Waimea Bay On A 5'8": Two Surfers Rave About The (Seemingly) Impossible
In 1982 Cheyne Horan had been on the World Tour for six years and was ranked second in the world, yet despite his competitive success Horan was beginning to move away from the cloistered world of pro surfing. By the middle of the decade he was living in a non-traditional commune, practicing yoga daily and militantly maintaining a healthy diet.
But before all that came the surfboard experimentation. With Geoff McCoy in his corner Horan began to probe and push the limits of surfboard design. In the following article Horan and McCoy talk about one of their most audacious yet little known efforts - riding a 5'8" surfboard in 20 foot waves at Waimea Bay. It was a feat that was largely overlooked by the press of the day but has assumed greater significance since the advent of tow surfing.
Geoff McCoy I had the idea of riding a small board in big waves, it was always a fantasy I had but Cheyne was the one that pushed me to go ahead and design a board to accomplish it.
Cheyne Horan 'Small can't be ridden in big waves.' That was the consensus of the general surfing fraternity. At the time I wanted to change surfing's approach and attack on a wave; when people went down I went up, when they went along the bottom I went along the top. So when they said you can only ride long boards in big waves I rode small boards and this is the first one.
Geoff McCoy At that time Cheyne and I were a potent combination; I had the vision, knowledge and skill to design the object and Cheyne had the vision, knowledge, balls and skill to pilot the object. So we went about making it happen.
Cheyne Horan A 5' 8" McCoy Lazor Zap, can you imagine how excited Geoff and I were in the shaping bay? We were about to change the way surfing in big waves was perceived. Geoff put everything into this shape. He spent many hours considering what to design for the mission we were to attempt. It was a whole new experience to design and shape a small board that would perform in big Hawaiian conditions. The board had to perform like no other board had ever done before.
Cheyne reunited with the board in 2012
Geoff McCoy I used Sunset and Pipeline as the two extremes for surfboard design and function, as to me they represent the essence of pure energy in the form of waves. Pipeline is a tubular 'round eye' with a steep wall requiring a shorter length board with more bottom curve and a high shoulder, full rail combined with a soft bottom rail to hold water on the steep, hard surface tension walls.
Sunset is the 'almond eye' with a long sloping faces requiring long, drawn out arcs, and you also travel longer distances to surf the wave. This requires a board that has a drawn out planshape and flatter bottom curves with a low shoulder rail.
I had spent many winters on the North Shore studying big wave designs with guys like BK, Reno and Jeff Hakman. I'd formulated designs that were working well for the McCoy team, guys like Larry Blair, Grant Oliver, Mark Warren and Steve Jones, so I felt confident going into the bay to shape this board.
I balanced out the design requirements combining a flatter bottom curve for running long distance, a planshape that would turn short arcs, plus a rail combination of open soft bottom with a lower shoulder off the deck. I got a blank glued up with less rocker, so I could have those longer flatter rocker curves for running speed.
The board was glassed heavy so it had momentum and sat on the water to give it good control in the windy, choppy conditions that it would need to deal with.
Cheyne Horan Geoff decided to use longer, flatter curves in the bottom and a little straighter curves in the planshape. The fin we designed was known as the Finger Fin. It had a very narrow base area with a long extended tip area. This allowed the board to run long arcs because the tip area was deeper in the water. At the same time the narrow stem allowed for easy turning. It was a very successful and practical design for its needs.
Geoff McCoy The main problem with the Finger Fin design was strength, by putting the base area in the tip of the fin it transferred the extra pressure to the tip area. This combined with its narrow shape put the stem and base area under greater pressure causing the base to sometimes break. To offset the problem we made the fin thicker but at high speed the extra thickness would lift the back of the board and cause it to cavitate. The solution would have been to use an aluminium fin but that became too much of a project at the time.
