Softboards Grow A Spine

This is not an advertorial, an infomercial, or instructional brochure.

I have no idea what motivated the following or where the curiosity came from, but it started in the surf shop downstairs from where I work. There I ran my fingers up and down the rails of the boards standing vertically in the racks. Lightly grasped and squeezed them, felt the rail curve and rocker, took two steps and repeated the process unthinkingly. Tyre kicking by braille. A lifetime habit.

I came to a stop, my reverie broken, when I felt a texture in the rail I was caressing. By shape it was similar to every other - lowish rail, probably heading towards a tucked under edge near the tail - yet this wasn’t smooth fibreglass my hands were running over. It was a softboard.

Instinct made me squeeze it. The rail deformed slightly under my fingers but then it wouldn’t sink any further. My fingers were stopped by something solid underneath the foam. An unseen endoskeleton. There was something hard inside this softboard. Then, when I picked it up and put it under my arm, I realised it was unlike any softboard I’d ever held. It was weighted like a normal shortboard, had rocker like one too, and when I spun it over, lo and behold, it even had subtle bottom curves - in this case a single concave running into a double.

Call it a slow news week but I couldn’t stop thinking about that hard softboard.

A lineup of '70s foamies (Museum of Surf)

Softboards have been around longer than the Thruster. In the ‘70s you could buy an EPS foamie with every family-size bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Colonel's goateed face stamped on the deck, Hanimex toys licensed Midget Farrelly’s name for a range of mesh-covered coolites, and never one to miss a trend, Shane Stedman launched his Aquarius foamies into the burgeoning learner market.

A decade later, however, Tom Morey’s boogie board became the learner vehicle of choice and the froth went out of foamies. Like softboards, a learner could progress on a boogieboard without fear of injury to themselves or others. 

Five or so years ago, softboards began to reappear on the beaches. Unlike the ‘70s and ‘80s, however, it wasn’t just learners powering the softboard resurgence. The most obvious players in the market - as much by graphics as popularity - were Catch Surf in the USA and Drag here in Australia. Each company was pulling the rug from under surfing’s seriousness. If surfers had lost sight of their original motives, the very reason they started riding waves, Catch Surf and Drag had the craft (and marketing campaigns) to correct the course. Each company makes bulbous EPS foamies, reinforced with a stringer and covered in PVA that’s brightly coloured or emblazoned with graphics. Performance is way down the list of priorities.

“I just like going really fast in a straight line,” says Chris James from Drag when I call him up. The last time I surfed with Chris, Sandon Point was ten feet and he was the only person out. As I paddled towards the lineup he stroked into a set, then swung his legs under him and laid on his back for an XL coffin ride. He went really fast, in a straight line, on a ten foot wave, while riding a foamie. A point well made.

Drag make softboards in the traditional style - slab of EPS, maybe a stringer, no fibreglass - and when I asked Chris about companies making high performance softboards he had a chuckle. “I don’t know what they’re thinking,” says Chris, and I could understand why he’s bemused. To him, softboards put the fun back into what’s become a painfully serious sport, yet here come the stiffs, and they’re missing the point yet again.

I wanted to hear from shapers who’ve waded into the softboard market, so I called and emailed all I knew. None replied, even after multiple attempts. In contrast, when I sent an email to George Arzente, the founder of Catch Surf, his reply was in my inbox twenty minutes later. George has been making his Catch Surf foamies since 2008. The first models were known as The Y Boards, as they were made in collaboration with Tom Morey who was then, like Prince and his love symbol, known simply by the moniker ‘Y’.

The Y Boards - there were two models, The One and The Super One - were slabs of PVA foam, stiffened with parabolic rails, but as with all bodyboards, they were meant to bend and flex with the wave. Subsequent models - such as The Beater, so called because it beat the blackball restrictions on California beaches - were similarly soft and pliable. Arzente has no interest in making a stiffer softboard: “Our boards are truly soft foam construction. We prefer the balance of performance and safety of our boards.”

Sanctum Surfboards are located on the Northern Beaches of Sydney and make fibreglass boards both short and long. They also make softboards that are cut on a computer shaper, then wrapped with resin and glass, and topped with EVA foam. In short, they’re softboards that are hard.

