Could You Perform Like This On A Board From The Late 1900s? S.U.R.F. Episode 2

Yeah, we're so cooking. Holy smokes. What? You boys were getting it done this day. Welcome to the second episode of SURF, a four-part series where each episode, our chosen four surfers compete against each other in different surf-based challenges. If you missed the first episode, our surfers Ozzy, Krooky, Solly and Vinny competed in our Space Challenge, a competition to see who could get the longest single ride. Ozzy Ride took it down by catching a wave of 643 metres and currently leads the points race for our overall winner that will win one million cents, or $10,000 if you prefer dollars as your unit of measurement. This episode, our challenge starting with you is Uncover, where surfers have nothing more than $100 and a case of Byron Bay Premium Lager as their bargaining power to try and find the best second-hand surfboard they can in a local area. The winner of this challenge will be whoever can take this cheap, nasty and old board and surf the best on it. Our surf company's boards will feature all four surfers in one session, a straight-out final at a pumping Byron Bay beach break. No! I think it's going to be pretty funny, getting to go and heckle some dude or someone for a surfboard. I hope people buy really torched 90s shorties. Function-wise, I probably should get not this oldest board on here. I'll be looking for something that looks like something that I think I could surf. But, I'm such a fashion victim, I just want the brownest board I can find. The hardest part of this challenge is surfing. I'm going to put it down to board selection. Dealing with the computer screen to try and buy a surfboard. I'd like to ride like a 6'0 or 6'1, but who knows. I'll know it when I see. Yeah. Industry experts estimate that in Australia there's approximately 175,000 surfboards made each year, which means internationally the amount of boards made each year is... The majority of these boards are made with a heavy dependence on petroleum products and harmful chemicals. The power of this chemical is way beyond anything you can imagine. Including polyurethane, polystyrene, expanded polystyrene, extruded polystyrene, fiberglass cloth, resin, carbon and cigarettes. The CO2 emissions from the typical production methods of an average shortboard is 272 kilograms, which is... On top of that, these materials damage easily and age rapidly in the sun, turning all shades of yellow, which makes them, like, not all nice and new and stuff. This, as well as shifting trends in surfboard design, results in hundreds of thousands of perfectly functional surfboards being discarded every year. Despite this, many surfers continue to consider themselves nature-loving purists and environmentalists. When in reality, Mama Nature probably hates our guts. This is my happy Earth. This one is sad. One way to get old Mama Earth back on side is to reduce the demand for new boards by finding old boards at the bottom end of the second-hand market. Brand-new shortboards, depending on their materials, on average can cost anywhere from $600 to $1,200. But just like new cars, as soon as they're ridden off the lot, their value reduces drastically. The second-hand surfboard market is stacked with options, but when you have a budget of no more than $100 and 24 beers, like our surfers do in this challenge, you're generally limited to boards that are decades-old brown and falling apart, or the altruism of beer-desperate donors, or whatever craft your best bargaining skills can acquire. All of our surfers' first moves in this challenge were to look online at the multiple websites that sell second-hand boards. These two skies look pretty good. One of them says Bone Bay on it. I'm liking the look of this board. That's torched. Picture frame surfboard. They've turned the surfboard into a picture frame. There's one with a Mad Huey Spono sticker In your right mind, you think you're going to get $1,100 for this thing. Positive spray job. It says $150 each. He won it for him. What's your ballpark sticker? $69. Good price point. $250. I reckon we can get him down to $100. He wants $225 for it. This is the one. How do we call him? All right, moving on. After looking around the web, the surfers next ventured offline, exploring the various second-hand shops in the local area, including pawnbrokers and rubbish tip shops that collect and sell other people's discarded rubbish. Let's go see what the tip's got. I think I had this exact springy when I was a kid. Pretty slim pickings in the old pawnbrokers in terms of boards. Hmm. Not much, is there? $100. Kelly Slater. So thin. You've got an empty board rack. Oh. Local motion looks bullshit. Speed, power, flow, claiming, progression. Hardcore shredding. Top to bottom, all the way to the beach. Six to the beach. Three to the beach. Not going to be able to compete with the other boys. Probably won't do very well. Me, Vinnie and Krooky have got no chance of ever making it. Oh, well. Out of the four surfers, I'm probably the only competitive