EIGHT BOARDS, THREE SURFERS, FIVE SESSIONS.
WE TEST A QUIVER OF HYBRID AND RETRO BOARDS.

What goes around, comes around. Old boards and smooth lines are all the rage right now. With the resurgence of the soul factor, alternative shapes are starting to pop up in everybody’s quiver. Joel Tudor led the way in popularising retro models with his well-documented experiments at Pipeline. Now scores of longboarders are following suit, checking out the vast array of shapes that are available.
Original ‘70s single-fins typically have a narrow tail and a wide-point way up the front. Contemporary ‘retro’ shapes hark back to those designs but update them using modern bottom curves and lightweight materials. Modern ‘egg’ shapes are a blend of old and new, incorporating the fun factor with smooth, simple lines and state-of-the-art fin configurations.
We assembled eight boards and asked Will Eastham, Sam Bleakley and Ben Skinner to put them through their paces. Here’s what they thought about them...

Ben: A really cool old board which had a nice flowing feeling...but it was a mission to duck dive! Chops has restored it really well.

Will: To be honest, I think we rode it in the wrong kind of surf [slow two-foot waves at Watergate]. I think you need a nice hollow four-foot wave to get it going, and even then you’d have to keep it in the steepest part of the wave. All the volume is at the front so when you're paddling it you’ve got to be right up there.

Sam: An archive beauty. It takes a good surfer to ride these boards well...makes you appreciate the skills of the old dudes like Larry Bertlemann, Jeff Hakman and Gerry Lopez. You have to surf it completely differently from a modern board because of its weight and volume. I’d love to see how it goes in hollow head-high waves.

Sam: This board did everything you’d want an egg to do. It was fast and loose but still paddled really well. The tail is shape is spot-on and the rails are nicely tucked. As soon as you stood up it felt as lively as a skateboard.

Will: For me it was the best board. I loved it. If you ride a longboard and want to come down in length, it’s perfect. You can throw it around — it’ll do cutbacks and top turns — and the fin setup makes it really responsive with plenty of drive.

Ben: Yeah, a very nice board. Quite a lot of kick in the nose and the tail so you could fling it around...good for rail-to-rail surfing.

Ben: This board was really good fun. It paddled like a longboard, with similar buoyancy and thickness, but being much shorter you could really throw it around. The single-fin setup gives a nice mix of traditional and progressive qualities.

Will: It caught waves very easily because it’s nice and flat and wide. It’s perfect for two- to three-foot sloppy beachbreak waves, and it’ll also go in medium-sized waves.

Sam: The Magic Carpet is basically a longboard with the middle chopped out. It’s disc-like and loose which makes it well suited for slow mushburgers

Will: I was quite surprised by this plastic fantastic BiC board. I thought it went pretty well really. The rails are the right shape and there’s a lot of kick in the tail which meant you could really move it around.

Sam: It’s a bit heavier than the fibreglass boards but it caught waves no problem. What a great board to ride in shorebreaks and near rocks where you don’t have to worry about smashing it up!

Ben: A solid, enjoyable board to ride. It could be the future...but I doubt it.

Ben: This board was the longest one we rode, and I found it pretty similar to a longboard really. It catches waves really easily due to it’s volume and it’s really smooth. You can get on the nose or surf it off the tail...it does everything!

Sam: A great board. You can tell that Tim put a lot of thought into this shape with the egg-like rails and the roll in the nose (totally opposite to the concaves you see in the nose of most mals). A nicely crafted board that rode really well.

Will: Yeah, this is another very nice board. It was good for nose-rides, while the thruster setup gave speed and drive through the turns. Very smooth.

Sam: A gem of a board, very different from the rest being way shorter and a twin-fin. No match for the eggs and mini-mals in sloppy surf, but great fun in small sucky waves. The Volan glassjob and resin tint adds to the cool retro look.

Will: This one’s obviously much shorter than the others but it’s got lots of width and float which made it easy and fun to ride.

Ben: Cool for cruising with an old skool style...you have to try to flow and glide rather than be too aggressive.

Sam: This board has a lot of similar features to the Magic Carpet. It’s got a good planing area and a nice bottom shape, so it catches waves easily and is smooth through turns. It’s not really designed for the steep sucky waves we got at North Fistral — the soft rails made it a bit slippy to say the least! But we all managed to get in the slot. I’d say it would be an ideal board for small summer surf conditions when you need a bit of volume to get going.

Will: I enjoyed surfing it on my forehand in hollow waves. It’s a nice easy board to come onto from a longboard, and you can just about duck-dive it as well.

Ben: This one has a longer fin than the Carpet which made it a bit easier to hold a bottom turn. We rode it as a single-fin but it has FCS plugs so you could put side fins in for more control in punchy waves.

Ben: This board was wicked. I rode it In four-foot waves at Morgan Porth and I felt like I could do anything on it because it was so light and fast off the bottom. Nice rails too, it really carves.

Will: Super responsive. A much more traditional template than the others with the bulk of the volume in the nose and a fairly tapered tail. The bottom shape has a bit of vee in the tail, flat through the middle then a bit of roll further up. It went rail-to-rail easily and turned really well too...in fact I think I’m going to make a copy of the template!

Sam: Looking at the planshape you can see this board is a Californian-style beauty. But the really interesting thing about it is the epoxy construction. It’s really light and super stiff. It feels much smaller in the water than it actually is, which is a great sign. I rode one of these in perfect waves at Sunset Cliffs in California this winter, and it was the business. It’s very nicely made and really solid. Super solid actually. Like, if a normal board cracked you on the head the board would ding; but if this cracked you on the head, your head
would ding!