“Our softboards have two layers of six ounce on top and one on the bottom,” says James when I called. “And they have a 50mm lap.” For those who don’t know, that’s not an not-insignificant structure for craft that’s often considered disposable. Was this so their ‘softboards’ can slip into their normal production line, I asked James, knowing they made their fibreglass boards in Mona Vale.

“No, all our softboards are made in China,” replied James. “Everyone’s are. If we were to make them here they’d cost more than a standard fibreglass board.”

If you’re yet to pick up a modern softboard, allow me to describe the construction - it might also explain why I’m making such a fuss about foamies. A blank of EPS foam is cut then glued back together with a stringer intact before it’s placed on a computer shaper where the cutting heads rout the complex concaves and curves. Next it goes through the laminating room, some companies using one layer of fibreglass top and bottom, others using two layers on top and one on the bottom. Holes are routed to add fin systems. Every board uses epoxy resin as it’s the only kind that works with EPS foam.

At this point the product looks and feels very much like a regulation surfboard, and that’s the point: Underneath that PVA foam and slick bottom is a regular board. The extra work, and hence cost, comes into it when the outer materials have to be glued. To the top a sheet of PVA foam and cushioning, and to the bottom a slick surface. The exact construction changes from company to company but that’s the gist of it: a regular EPS/epoxy board hidden under a PVA skin.

Not your average foamie: This cutaway graphic shows the internals of the modern hard softboard (Softech)

I’m not sure that anyone’s ever traced the development of hard softboards before, yet that’s what I did, researching my way back to a Japanese company called Water Rampage who, in 2010, released a series of EPS/epoxy boards wrapped in a PVA skin. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevented me from finding out exactly what Water Rampage’s motives were: To surf in the flags? Stop injuries? Or did they just think it performed better?

If it’s the latter, they’re not alone. “Our boards are not aimed at the beginner market,” says an emphatic Scott Norby from Spacestick - a company with factories in both Oregon and Hawaii. Scott, or his partner Jim Richardson who shapes under the Surflight label, have made boards for Occy, Ross Williams, Pato Teixera, and apparently Kelly has just ordered a few.

Spacestick, and also Surflight, take the aforementioned construction and push it to the extreme, using basalt fibre, adjusting the layers to adjust the flex, wrapping the shell in foam, and then wrapping the foam with a clear, tough membrane. Though I’ve only seen videos, the soft outer foam appears to sink about 5mm before hitting the inner shell.

The boards will soak up excess surface chatter, they’re easy to grip, and, according to Scott, they “outlast typical hard shell glass boards.” He makes the point about durability many times, however, it’s balanced by another factor: cost. “Our boards actually cost more than a glass board,” admits Scott. “They require more hours and more material.”

Because of this, “shapers and companies hesitate to jump into the development game,” says Scott. He is, however, getting traction elsewhere. “The alternative surf markets are more open to new ideas,” says Scott explaining why they started making surfboards but have since branched into foil boards.

Between Scott, Chris, James, and George, I had willing advocates for their own line of softboards, yet despite repeated efforts, I had no luck contacting any of the shapers dipping their toe in the softboard market.

“What do you expect them to do?” asked an incredulous colleague when I mentioned it to him.

“It doesn’t matter that they’re epoxy inside, softboards aren’t core. The shapers won’t reply because their reputations are at stake.”

It’s true that Catch Surf and Drag know exactly who their customers are and what they stand for. No problems of confidence there. Most of the others appear caught in a limbo unsure of exactly how they should market their boards. Who’s going to buy a softboard that costs almost as much as a fibreglass board? Why would they buy it? And also, where would they ride it?

Mick Fanning and Mark Mathews started up Mick Fanning Softboards in 2017, largely marketing themselves at the beginner market, though they give a nod and a wink to the parents that buy them. Approximately half their range are EPS wrapped in epoxy laminate.

“A bunch of local dads had been coming up to me saying how they had to buy their groms a softboard because I had been using them,” said Mark in a 2017 interview with Red Bull, “and when they'd get them they just didn't go good. That got me interested in creating a softboard that performed well.”