Cheyne Horan Paddling out at an out-of-control Sunset Beach the ultimate test was about to happen with no one out or on the beach. Will it work? Can I catch a wave of this magnitude? Yes I was scared, the waves were hairy and if I were to wipeout I was on my own. After a horrendous days surfing on massive faces with a board that could turn tight and long it became clear to me that small boards could surf big waves. I was convinced after riding Sunset, the next step now was Pipe.
Geoff McCoy I knew with what I had shaped that this same design would ride both Sunset and Waimea because both waves had big open faces with long distances to travel, but Pipeline was such a different requirement with steep, vertical walls. But I kinda still felt confident it would surf Pipe good.
Cheyne Horan One cloudy, windy afternoon Pipe was 10-12 foot and barreling with only a few guys out. I knew the take off spot and I got in relatively easy, dropping in vertically on edge and making it. After a few it felt like a beachbreak so I started to try and hit the lip. One wave I went up inside the corner of a tube and rode on the roof almost upside down and turned and flew onto the face - it was insane. Gerry Lopez was paddling out and saw it happen, he later said it was "the most radical turn he'd ever seen out here."
Geoff McCoy If you view old footage of those times, to me it is blatantly obvious that Cheyne was a superior surfer riding superior designed equipment. Surfboards that could go places other designs were not getting to. It was a great time. It was an age of innovation for both the top designers and surfers.
Cheyne Horan This was an amazing achievement for the design and also for myself as it was generally thought that you do not ride the same design board at Sunset and at Pipeline. They are completely different waves that up till then required totally different board designs - this was mind blowing stuff!
I wanted to keep going, taking it to the limit and beyond, so the next challenge was even greater. I felt like I was making fresh imprints on the planet, pushing surfing's limits to the max, being right where I wanted to be so I paddled out at 20 foot Waimea Bay on this 5' 8". I felt like it could be done, riding Waimea on the smallest board ever.
Still shots from Scott Dietrich's film 'Follow The Sun'
I sat right in the take off zone and the local Hawaiians were very supportive, they would say 'here comes a set' and watch intently to see if I could even catch a wave. I was sitting right on the ledge and dropping in just under the lip, riding down the face like it was a 3 foot wave. Going down the wave felt like I was going along a wave, I would turn a few feet one way then back, or I'd get in a valley, a crevice, while going down the face and stay in it riding the valley like a small wave. I was having some great rides, including one where I nearly went off the lip and did a radical snap in the pocket.
It was overwhelming stuff. I found it hard to believe what we had achieved on this amazingly designed 5'8". The Hawaiian's that assisted me were blown away and stoked and it was a talking point for quite a while on the North Shore that winter. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest without oxygen!
However the skeptics and powerbrokers of the day kept trying to discredit most everything we had done preferring to focus on any small negative aspect they could find rather than credit the sense of adventure Geoff was designing for and my own groundbreaking achievements.
Geoff McCoy To both of us the whole experience was an amazing accomplishment as we broke ground that had never been attempted or probably even thought of previously. Yet the combination of myself and Cheyne was so potent that the power brokers controlling surfing at the time saw us as a major threat to their self interests and proceeded to condemn and ridicule everything we were doing. We must have got up their noses for stepping outta the norm and thinking outside the box.
If you look in their history of surfing, that is the history of surfing as portrayed by the Big 3 and the media they pay for, it's like we - me and Cheyne - never existed at all and to this day the controlled surfing media refuses to acknowledge my new advanced designs and Cheyne's amazing big wave tow in achievements which are truly mind blowing.
Cheyne Horan Breaking the moulds and challenging traditions always ruffles the feathers of the establishment. They said we were crazy trying to design and ride small boards in big waves yet here we are some thirty years later and that's exactly what tow in surfing is proving works. When we were doing it back then we always figured we were way ahead of our time. Fact is, Geoff still is.
Geoff McCoy It's an irony that today's big wave tow boards are also very short, which as I said confirms our achievement regardless of the biased but influential few who did their utmost to cry us down at the time. Those highly opinionated and mostly ignorant fools now stand tall condoning the use of small boards in big surf as if they know what they are talking about. An overabundance of ego, ignorance and jealousy is not a good combination as time has proven.
