Words: Matt Chojnacki
Photo: Tim Bonython

The vibe at Deadmans last Saturday was as good as any lineup I've been out in, and that's saying something considering the size of the waves. It's such a young crew, I'm one of the oldest, but I'm only 32, and their camaraderie was incredible. Even from young Sol, the 14 year old grom, he's patting me on the back going, "Oh my god."

Everyone was communicating and chatting. It was such a nice energy, which you don't really get many places in the world. We were just in awe of Mother Nature. If you had some sort of barometer to measure all that energy from the ocean and our vibes it would read so high.

I think it's actually scarier watching it from Winki, from Craig's angle, than it is being out there. When you're down there you get to see how many waves are unsuccessful. While out in the lineup, someone takes off, you go, "Oh, that was a sick one." But you only realise later they didn't make it because the bottom dropped out or that end section shut down. You don't see the wipeouts and hold downs.

I rocked up just before high tide and it was looking more like a gigantic pointbreak, going top to bottom all the way through. I often ride a 7'0" out there, but I thought it was too big for the 7'0" so I took the 9'2" out - I'm not scared of a bit of rail.

I missed one wave, which was probably that tsunami wave that went up Queenscliff Lagoon. Honestly, it was so much bigger than everything else. That was the wave I was out there to catch. I wanted to get one all the way to Bower - that was in my brain.

There's usually a chip shot entry out there, but I think it was almost too big for the chip shot. It was hard to predict which ones would allow a chip in, and it was also bypassing the normal boil. I talked to Tom Myers, who probably got one of the waves of the day, and he said you've kind of got to go between the two boils, which usually everyone fades around, and then get barrelled on the second boil.

When that wave came at me, I aligned myself, knifed it, and everything was going to plan. I was ready to pack it all the way to Winki. I was a 100% ready to go! But the wave just steepened up, and it showed me who was boss...which it does from time to time.

I was telling Bob [McTavish] about it, I spoke to him for about an hour yesterday, and said, "Look, if I'd made that wave at Deadies, it would have been the best board I've ever had." As it was I got hammered but the board didn't break. I ended up getting other waves, in fact I surfed Queensy Bommie and Narrabeen on the same day, and I had pretty good results there.

Bob shaped the board - hand-shaped it - and we call it the G3. It's the next evolution in his longboard gun. The first one, G1, was shaped in the 80s, then G2 which incorporated a modern longboard design. Last year, I had a lot of luck on an old Gumtree find, a 15-year old G2, which Bob doesn't do anymore. Then after all the swell we've had the last two years come this, the G3.

It's just packing in a lot of volume, probably the same amount of volume as a 10 foot gun but in a 9'2". It's the first batch of these boards, and it's purely designed as an East Coast Australia gun.

The idea is to be able to knife big waves, but also be able to hotdog it as well. Something you can have in the car and ride from two to ten foot. The day before the swell I had it at 1 to 2 foot Freshie gliding around on it. It's all about tail rockers, this design. It has five inches of nose rocker and three-and-a-half inches of tail rocker. Fuller outline while keeping the conventional gun tail and playing with that wide point forwards planshape.

We went for a quad. All equal-sized fins, the new Nathan Florence design. Double-foiled on the front and 70/30 on the rears. It's unconventional, and I may still play with fins as I lost them on the top of the wave.

The rail shape was actually a test, and I wasn't amped on a test knowing that we were going to have waves. I really needed it to work. But Bob did it anyway. It was a rail that was ridden at Hanalei Bay in the '60s by Joey Cabell. It's got this radical, flat bottom with an 80/20 rail.

It's not sharp, but it's like an 80/20 rail, from nose to tail. It's got so much beef in it and it's so aggressive. For the amount of bulk it surfs very light, which is really cool.

Bob shaped two of them, the 9'2" and a 10'2" - hand-shaped, no file - but I think it will become a model. We'll work on this concept of packing lots of volume into a high-performance, versatile gun that can be ridden in a variety of conditions.

// MATT CHOJNACKI (as spoken to STU NETTLE)