’re always facing forward, and being so close to the surface of the water gives you the premium visual experience!” For any kneeboarder on Phillip Island, Neil Luke is bound to have been a big influence, and not just because of his surfing: as one of the mainstay shapers for Island Surfboards he’s one of only two Australian kneeboard shapers to have been continuously producing state of the art craft since the late seventies. Turtle: “Neil always shaped my boards, and I never remember having one that I didn’t like. I like to be able to personally discuss boards with a shaper. It’s good to sit down and talk about the waves the board is for, what little changes he recommends etc etc.” Neil’s recent move North to distant Byron Bay left a sizeable gap in the PI surf community, one which another local and long-time friend of Turtle’s has begun to fill. “Local bloke Deano Bould is now shaping boards for Island. He just shaped me a nice narrow 6 footer for Indo and it was awesome. I’m now keen for him to do me some more boards for Island waves.” So what’s Turtle riding? “My quiver ranges from 5’10’’ to 6’3’’. They’re all rounded pin thrusters. Width and thickness are the only things that vary.” For the last decade or so Turtle’s been building a very successful eco-tourism business but prior to that he led a rather less responsible life. “I travelled around Australia in a 1966 Land Rover ex-army ambulance. It was extremely rough to drive but it went anywhere I wanted to go. I set up the inside with bed, stove, fridge, cupboards, stereo etc. but I kept the outside original – still looked like an army truck. In a way it was kind of like a turtle driving around with a shell on my back!” From his home on the Island, Turtle travelled up the east coast to the Barrier Reef, then retraced his steps to Victoria. Next he headed west across the Nullarbor and then all the way up the west coast to the Bluff before returning home by the same route. “I was gone for three years. My favourite place was Cactus. I stayed there for 3 months. Collected firewood on Sundays with Ron the caretaker, and he let me stay for free. Surfing every day and eating salmon, calamari and abalone all the time. Got a bit sick of salmon though.” Turtle’s also found time for a couple of trips to New Caledonia. “We hired a catamaran both times, and sailed around the barrier reefs exploring all the reef passes. They were full-on adventure trips. We weren’t the best sailors but we had a good crack. Found lots of awesome waves but nearly sunk the boat a couple of times on the first trip. The best wave was ***** Pass. The wave breaks for 500m when the swell is big enough and wraps right around this reef pass, getting faster and hollower as it breaks down the line.” The photos above are from that Indo boat trip we mentioned earlier. “We told the skipper that we wanted to avoid the crowds. The swell was good so we headed for the Telos. Most of the waves were a bit shorter than I expected but they had heaps of punch and lots of barrels. The skipper took us to heaps of different places, some that only he knew about. Most of the waves were reefs, but we did go to a couple of beachies too. It was 2 weeks of heaven. The waves ranged from 3 foot to about 10 foot. I loved how you could pick out your board, a Balo puts it in the tender then he drives you out to the line up! When you’ve had enough, wave your board in the air and a couple of minutes later the dude comes and picks you up! Then you go back to the big boat and eat until you feel like your belly will explode.” We thought it’d be interesting to hear what a PI local thinks of competition surfing, given that the world’s longest running, most competitive and most prestigious kneeboard surfing competition is held practically in his backyard each year. “I’m not a very competition oriented surfer at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love to win, but unfortunately it doesn’t happen enough. The best thing about contests is getting together with a group of blokes who all love kneeboarding and having a good time. It’s also great to swap stories about shenanigans from years gone by. It’s funny how the stories get exaggerated as time goes on!” Turtle’s pretty clear about why he loves riding kneeboards. “I like being different, and I love the camaraderie between kneelos. Meet another kneelo in the water and he will always say g’day.” PI is blessed with a plethora of waves that work in different tides, swells and winds. “The Island’s awesome because there will nearly always be somewhere decent to surf most days of the year. A lot of interstate kneelos hate Kitty Miller Bay, but this is the place which I reckon is my local. Once you surf it a lot (and sometimes we have no choice!), you understand which ones to take and you can have some great surfs out there.” But the Island still holds its secrets, and they’re not