Swellnet would like to give special thanks to Marc Atkinson, Damion Fuller from the Board Collector, Laurie Baker and of course Cheyne and Geoff for making this article possible.
Comments
Great article.
Cheyne in my view is definitely the best surfer never to win a world title.
Who's number two. Parko?
Yep, Parko for sure then Taj.
But both are still in it and could win a title.
How thick is that bloody fin! Looks like a sailing boat keel.
Cheyne Horan and Matt Archbold surf pipe and sunset so good that i would say that they are the two best not to win a world title .You could go on and on about this with a lot of surfers . Any surfer who can free fall into a barrel at backdoor and pipe like Kelly dose has got my vote .
But Cheyne did win a world title! He was the 1999 World Masters champ and I reckon he'd tell you that title counts.
Cheyne's a legend. But seeing as you're commenting on the best who didn't win a WT, then my money is with the KONG!
Imagine him in the modern day dream tour.
Rob Machado??
To me Cheyne & Geoff were on a whole other level when Cheyne was part of the circus. I also thought it was always destined to end the way it did with Cheyne missing out on the world title because he and Geoff weren't playing the game with boards and fins and the like. You know the game others play even to this day with the efficiency of a well oiled machine. I am reliably assured some pros today even employ logo fluffers to keep all those industry sponsors happy.
For me there was a period of maybe 3 years when Cheyne's surfing was just head and shoulders above everyone else and he was the best.
As an aside, there is some footage of a very young Cheyne absolutely ripping massive Express Point on a tiny tiny board while others including, from memory, a Hawaiian legend, were on guns ... maybe Alan Oke Memorial footage. Worth a check
The above story was from 1982. I think it was 1981 when Cheyne got shafted for the world title. In that year there were four contenders on the last day of the last comp (the World Cup at Haleiwa from memory) and Cheyne got stitched up by Pete Townend 'cause he'd recently quit the Bronzed Aussies. Townend later said if Cheyne hadn't quit the BA's he would've thrown the heat and arguments about 'best surfer never to win a world title' wouldn't include Cheyne Horan's name.
That must've cut him deeply and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the motivation for him to start heading in a different direction.
As for the above story, the line about 'not being recognised for their sense of adventure' is pertinent. Nowadays Kelly Slater gets lauded for riding a bloody wooden door but back then Cheyne was shunned for attempting something much more functional yet different than the norm.
ok, here we go again, so Stunett, your logic as it reads above to me indicates Cheyne got shafted for the world title due to Townsend not throwing the heat? Does not throwing the heat or "tanking" the heat to allow an opponent to advance constitute getting shafted of the world title?
OR, Do you mean, as distinct to not throwing the heat to allow a fellow bronzed aussie to win a world title - that he would maybe not have sat inside him and hassled him...there's a massive difference? Which one is it?
What is a "Logo Fluffer"?
Here you go RR: http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/406-confessions-of-a-surf-industry-fluffer
Great article Stu, really appreciated this. If Cheyne and Geoff could achieve this, maybe some of the stories of ancient Hawaiian legend don't seem so "undo-able" after all...
I thought Cheyne and McCoy's design were credited with being the catalysts to introducing what were originally termed No_Nose surfboards. Shortly after Simon followed suit, less radically but with great effect, so I don't know about being a shunned design? Stand corrected if that be the case, but that's my recollection -- keen on others
no need to give PT any credit. How can PT throwing the heat be a legitimate win for Cheyne? The year was 1979 (and not 1981). Cheyne was 19yo. Rabbit reported what happened in his bio. PT was hasselling Cheyne, paddling him way inside, but that was not the reason why Cheyne was robbed. Cheyne caught two waves and Cheyne was robbed when he was paddling into the winning wave, the 3rd, which Rabbit reports he shredded to pieces, surfing the best Rabbit ever saw Cheyne surf. As Cheyne was paddling into the winning wave, they rang the bell & disallowed the wave. The bell ringer was Jack Shipley, owner of Lightening Bolt, who happened to be Mark Richard's sponsor. This is how MR became the world champ and how Cheyne started riding wider & wider boards in 1980, resulting in him coming 5th in 1980, and then 2nd and 2nd in 1981 and 1982.
