Slyding Sunrise to Sunset

This past Saturday saw the finless clans of the British surf community converge on Lusty Glaze beach to compete in this year's Approaching Lines Slyder Cup, presented by the good folks at Reef.  With it being just a few weeks shy of the winter solstice, the "Friction Affliction Winter Convention" filled the few short hours of daylight and extended the magical golden hour to cover what felt like half of the heats contested.  Huey co-operated and sent some solid lumps shoreward for the duration of the day, testing all competitors waterman skills as well as their abilities to ride waves with no traction.  Here's a selection of my shots from sun-up to sun-down that sum up a great day of wave sliding.

At first light the surf looked fun.  An hour later it had jumped in size by about four feet as a westerly swell filled in, providing big, cold and bumpy conditions for the bodysurfers.

Swasssshhhhh zone stand-off.  Crabbing my way half-way up a rock face and balancing my camera on my knees doesn't get quite the same results as a tripod, it would seem.

There was a lot of water moving around the small bay as the bodysurfers competed at high tide, with wash-through sets leaving the "smaller" inside waves as the only consistent options.

Wooden surfboard shaper James Otter preparing to swim out with a handplane produced using offcuts from one of his surfboards. 

I'm pretty sure that Rich Pope was entered into every category.  Here he takes on an outside bomb on a 4'x1' bent plywood bellyboard before going on to win the air mat category and take second place overall.

The Otter Surfboards demostration station - showing what goes on at a bodysurfing "build-your-own" workshop experience day.

Jimbo Bennet returned to defend his title, drifting all over the place on an albacore with control and grace - here delaying the drop with a mid-face tail slide.

Pat from Surfboard Art Wales made the trip down and caught some screamers in the paipo category, switching between prone and kneeling and causing the judges to quickly glance at the scoring system.

Sarah Bentley, deserved winner of the "Most Stylish Human" award for making drop like this time and time again on a surfboard with no fins.

The twilight expression session saw all manner of wave-sliding craft in the line-up, including Ross Curwen and his trusty tray.

The mat finalists making walk to the waters edge at low tide, and considering how they might paddle a large, buoyant, bag of air out through shifty overhead surf.

Contenders ready!  The finless finalists.

Jimbo Bennet using nothing but rail to stick a drop that most surfers would be stoked on if they had a few fins in their board.

Finless friends, congratulating each other on a well surfed day and demonstrating the camaraderie that exists between the tribes.

Event Director Chris Nelson with Wooden Surfboard maker James Otter, watching the sun set on the last minutes of the grand final and a day of great surfing.

Paipo-a-Go-Go

Me, a big baked bean and some deep-winter wedges.

What with it having been a long weekend here in the UK and many other countries, I should really have written this post a week ago so that the classic long weekend of DIY hammering and sawing could be channeled into producing one of these wonderful little surf craft.  But I've just moved house and spent the last few weeks without internet access, so now the challenge is for you to make one of these in two days instead of three next weekend…

But just what is it?

Dan Crockett on an Otter paipo.

When Captain James Cook dropped anchor in a Hawaiian bay in 1778 he witnessed many of the locals riding waves lying down on wooden boards.  These basic wave riding craft are called paipos (pronounced pipe-oh) and the name is derived from the Hawaiian "Pae Po'o" which means "to surf headfirst".  Generally around 3 feet long, the paipo is the little brother of larger finless Hawaiian designs such as the alaia and olo, the alaia having experienced a resurrection of sorts over the past decade in alternative surf-craft circles.  Travellers to and from the Hawaiian islands at the turn of the last century exported the paipo and it was adapted at various coastal locations around the world, becoming known most commonly as a "bellyboard".  In the 1970's Tom Morey introduced the boogie board and foam bodyboards instantly overshadowed the traditional paipo, with just a few small pockets of traditionalists keeping the flame burning - mostly in Hawaii.

I made my paipo a few years ago, and it's the sort of board that sits in my quiver waiting for a time when I've surfed enough good waves on my regular stick to make heading out on something a little different not seem like much of a risk to my monthly wave-count.  I managed to get hold of a 3'6" long paulownia kitchen worktop off-cut from a friend (the same wood that the majority of alaias are made from) and wondered for a while what I could make with it.  The worktop was made from a number of planks of varying widths, all glued together.  I cut these apart, trimmed them to uniform widths and then glued them back together with thin strips of a random hardwood (that I had some strips of lying around my workshop) sandwiched in between them.  I planed down the hardwood stringers and then drew out a template for my paipo.  It looked like a giant baked bean.  Once I'd cut out the shape of the board I shaped the rails using a small block plane (turned down at the tail, up at the nose and 50/50 through the middle section) with the board clamped against a workbench.  Because I have a bit of a thing for not wasting off-cuts I cut a band to go around nose on the deck, using the same template, and once it was glued in place I routed a groove into it to act as a hand-grip.  The whole thing was sanded smooth and then had a few coats of linseed oil to seal it before being taken for a splash in the sea.  All up it was a fun way to spend some time and I came out the other side with a new surfboard, of sorts.  It takes the bare minimum of tools (a pencil, saw, a few sash-cramps, glue, a block plane and abrasive paper) if you want to try making one yourself.  Essentially it's just a wooden bodyboard which makes it the ideal choice for shorebreaks, but it's also great just to run in with for a quick half hour in summer to catch a few waves and ride some whitewater back towards the beach.  It depends how seriously you take your surfing, I guess.  If you're open to different ways of experiencing waves though then I would definitely recommend sliding in on a few head first.

Ride anything: wave-wise and board-wise.

Check out the stoke that the crew at The Paipo Society have for these things, and keep your eyes peeled for the next Approaching Lines Slyder Cup event - celebrating finless surfing in all of it's many forms.