given up lightly. “My favourite place to surf is … an amazing right hand barrel which works only on a handful of the biggest tides each year. When it’s on, take the day off work ‘cos it’ll blow your mind “. Of course if you want to know where it is, you’ll have to paddle out at Kitty Miller Bay and look for a legless type with green, green eyes … Rob Harwood RH Legless Images supplied by “turtle” Current World Kneeriding Champion Albert Munoz Shares some private moments with us from his recent trip to Indonesia. It looks super fun. Images: Brian Manahan Alley Rights to Uluwatu: Steve Artis talks story with SteenSB So did you get onto slabs at the first D’bah, were you riding slabs then? SA. Nah, the first Duranbah I had a board that was sort of like a combination of a twin-fin nose and a gun rail-line and then just brought out to around 13” and rounded off. I did it at the Hutchison factory, and my friend shaped it for me but we played with the templates … that was one of the first ones that I had direct input into. But a lot of the places … you know, I stayed with PC (Peter Crawford) and he’d be psyching you out the whole time. SB. Yeah, he was a pretty rad competitor eh? SA. Yeah, but I’d be so stoned that it didn’t really affect me. (Laughter) But he’d go …” Oh, oh … look, look, look … look at this … it’s a secret!” and you’d be looking at it and you wouldn’t know what you were looking at, you know, it’s just a psych-out thing. SB. So when did you make your first board? SA. I sort of had input into that one around ‘67 or ‘68 or something, and then I started hanging at Narrabeen more and more. I used to be at Curl Curl and then I’d go to Northy in the afternoons for the Nor’Easter and surf and then I started hanging there more often and … there was a guy up there - Jim Walsh, he’s passed away now. Jim was from Narrabeen and he was the president of NSW Surfing and Narrabeen Boardriders and did a lot of administration work. He was a schoolteacher. Well, he was a kneeboarder. I wouldn’t be able to tell you when he started … but I bought a blank and Col Smith shaped it for me and Jimmy Walsh glassed it. So it was a North Narrabeen board and then I surfed that for quite a while. It was really a slabby shape you know, a bit pointy nose, a little bit … wide, same wide point, you know … but the nose came to a bit more of a point. SB. What year was this? SA. Probably about 1969, 70? Yeah, about ’70 I’d say because I had that board for a while, and then Fitz (Terry Fiztgerald-Hot Buttered Surfboards) dropped in on me one day, out on the right-handers. Alley rights … and I went flying past him. And it blew him out that anyone would dare pass him after he’d dropped in, let alone a kneeboarder, you know? So he started talking to me from that time, and looked at my board and felt that he could do better. That led into him making me boards. He made me, oh, half a dozen boards that weren’t real, you know … SB. Sharp learning curve? SA. Oh, sharp learning curve, but his idea of what a kneeboard should be. There were a lot of aspects that were good, but it was very limiting in sloppy waves and stuff like that you know. It’s alright at Narrabeen … SB. Were they still semi slab shapes? SA. No they were more … pointier in the nose and … more or less like a short, wide, shortboard. Mostly swallowtails. He’d just widened his shortboard I’m sure. And then I’d had enough of those you know, it wasn’t going anywhere with those, and he made me pretty much a slab shape, single fin of course, about 5’6”. Well I was heading for Spain & Portugal. I … had a broken heart so I was gonna go over there and go and refresh it, see if I could get it broken again. So I flew to Malaysia, I was hitch-hiking around, met an Australian guy there and he said ‘Why don’t you go to Bali, there’s waves everywhere!’ SB. What year was that? SA. It was just after they’d shot Morning of The Earth, so whatever year that was. I think it was ‘72. So I lobbed in Bali and I stayed there for 3 months on my own. Oh, the girl who’d broken my heart arrived about halfway through it. So I was there for 3 months surfing. Oh it was insane. The first surf I had I paddled out at Kuta reef about four o’clock in the morning, it was about 3 or 4 ft, you know, it was only small. SB. And you were on that 5’6” single fin … SA. Yeah, I surfed that but I stayed out for too long and got the shit burned out of me so I didn’t surf for another 4 or 5 days. I had diarrhoea and Bali belly and the whole bit: sunstroke, the whole lot. So I just stayed in my room, locked myself in my room. And then I surfed along the beach at Kuta, probably what’s about halfway now, Kuta reef. SB. See any other kneeboarders there? SA. I did see another kneeboarder there and it was amazing. This guy was American, ginger hair and he had rail-straps, handles. And then Bruce Channon (from Surfing World) arrived. He’d been