December 29, 2008 Monday

Stinson Beach	Out front from the showers
10:30 am to 12:00 noon	3' to 4'
High tide - 5.9 ft	No wind
Overcast	Fun session

My New Board – Second Session

Late last October, two days after I had ordered my new board through Nate at Proof Lab, I was back in there to confirm that my ordered had been placed with Doug Haut in Santa Cruz.

As soon as Nate saw me walk in he emphatically said, “Your board is done. It’s in the back.”

“What?” I responded.

“You are just like all other surfers,” Nate continued. “You order a board and come back two days later wanting to know why it isn’t done.”

“I just wanted to ensure that Haut had my order,” I said.

“Your order is in,” Nate stated. “It’s a done deal. They’re working on it.”

“Great. Call me when it is done,” I responded.

I know that one has to be patient when doing business with surfers, and that includes 70-year old Doug Haut. Surfers have additional priorities that other businessmen don’t have, like surf conditions. What was supposed to take three weeks, took two months. My board came in Christmas Eve; I picked it up the day after Christmas and took it out the first time on Dec 27th.

I was anxious to ride it again. I drove to Bolinas, which was flat due to the high tide, thus I returned to Stinson. The waves were similar to the other day but smaller; peaks pushed up the berm and broke close to shore with no wind and glassy conditions. I had more wax on the board today and didn’t slip like the other day. I caught several small rights and lefts. I felt more comfortable on the board. It paddles faster than my old board, and enables me to get into waves sooner to position myself high in the curls. My last wave was my best, a three-foot fast breaking left where I managed to lock the board just under the lip of a well-formed curl and shoot through a good section. This was my first good nose ride and yes the board performed well.

I’m the type of surfer who has only one board in his quiver. Others like to have several boards of different shapes and sizes to match the different conditions. Not me, I ride the same board in small waves, big waves, flat sliders like the Patch and steep crunchers like at Montara and Kelly Ave in Half Moon Bay. Over time my body adjusts to the size and feel of the board. I become accustomed to its speed, its ability to turn, its support on the nose and its maneuverability in the curl. An analogy here is baseball players with their bats and tennis players with their racquets. A good major league hitter has ten bats, all of them exactly the same. He doesn’t change bats because of a different pitcher. Weight, feel of the bat and timing are critical to hitting the ball. Only when a hitter gets into a slump does he experiment with different size bats. The same holds true for tennis players. They walk into the tennis stadium with five racquets, everyone of them the same. They don’t switch racquets after the first serve because they know the second serve will be slower and with spin. No they use the same racquet because their bodies are accustomed to the feel, weight and timing of the racquet they have been using for months. Thus with time I will meld with the particulars of this board.

Last October I destroyed my old board when due to a crack in the bottom water pressure ripped off a three-foot sheet of fiberglass from mid-board to the tail fins (see my October 1 entry). I was due for a new board. I dithered around a few weeks looking at all the new boards at the local surf shops. While at Proof Lab I mentioned to Nate that I might go to Haut’s shop in Santa Cruz. Nate informed me he was an official Haut dealer and could get me a better price. He called them, read them the model numbers from my old board and placed an order for a custom built board. My new board was suppose to be exactly the same as my old one: length 9’ 2’’; thickness 3”; mid-point width 22”; nose width 16” and tail width 13.5”.

But my new board felt bigger. When I got home this morning I compared the model numbers on both boards; they were the same. I measured them and discovered that my old board is 21.5” wide and thinner in the rails. Thus I was right, my new board is slightly bigger, which for me is good. I was ready for a larger board. When you are 63 years old, you don’t downsize.

In my thirty years of surfing I have owned several boards but only three of them I purchased brand new. And they were all Hauts and were all the same. In 1996, I first went to Haut’s shop in Santa Cruz. I told the sales guy I was thinking of downsizing to an 8’ 6”. He pulled one off the rack and explained that this one was 9’ 0’’, 3” thick for plenty of floatation but thin in the rails thus less volume. It was a squaretail with three fins. I bought it and he was right. It floated me well and was very maneuverable. Five years later after driving this board into the ground, I returned to order a new one. On a Saturday, Doug Haut was there. I showed him my old board and told him I wanted another one just like it but a little bigger. I was ready to order a custom board. He looked at the board, read the numbers and pulled one off the rack.

“This one is very close,” he said. “And it’s on sale for $500. I could make you a new one for $800 and I could have it ready in eight weeks.”

“Sold,” I said. “I’ll take the one on sale.” I surfed on it that afternoon at the Hook. It was a great board, and I rode it for seven years until I ripped the bottom off it. So now my new board is just like my last two boards. For the last twelve years I have owned and ridden Doug Haut 9’ 2”, 3” thick, thin rails, squaretails, tri-fin boards and I love them.

Special thanks to Nate and crew at the Proof Lab Surf Shop in Mill Valley for securing my new custom board.