In the same interview, Mick muses on how much safer Snapper would be if people were riding these ‘softer’ boards. That’s useful as a thought exercise: Imagining a world where surfers at hyper-crowded waves such as Noosa, Snapper, The Pass, and Malibu are forced to ride softboards - albeit high-performance softboards.

As it stands, there are only limited reasons why anyone would be forced to ride a hard softboard, but before we discuss them I needed to settle my own curiousity about how they ride. Two days after I placed an order, a cardboard box landed on my verandah. From the box I pulled a 6’0” Felipe Toledo signature model from Softech. First impressions are that, with a squint of the eyes, it doesn’t look unlike the old KFC coolites with a white deck and red graphics. 

Softboards ain't softboards. The latest models are built similar to other fibreglass boards so they can handle the forces surfers such as Felipe apply (Softech)

The shape is like a classic summer groveller with a full planshape, and like all modern softies it has a round-ish nose - which is needed to glue the flat sheet of PVA to the fibreglass underneath. In profile, however, it’s a more stealth bit of kit with a gentle but continuous rocker and 50/50 rails rolling into a tucked under edge. I’m being generous using the rail feature popularised by Gordon Merchant when in reality this ‘tucked under edge’ is just the seam between the PVA and the bottom slick. Though it’s perceptible, it’s far less noticeable than the nearly square edges in many other softboards. I even wondered if I might be able to sand it off.

Though it had more foam than I would’ve liked, there was no apparent flex while loading it up, so the board always kept its speed. In fact, and here’s what I was most curious about, it even performed like a modern board lifting off its concave for bouts of drive and acceleration. Underneath it had a deep single concave fading out to a flat behind the fins - which was a Thruster set up with FCS plugs. While checking the concave, the thought hit me that, if I were to knock a fin box, this wouldn’t be easy to fix or seal.

The board rode with the same buoyancy and chirpiness I find in all EPS/epoxy mixes, and I wondered again about the merits of foam dampening - as per Scott Norby's Spacestick boards - to stop chatter on a choppy day. Aside from the excess foam, the board rode better than I expected. A little delayed going rail to rail given the width - it’s a groveller after all - but otherwise impressive. Enough to have me wishing it was a quad and not a Thruster (Sidebar: Shouldn’t all grovellers be twins or quads? If you want lateral speed, lose the rear fin handbrake)

On my last surf, I came in and had a chat with the lifeguards on the beach, asking them their rules on softboards in the flags - surfing in the flags being one of the major advantages of softboards. “We take it on a case by case basis,” said the unnamed clubbie. “You can surf that board in the flags provided there’s no-one else there, but when people swim out you’d probably be asked to move on.” Surprisingly, or perhaps not as he was obviously a surfer, he knew the board I was riding had a hard shell underneath the innocent outer cover.

Other council areas are far less permissive. When I asked the same question to Joshua Hay from Randwick Council he said “our lifeguards are aware of the new soft boards which have the thin foam covering. These boards are not permitted within the flagged swimming area of our beaches. Lifeguards will move on board riders they see.”

Just north of Randwick is Waverley Council, which includes a few beaches I’d thought were softboard-friendly. However, their rules are even more rigid: “Waverley Council allows all softboards anywhere along Bondi, Bronte, and Tamarama beaches except between the red and yellow flags,” said a Council spokesperson when I asked.

So the one-time advantage of softboards, to beat the beach restrictions, no longer applies at some city beaches. The constraints don’t appear to be harming trade with a plethora of softboard companies hitting the market. By and large, they’re true softboards, EPS and foam, designed to bounce like a nerf ball off other objects, but increasingly they’re a fibreglass wolf disguised under a sheep’s skin of foam.

I’m heading on a surf trip in a few week’s time and I’m now wondering if I’ll take the softboard. It rides well enough, possibly better than my usual grovellers, but with the added bonus of feeling different. Under my hands, beneath my chest, while standing on it, it’s a different sensation. I wonder, however, what the response from other surfers would be when I pull a softboard from my board bag. Shapers aren’t the only ones worried about their reputations.

// STU NETTLE