surfer out of them. Sully is the only competitive surfer in our group and has even qualified for the Elite World Tour, a feat many surfers dream of but few ever achieve. I'd be pretty happy if I didn't do well out of it. Strategy, I mean, get the board and surf it, as if I was surfing a CT heat. The other three surfers are what is known as free surfers, a term that means they're free to do whatever they want, including surfing, because they're not in jail. Competitive surf jail. I like that kind of surfing. I'm just going to try it. Go to the bottom, go to the top. Bottom, top, top, bottom, top to the bottom. I feel like Ozzy could do pretty good. I can't remember the last heat I surfed. We need a section, we need a section! And another round for Ozzy! A round for Ozzy Watts! A huge thank you. I know for a fact that Ozzy watches the Antiques Roadshow, so he knows a bargain when he sees one. He's also very charismatic and likeable, so people may be more inclined to sell him a board for a case of beer and money where they wouldn't normally. Ozzy had some luck at a local tip shop and managed to stretch his dollar by finding not one, but two boards shaped by iconic Australian shapers. Jim Banks. Might break first wave. And Gold Coast shaper Dick Van Straalen. Mad ding, but it's pretty sick. How's the tail rocker in it? I reckon I could get two for a hundred. Now I've got a quiver. It's going to break pretty soon, but I'm a mate of Jim's, so I reckon I just want to get it so I can say I bought one of your boards, mate. All right. I've still got 75 bucks and a case of beer. I might be able to get a few more boards. You drink? Cheers. Thanks, man. No worries. I was just wondering, do you have any surfboards? Surfboard, not at the moment, yeah. Vinnie gave up on the second-hand stores and returned to the World Wide Web where he managed to find a board with some sentimental value. It was like my first Spono when I was a kid, Yorkie. I've got a good feeling about this one. Oh, we're on it. Did you get it second-hand? Yeah. It's pretty sexy. It's pretty... It goes really fast. I quite like fast boards. All righty. Thank you. In exchange. Oh, yeah. And you want some cash too? Yes, please. Pleasure doing business. Pleasure. I think I hit the jackpot. All right. 30 boards in a container. Here we come. Sully managed to locate a board collector that wasn't interested in being on camera but owned an entire container full of old boards from iconic shapers from all over the world. We're pretty happy with this. We've got $100 and a case of beers. Would that be... All right, with you? All right. This is me. Done deal. Picked it up and knew straight away. All right. Well, yeah. Thank you very much for the album. I'm very appreciative. And this is a case of beer and the $100. I'll give you that. Thank you. I'll take that. Awesome. Oh, we're on here. Krooky, on the other hand, went no further than one of his neighbour's houses that is set up as a permanent garage sale and was happy to make his choice from the limited options that they had in their front yard. They're actually crud. They're so bad. Dude, they're so much more scorched than I thought. There's no options. Like, look at this. I'd happily walk away from here with this under my arm. I just like how narrow it is. I'm ready to buy. Hello. With no one manning the merchandise, Krooky left a note, an extra $11 over the $49 asking price and a case of beer as a bonus. The weapon of choice for the Krookster. Done. Byron Bay is most well known for its user-friendly and extremely crowded point breaks, but for the Uncover Challenge, we decided to get away from the crowds and explore one of the lesser-known beach breaks of the area. Between Byron's points are long stretches of straight beach without any headlands, river mouths or rocks. This means for 663 days a year, these beach breaks are straight closeouts that are virtually unsurfable. But if you're there on the right day, a day with an uncommon swell direction, these beach breaks can turn into incredibly fun barrelling peaks. Ozzy, Vinnie and Solly showed up on time for the challenge, got ready and paddled out, but Krooky was nowhere to be seen. The first board Ozzy decided to surf was his Dick Van Straalen. Dick is an underground Australian shaper revered for his innovation and creativity. His career began in 1956, spending most of his time shaping out of the Gold Coast, 90 kilometres north of Byron Bay. He's a devout hand shaper, and over the past 50 years, Dick's shaped an impressive variety of boards that highlight his experimental philosophy and eccentric personality. Dave Rastovich started riding Dick Van Straalen's boards at the age of 14 and continues to keep Dick on his roster of shapers 26 years later. Ozzy's Dick Van Straalen is a swallowtail thruster, is 25 years old and features multiple poorly executed repairs, plenty of fresh dings, very technical flyers, a very scorched grip pad and a really disgusting wax job. Also notable was Ozzy's fin choice. He chose to use three completely different