@dzb; - very interesting!
that board looks like a set of dog's balls to me. Is that where GM got his inspiration?
that board looks like a set of dog's balls to me. Is that where GM got his inspiration?
Concur with 'Thermalben' - Cheyne by a reasonable margin.
Had a chat with Geoff McCoy today. He's making some beautiful looking wooden boards that are great fun to ride. Gonna have photos and words about them on Swellnet next week.
Bruce Channon has just finished one made from a Red Cedar slab they dug out of the Bellingen River bank. Worth a look if you get the chance!
On the original topic ask Geoff if he remembers the late Grant "Dappa" Oliver surfing his 4'10" twin fin at huge Fairy Bower. It might not be up there with 5'8" at Waimea but it impressed the hell out of us. I have a vague memory that Geoff himself was out there too. Late sixties.
Geoff McCoy made me a few amasing boards specifically for blacks. A 6' 8" lazor zap single, boomerang wing fin that I eventually broke at that big right in front of cliffs, probably the best ever a little 6'4" lazor zap, boomerang wing tip, that I idiotically sold when I really needed money. God I loved those fins. It was one of those boards that first surf felt deluxe. Then a 6' 8" nugget thruster (should've got a single, but he couldn't convince me)that I would surf in anything at blacks, with anyone. I surfed that one, one day with a terrified Neal Purchase Junior yet, I felt it was such a nice, easy day. I used to love it when strangers would roll up and warn you not to go out, as it was so heavy, and that my board would kill me, knowing I was going to have a blast on it, while they floundered in terror. I surfed one heavy day with the guys from Easter reef who were horrified what I could get into to. Best case of that was when Frosty bought Murray Bourton, whom I'd never met, and who proceeded to lecture me on why it would fail. It pissed me off enough to drag him out there in what I thought was gutless slop. Pretty entertaining, we got to watch 'Muzza' get hurled around like a dead guppy, and crawl in over the reef with the whole show between his legs.
I let Geoff down pretty badly in the end though. He was so good to me, and gave me some ridiculously amasing moments with his boards. He did make me one bad one, that was a shocker at big Margarets. He warned me he wasn't happy with the blank though, and I kind of gave up. I honestly believe and found that if its super thick and round, super sucky, super hard to get into, the zap/nugget style revels in it. He was a hard one to deal with, because of his frank, brutally honest way. Utterly confident and single minded. Why not, when you taught so many guys, and helped so many, so much. Just a few, Mark Richards, Simon Anderson, Mark warren, Larry Blair, Reno, BK, Dappa, all legends, and of course, Cheyne Horan. Just too kind for his own good really, is what it boils down to. So sorry Geoff.
good effort on the 5'8" at the bay.
I remember seeing it on the telly back in the day. One thing though is that I remember a surfer from down this way riding really small boards in really big waves, and this was around 1967 or so. And riding these waves alone without legropes. His name was Wayne and the place was Bells, so be careful when you claim firsts in surfing.
P.S. Wayne ripped back then on those big waves on those small single fins without legropes or crowds.
P.P.S. Cheyne ripped as well and is one of my favourite surfers to watch from that era, but he wasn't the first to try big waves on small boards, not sure exactly who was the first, but Wayne from Lorne was into it earlier.
Hey Blindboy,
Geoff actually mentioned the Red Cedar slab at the Bellingen River though he didn't say it was Bruce Channon doing the shaping. He didn't mention any name, just said he knew someone who found a big slab of timber. Also, I wont get a chance to chat to Geoff for a while as he's currently travelling around the mid North Coast. One thing I can say is that Geoff never misses an opportunity to praise Dappa and give him his due. We'll probably be having more to do with Geoff in the future so I'll be sure to ask him next time around.
