Surfing
Board check: Soft tops
When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Go Soft
The very existence of soft-top surfboards came about in the 80’s with the Californian ‘Black Ball’ system, where surfboards were banned from bathing beaches for safety reasons. It turns out, and rightly so, that a fiberglass surfboard underneath the feet of a beginner surfer is an unguided missile that can cause untold damage on innocent bathers. There was no distinction between beginner surfers and highly experienced and competent surfers obviously. It was a simple blanket-ban on all surf craft, causing much frustration for many surfers who were not allowed to surf their local breaks during certain times.
There was a loophole however, and while the name of the actual surfer who figured it out at the time is forever lost in those mists of time, it was undoubtedly someone like Rob Machado, addicted to surfing and focused on having fun more than anything else. That surfer worked out that soft-top surfboards were legal in Black Ball-demarcated areas, and while they were way less maneuverable and fast to ride, they still provided endless of amounts of pleasure. Thus began a revolution of sorts.
This movement, for want of a better word, has gone full circle now, with surfers taking Beater surfboards out in the most challenging of conditions. Jamie O’Brien and friends are totally nonchalant with their approach to surfing on their Beaters of different lengths, and take them out at places like Pipeline and Jaws to name a few. It does not stop there, with these surfers getting up to antics like tandem surfing at Pipe on soft tops, of surfboard transfers at grinding Backdoor. Some of the most revered waves in the world are now subject to surfers paddling out on pink soft tops on decent sized days to have their fun. Bruce Irons even surfed Teahupo’o on a soft top once upon a time.
While these moments are highly entertaining and show the inanity of the act of surfing at times, the soft tops also have a very clear function in the hierarchy of surfing in that they are the best craft for kids to learn to surf on. No chance of getting a big board to the head or leg, and very little chance of a fin cut. Also, if the groms are at the really early stages and are riding all the way to the sand on little foamies then the soft-tops wont dig into the sand and come bouncing back at them, a situation that has caused injuries in the past. Soft tops are the way to get going in the surf with minimal risk. The amount of stoke on a groms face as he or she flies towards the shoreline on a soft top is reason enough to buy one, no matter what the price. They are buoyant, they catch waves easily and they are not going to hurt.
In South Africa two exponents of the soft-top revolution are Jason Ribbink and Ricky Basnett on their Beaters. Both have utilized their soft-top boards in real surf and have challenged the norms by surfing them when there are consequences in the surf. Jason was the surfer who paddled out on a decent six-foot day at Supers on his little sub-five Julian Wilson Beater, and proceeded to ride some bombs all the way through to Impossibles, doing turns and open face carves along the way. Ribbink is the kind of surfer who can ride anything, and is always keen to give it a go. Ricky on the other hand has been having fun on his Beater in all conditions, on the point-breaks of the Eastern Cape, and on the beachies and anything else in between. Ricky is another surfer like Machado who is focused on having fun, and has figured out that the soft top is one way of getting that required fun level. Sometimes it seems that these surfers who paddle out on a soft-top or a beater are actually compromising themselves, and that they would be better off with a normal PU surfboard, but then you see the smile on Ricky’s face as he flies past, and something clicks.