Quick question: How many female surfboard shapers can you name?

Answer: Not many.

In fact, I’ll fess up: Not one. Around the country, a female presence in the gritty, dusty, chemical-smelling bowels of a surfboard factory is almost unheard of.

To test my theory of male dominance of the industry, I recently asked the above question to a couple of people for whom surfboards have been a religion for a very long time. After a long pause, our esteemed Swellnet editor and board collector Stu Nettle managed to rattle off a couple of names from the past, who probably don’t do it anymore, and a girl from Tasmania (now living in Queensland - Stu) who may still be running the planer along the odd blank (She is). Simon Anderson, after 54 years in the industry, working in virtually all markets, sipped a glass of wine and stared out the window at a dramatic seascape for a very long time before concluding: “Maybe one or two, in Brookvale, a long time ago, but not for long and I can’t remember their names.”

Considering the leaps and bounds that women’s surfing has made over the past couple of decades at all levels, and the vast numbers of female recreational surfers now found on virtually every beach, it seems strange that more women have not picked up the planer in an era when they are entering the trades across the board in record numbers. 

But here in Noosa Heads, unofficial capital of women’s longboarding, Anna Constable is breaking new ground, something she’s been doing in surfing for more than quarter of a century now.

Anna doing the rounds at Noosa with her Illa model (Fenna De King)

Wife of surf coach, board designer and 2006 world longboard champion Josh Constable, doting mother of Jet and Jive, and graceful presence on Noosa’s points whenever they’re firing, Anna Shisler (as she was then) first came to the attention of surfers everywhere back in the mid-1990s, when she was the tiny half of Bobby and Anna, the world’s most famous tandem surfing duo.

Tandem surfing had been a big deal in California and Hawaii for decades but its revival only kicked in here in the ‘90s, particularly on Noosa’s small and long-peeling point waves that seemed made for acrobatic stunts involving small, supple girls and big, muscle-bound blokes. When my business partners and I started the Noosa Festival of Surfing in 1998, we just had to have Bobby and Anna as special guests, and they came.

Bobby and Anna with surf champs and special guests at the 1998 Noosa Festival of Surfing

Strangely, neither Bobby Friedman nor Anna came from surfing backgrounds, although Anna’s Hawaiian bloodline was probably lurking beneath the surface. He was a crack gymnast and volleyball star; she was a ballerina who had apprenticed with the Joffrey Ballet School and then performed with the Chicago Ballet. 

Coming from surf-mad San Clemente, they had both been exposed to the longboard culture, particularly at San Onofre, home break of the local tandem community. They struck up a friendship and one day Bobby suggested they borrow a board and give it a crack. Anna could surf a bit but Bobby was hopeless.

But they stuck with it, coached by veteran champions Steve and Barrie Boehne, and soon they were revolutionising the sport, riding huge waves no tandem duo had ever attempted, performing lifts in the barrel and gouging deep turns. They rode Waimea Bay and Todos Santos and Teahupo’o. They were world champs and legends, but Anna also made the time to reach out to the masses through tandem sequences on the ridiculously popular Baywatch TV series.

Bobby and Anna North Shore action, 1990s (Jeff Divine)

By the time Bobby and Anna came to Noosa they were still a joy to watch but the partnership had just about run its course. Then Anna met teenage surf sensation Josh Constable, he followed her back to California where he made an international name for himself on the longboard circuit, and six months later they were an item. They came back to Noosa where they continue to live happily ever after.

About a dozen years ago, Josh introduced his Creative Army Surfboards brand, which combined finely-tuned shapes with boisterous, fun graphics, which were an immediate hit. Deliberately keeping the brand low key and custom order focused, Josh quickly gained an Australian and international following, but few people knew that right from the start, there was a second set of eyes in the shaping room, watching every plane cut, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge. Soon Anna was shaping her own boards and often for their two boys as well, but only now has she come out of Josh’s shadows to introduce She Creative Army to the world.

Surfboards shaped specifically for women are not exactly new. In fact at the very beginning of surfing’s modern era, in the late 1940s, Malibu’s handsome and heroic Tommy Zahn asked the master shaper Joe Quigg to make a scaled-down, lighter balsa board for his new girlfriend, Darrylin Zanuck, daughter of the famous movie producer Darryl F Zanuck. Quigg’s 25lb 10-footer may seem like a massive log today, but back then it was a breakthrough, so much so that the poor girl rarely got to ride it until the boys had finished their sessions.

But women’s surfing had to take a back seat for decades, and has only really come into its own in this century. And Anna’s She brand is hoping to help write the next chapter. She says: “I can’t explain the happiness I get from riding a board that I shaped. Now, I am shaping and designing boards that I believe have a bit of magic in them. Being an ocean woman with years of experience I have developed boards made specifically for a woman surfer.”

Anna on the tools (Julie Del Mar)

Of course there are critics, both male and female, of the need for gender-specific surfboard design, seeing it as more about marketing than performance. And since the Darrylin board, it’s true that the defining characteristics of a surfboard made for a woman have been about weight and width. But Anna is proud of the trust she is building with her customers as her subtle refinements of plan shape, rail and bottom curve result in excited reports of improved performance. 

She says: “Just the other day a customer came in to pick up her custom order She and took it out to Tea Tree to try it out. Three hours later she sends me a text saying, ‘I’m so in love with this board!’”

The She models are named after female members of Anna’s family who have meant a lot to her, no more so than the 'Illa', named in memory of her late older sister. Illa, who passed away in California last year, was the absolute model of the protective, supportive older sibling, and yet she and husband Brian also found the time to forge highly successful competitive careers in tandem surfing, and to raise a family of waterwomen, who also have She models named after them. It’s a beautiful touch and a strong indication of where Anna’s values lie.

Big things are happening for She and Creative Army.

// PHIL JARRATT