And Uplift, very intriguing post...
Geoff is well regarded for his design abilities but I suspect few remember how instrumental he was in that whole North Narrabeen competitive push. At a time when the Whale Beach mafia were pushing the drop out and be cool with country soul approach Geoff was rabidly anti-drug, pro competition and had a serious work ethic. He was various combinations of employer, coach, manager and best friend to that whole generation and was instrumental in establishing the culture that still breeds success at NN today.
At junior level Dappa was probably the most highly regarded of the lot and if you look at what the others ( Mark Warren, Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, Col Smith etc) achieved then he could be regarded as the one that got away......and I have a vague memory that the 4'10" twin fin he surfed that day at The Bower was pink!
Yeh Stunet, I had some interesting times on his boards. After writing that I remembered he made me a few more awesome boards. He made me a deluxe, super light 7'4", part of a quiver of 3. It was funny because he sent them all with a sanded finish, in the era when everything was still glossed. We were all horrified, and I nearly sent them back! I'd had a mate from Hawaii come to blacks, and his boards were so different (Minami's... when he was in his prime). He rode bigger boards he used at pipeline that handled blacks so well, and paddled so well, it got me all fired up. Jeff loved that sort of thing, and with his Larry Blair success made the beautifully shaped 7' 4" gun, super, super light. I was pretty gung ho then, so waited for a huge day and took it out. Only Mick and I were out and it was super glassy, but huge and raw. I saw this slob that normally I'd probably ignore and paddled. I remember Mick looking no, no. And it caught it so easy and got in so early, made the wave look beautiful. I was really shocked, and then the board surfed so well, so easily. He was a quiver master, you could jump from the 6'4, to 6'8, or gun, and they'd take no adjusting to. I only had 2 amasing surfs on it and broke it on a crappy wave, hitting a guy ditching his board in the end section/bowl. Spewing. I couldn't bring myself to get another super light, sanded finish. Later, he made me an amasing 7'4' bright green, gloss gun, a thruster and a bit more kind of nugget shape. Its so different to look at his boards from the tail towards the nose, they are deceiving, and have much more drawn out, catchless entry than first appears. I used to spend hours looking at them, like when we would smell wax, and look at wetsuits for hours. I literally rode that board to death, and had it for years. I was so, so confident on it. It broke in worse circumstances. I had one of my best ever surfs on it, bomb after bomb, and was so stoked. Then the old, 'just one more', and I hooked into a deluxe bomb, so stoked about the takeoff, and this guy is caught down inside, breaks the cardinal rule and tries to escape up the face and bails. It was sure collision or straighten out, so I straighten out and get pile driven, but come up so stoked its in one piece. When I get up the cliff someone says 'bad crease eh' and I turn it over and its fucked. I was young and wild then, and wanted to kill the poor guy when he got up the cliff. Yet, somehow I ended up turning away from them, because of one wrong board. Camel had a hand in it too, I surfed the favourite nugget too long with cracked fin bases and it weighed a ton, so he fixed it for me, but added about 10 kilos of resin to the tail (gotta stir him), and it paddled shithouse. I lived in Ballina after the shark thing years ago, and couldn't bring myself to visit Geoff. It's crazy, a mate of ours would tell him I'm coming and for some ludicrous reason, I felt too guilty, and didn't. Pretty lame. He pours his heart and soul into your boards, and has copped so much crap over the years, which makes it even worse.
Geoff McCoy ... You won't find a more complex man in surfing. You also wont find a man more passionate, more dedicated to.his craft, more knowledgeable about his craft, and more intense about the outcome of his work . He is a true inigma for sure to most. But to those of us he calls mate, he is simply the best the surfing Industry has ever seen to this point in time.
There are many of us, as blind boy states, that owe our gratitude to his legacy.
Has Dean Morrison ever taken a title? Amazing surfer and very interesting dude.
Jeez I enjoyed reading uplifts posts back then. He’s been around and seen a bit and had a pretty entertaining way of putting pen to paper.
Indeed, GF.