fins from three completely different brands. Boy's already out there, am I late. By the time Ozzy showed up, everyone was already in the water surfing. As he was scrambling to secure his fins so that he could get out in the water as well, he realised his board didn't have any grub screws, the tiny little screws that fasten the fins to the bottom of the board. There's no grub screws in it. Have you got grub screws? You're kidding. These screws are just 4.8 millimetres in length and only cost 37 cents each. But if they're missing from your board, there's no way to attach your fins. Ari only had enough grub screws to secure one fin to his board, a bizarre winged keel design. With no other choice, he entered the water not only very late, but also riding a thruster as a single fin. That's a winning, winning board. Alright. Ari managed to find some decent ways, but his unintentional single fin lacked drive and hold. He was forced to nurse turns and utilise experimental stances. Ari's board was shaped by Greg Webb, not to be confused with Greg Webb-er, a completely different guy. Greg Webb began his career in Adelaide, Australia in 1968. He relocated to the Gold Coast in 1979 and began working with some of the area's best shapers before starting his own brand, Shaping Co, in 1983. Greg still shapes to this day and his son Ben continues the family tradition of making knifey, narrow boards with longer rail lines that, as you can see here, work extremely well under his own feet. Crookie's board is a 26-year-old, heavily rockered, high-wide point gun that was made for the solid barrelling waves of Bali. For its age, this board is in relatively good condition. It features a chipped nose, complete with a price sticker still on, multiple dings and cracks, pinstripe rails and the most disgusting wax job of all the boards. Wax so old, it's turned completely black and even has some kind of weird hair growing in it, possibly dog hair or potentially the nipple hairs of its previous owner. Despite just about everything working against him, Crookie managed to find one of the best waves of the day and navigate it perfectly, even though he had compromised equipment. Performance. Performance surfing. I was hunting for that wave the whole session. Yeah, I was stoked. I was so tentative, just like tippy-toeing, you know, not pushing too hard or else it slips out. It works pretty good, but it's surprising how much drive and directional stability you can get from just this little guy. Obviously, I was getting a lot of lift as well out of the fin. That's why I was going so fast and getting all the best waves and posting such high scores the whole heat, I guess. Crookie packed it in early. Meanwhile, Sully was falling in love. So fun. Heaps of drive. It's almost hard to surf because it's so drivey. Like, there's sections where I'm like, it's overpowering me, which is kind of radical because most of the time, like, you just got this little, like, sick tic-tac kind of board under your feet that feels good, but it's just a completely different feeling. It's kind of cool to feel. I'd never really experienced it like this. Sully's board was made by one of surfing's most celebrated board designers, Alan Byrne. A former member of the New Zealand Air Force, it's here that Al first learned about aerodynamics and how the properties of objects that reduce resistance could affect the flying experience. He later applied these lessons to create his groundbreaking channel bottoms and fin templates that he's famous for today. Al was known as the guru of the channel bottom and known for his master craftsmanship of this difficult-to-make surfboard design. Al was also known for his skills in charging as a surfer that continued all the way up until his unfortunate passing at the age of 62. The board Sully found was a highly refined performance for us, so that was particularly rare because it was from a brief period in the early 90s where Al stopped making channel bottoms to solely make flat-bottomed boards. This board features zero channels, glassed-in fins, exposed foam on the nose, a cracked tail, a cracked rail, multiple decals, various pressure dings and chunks of shattered glass, and a beautiful, clean, fresh wax job. Halfway through the session, Ozzy decided to swap out his Dick Van Strallen fish for his Jim Banks thruster. I'm going to try my Banksie. Jim Banks is an Australian board builder and former pro surfer. At the height of his competitive career in 1982, Jim walked away from a top 16 position on the world tour to hunt down remote and intense waves that most surfers of the era wanted nothing to do with. Jim is one of surfing's most revered characters, famous for his early exploration around Indonesia where he's now been permanently based for the past 12 years. Ozzy and Jim are good friends and Jim has previously shaped Ozzy some boards. This board, however, is a 30-year-old thick rail thruster. It's the oldest of all the boards and in the worst condition by far. It features multiple creases, a sunken deck with protruding