mostly a Narrabeen guy, and he was with Bob Evans and Peter Drouyn and Bob’s son and they were doing a movie on Drouyn. They’d been travelling around the world. And I’d been up to Uluwatu to have a look, just exploring around, and we went up there. Surfed up there maybe 5 or 6 times. SB. On a 5’6” single! How did that go? Would’ve been hard work, wouldn’t it? SA. Yeah, on a 5’6” single. Mate, it was … most … say 3 of the surfs we had were off the peak, probably say, 4 to 6 ft. so it wasn’t all that intimidating. Every time we surfed it was never really a high tide, you know. Then we surfed it a big day and I got two bottom turns in and went about 400 metres. Whether we just got the right angled swell or whatever, but it was like, yeah, going down the face I just had to wait till the board started to slow down before I could turn and when I’d turn the water was coming up over my rail and trying to rip my knee up off the deck. SB. So when you left Indo and came home you must have been ready to get out and kill the world? SA. Oh, nothing frightened me you know. I’ve just gone, ‘Yeah, bring on big waves!’ Images by Stephen Both, Richard “Nat” Palmer & couple unknown RH Legless Wollongong kneerider Braden Perry, came over to my place this afternoon to talk about his recent trip to Indo. Now, Brad has a family, so he looks for kid friendly spots to go on his surf trips. This time he chose Bingin in indonesia. Brad let me kindly know, that he had a 3 bedroom, 5 star Villa with its own pool overlooking the lineup. What a family holiday, surf looked OK aswell. Thanks Brad :) steeno Karl Ward: legless nomad St Ives in West Cornwall, UK, is known as a tourist destination, a fishing town and as a centre for art: the Tate Gallery’s International Contemporary and Modern Art Collection is based there. But first claim on the town goes to the Atlantic, a claim spectacularly demonstrated in 1891 when part of the St Ives Arts Club on the harbour was swept away by waves during a storm. Of course, where there are waves there are surfers. Enter Karl Ward. Karl’s really a Yorkshireman. Born in 1975 in landlocked Doncaster, he spent his first five years there until his parents moved to St Ives. “I’m so glad they did … near the ocean I found myself a whole new playground.” Karl was 10 when his parents bought him a £5.99 polystyrene ‘Surf King’. “This was when I found the buzz for riding waves. Unfortunately the Surf King didn’t last a day as the shore dump soon broke it into pieces.” Karl moved on to a boogie board for a few years, becoming pretty proficient, but felt something was missing. ”I was seeing some older guys at the beach riding kneeboards and just going so fast, way faster than I could go drop-knee, so at the age of 14 I got my hands on a second-hand kneeboard, a 5’ 6” 3-fin swallowtail. From that point I just knew this was me. I had found my vessel!” Why a kneeboard? “I was attracted to the speed, the low centre of gravity and the fact it was kinda different to what everyone else was riding.” As a grommet, all Karl’s friends were footboarders. With them he spent long hours studying Taylor Steele videos and finding ways to translate the manoeuvres he saw there to his kneeboard surfing. Over time this transformed into a personal quest to improve the performance level of progressive kneeboarding in the UK, a mission that became increasingly rewarding for Karl as his level of ability rose. “Kneeboarding as a sport in the surfing community takes a lot of flack and one of the reasons why I still kneeboard, (apart from the deep love I already have for it), is the odd compliment I get from surfers etc after you’ve just landed a big air or something. I get a good feeling knowing that the sport I love can be as progressive as mainstream surfing.” Like all grommets, Karl wore out his surf magazines dreaming about the exotic destinations featured in them. In 1992 a Tracks article on Sumbawa caught his imagination. Later that year, after a lot of hard work, Karl embarked on a 4-month sojourn on the island that left a lasting impression and set the course for his future. “It was amazing. From that point on I never looked back.” From 1994 to ‘97 he lived on the Gold Coast, and while based there he explored Australia’s East coast, scoring a lot of great waves as well as sessions with many other well-known Australian kneeboarders. “A lot of the top guys I admire as they have a sense of progressive drive in their surfing which appeals to me a lot.” 1998 found Karl living at Ocean Beach in San Diego, where he entered his very first contest: the kneeboard division of the local Surfer Bowl. He won. On his return to the UK he began competing seriously, taking 2nd in the English Nationals as an opener. He’s now won the British Kneeboard Championship 5 times and in between travels is a regular World Titles competitor. The list of places Karl’s surfed is impressive to say the least. It’s hard to believe that one man could do so much travelling, but this is a man on a mission to find waves. Apart from Australia, he’s so far explored Indonesia, the USA, Mexico, Hawaii, NZ, Brazil, the Caribbean, South Africa, Morocco and Europe. “Its all down to kneeboarding and I thank it for some amazing times and barrels. I hope it continues!” His trip to Oahu’s North Shore in 2005 proved to be another crucial milestone “Being lucky enough to spend some time surfing with Simon Farrer in Hawaii was a pivotal influence in my surfing … the power, style and progressive surfing that Simon makes look so effortless is truly amazing.” Sumbawa, Oahu and Morocco are all a long way from Cornish reality. “Surfing in the UK can be pretty trying. Rushing to the beach in freezing conditions with a 5mm suit, gloves, hood and boots hoping to catch a few waves before dark or before the tide changes and the surf craps out is something every surfer here accepts. It’s just the way it is for part of the year. There have been times when it’s so cold that your hands hurt and you can’t get the key in your car door to open it and you can’t get dressed properly! I dunno if we are more hardcore here … I mean you guys over there have to deal with sharks: to me that’s way more hardcore than the cold!” As you’d expect, Karl’s not letting any grass grow beneath his feet. His current pet project is moving full-time to West Oz. “I really am looking forward to surfing over there and ditching my 5mm suit … got my shark repellent ready too! I’ve spent a lot of my life travelling all over the world and the lifestyle you guys have is just amazing.” Considering this is a man who knows how to live out of the back of a van, likes long fast waves with big, open faces and doesn’t mind the odd barrel, we reckon he’s probably not just talking about barbeques and cold beer. RH Legless Pics: Steen, Duncan Jones and a few unknown Check out the latest update on the Drift site… Rob Slater has been nailing some great shots of all types of waveriding… Well worth a look CS KUMU (Hawaiian. n. Base, bottom, as of a wave. Also, origin, source, starting point, as of a wave)* Anyone who regularly rides powerful hollow waves is familiar with an inescapable fact of hydrodynamics. Every hollow breaking wave has a point on its face at which the flow of energy from the bottom to the top is such that movement down and forward is impossible. Power surfing is a cycle centred around that point of unbalance. From that critical point we draw the power needed to move around it, and when each draft of power is exhausted we return for more, never straying too far from it, always returning to it. This type of surfing is a balancing act in an unbalancing medium and its root manoeuvre is the bottom turn. Take off on a wave and accelerate as you might, it’s only when you reach the bottom that you tap into the real power. The sole function of the bottom turn is to transfer energy from the breaking wave into the vehicle you’re riding and put it under your control. That first turn marks the beginning of another cycle: that of the ride itself. Off the bottom and around the section, maybe ducking under the lip and racing down the line as the section throws, then flying out on to the face to cut back into the pocket and drive off the bottom again. A good bottom turn comes from instinct, experience, commitment and control, and makes a solid statement: ‘here and now the power in this wave is being released and by flexing against it here and now I can connect to it and fly’. This nexus of human, energy and medium has always been the foundation of radical power surfing in critical waves. We may speak of it in worn clichés - putting the board on rail; laying it over; cranking a turn; plugging into the power – but these expressions only state fact: power surfing depends absolutely on powerful bottom turns. Photos permit glimpses of what happens when a surfer connects with a wave’s power source in a bottom turn. These are moments of grace under pressure gone before they even register on the naked eye, frozen and preserved to be pored over in minute detail. The way the water releases from the rail here, the way the tail’s buried there, the finger trailing in glassy water, the tip of a fin just barely holding in: almost all of it done by instinct and muscle memory, at a quicksilver speed conscious thought couldn’t hope to match. An instinctive connection to kumu, a cycle within other cycles, played out in saltwater and ending in the dissolution of kinetic energy on a beach, reef or point somewhere near you. Get out, get down and enjoy the ride. * Mahalo and warm aloha to John R.K. Clark (again)RH Leglessmorning session with albert, and the on dark session with chayno… images:steen Todays effort, a bit of running around for a coupla fun ones, Albert & Chayne. SB Legless |