stringer, glassed-in fins with plenty of cracks, and whatever this is growing underneath the glass. Oh yeah, and another disgusting wax job. Look at this gun. Mud for wax. Oh, look at that thing. Jake's board is a Yorkie that just so happens to be shaped by his first sponsor back when he was just 14 years old. Yorkie is a label started by shaper Adrian Yorke. Obsessed with surfboards from an early age, in 1986 at the age of 16, Adrian taught himself to shape and built himself a shaping bay at his family home. Adrian obsessively focuses on developing complex mathematical design systems that allow him to be able to replicate any board he's ever shaped. He meticulously documents every board's build and was even able to provide us with these images of the different phases of construction of the exact board that Jake was riding. Jake's board was by far the youngest and easily in the best condition of all the boards. It features a stringerless blank, carbon strips, flyers, a diamond tail, complex channel bottom, and a thick, heavily combed wax job. After Ozzy joined Krooky on the beach, Vinny and Solly continued to battle it out with two very different approaches. Vinny riding his modern experimental design with his modern high-tech surfing to match, and Solly on his 1990s design and his perfectly appropriate no-nonsense power surfing from the era. Proof is in the pudding, really. Bit of fun. Couple jumps. Couple little tricks now. Bring it in, the tricks. I'm not going to beat Solly if I'm trying to do snaps and cutties and stuff, so I've just got to try and out-trick these guys on their 7-0s. I mean, I don't know how much more those boards are worth, but to a good surfer, they're ******* worth everything. That Alburn that I've got there, it's like the best board I've got in my house now. Like, I mean, yeah, sure, I won't ride it every day, but it's like, it's a collectible to me, and it freaking works, too. So I'm psyched. Look at the ******* force of the air. That was so sick. I was getting, like, 10-centimeter-long tube rides and I just thought I was ripping. This board's so proven. So good. The best man wins. Look at the power. We're getting it done this day. Unlike our last challenge, Space, where the winner was decided by an objective piece of technology, for our Uncover challenge and remaining two, we're making the surfers decide the winners by judging each other. Rules are you're allowed to vote for the other guys, you're not allowed to vote for yourself. You've got to go first to third, and you've got about 20 seconds to do it. All right. Oh, it's hard. We have to do it, though. Holy ****. ****. It's a hard one. Gee whiz. It's a hard one. ****, it's really hard, actually. I'm going to put Krooky in third, though, mainly because of his choice of fin. Sorry, Krooky, but he got those couple of good pits. Vinny, Ozzy, and Ari, obviously. I'm thinking like myself. I was just getting some sick pits, but it's probably Sully for the win. And then these two. ****, I was shredding. I mean, Sully went ******* nuts. He got that layback bar. Sully, shredding just dominated the scene all morning. Although Vinny was a close second. He had me probably the most excited, but fewer times. As far as whacking it goes, Sully really just whacked it. Vinny was doing some pretty like tech stuff on his board. I was kind of like fully shocked when I watched him surf on that thing. Sully was just carving like a maniac, got the sickest layback barrel. The board looked amazing, but Vinny just did all kinds of funky tricks with all this cool like trippy style. Super stylish, so give it to Vinny. Cookie! Sorry, dog. You got eyes. You got posy. Boom! Sully! Whoa! That's big. Equal. Hey! Split it. I reckon that's actually right. Yeah, that's big. That's kind of awesome. I sort of felt like I was like, ----, it's ******* it's right there, like boom. With two challenges down, the leaderboard looked like this. Vinny has jumped ahead of Ozzy with 15 points, Ozzy has moved down a second with 14 points, Sully remains in third with a total of 13 points, and after his second last place finish in only two challenges, Cookie's way in the back with less than half of Sully on six points. Our next challenge starting with R is resourcefulness, which involves our surfers sticking together the ends of two completely different snapboards with no traditional surfboard materials, just whatever they can find at the local hardware store with a budget of $200. This is actually going to be hilarious. I'm pretty pumped now. Woo! Nice. Two winners. Um, wow. How great. Double the fun. Well deserved. Ah, tip of the hat to you. I feel like I almost cheated because I wasn't my board wasn't brown enough. When I like walked in here without watching anything, I was like confident. I was like, yeah, okay, I had a ******* sick day on my board. But then I seen Vinny, I was like, whoa, he also had a sick day. All the boards went mental. It's pretty good to know that I'll be able to get boards off Gumtree in the future. Yeah. Ballina Tip Shop is my new shape. Yeah.