Last week Swellnet ran an interview with Greg Webber where he said he'd been approached by Kelly Slater to shape a pair of banana boards for him. This followed Slater viewing twenty-year-old footage of Shane Herring on Webber's highly rockered, low volume boards from the early-90s.
Knowing Kelly Slater is always ebullient when board design is the topic, we then asked the 11 time champ how the boards are riding. He admitted to "being a little caught off guard" as he hadn't ridden the boards much. Nevertheless he's "still to this day amazed by the carving Herring was doing in '91 and '92" on Webber's boards and keen to explore the idea further.
Swellnet: Do the boards have similar rocker and other dimensions to those you were riding in the early 90s?
Kelly Slater: My rockers were very different from what Herring was riding. The overall volume is more than my boards now and a bit thicker and wider than what I was into back then. I didn't ask for specific measurements, just whatever Greg assumed I would need.
What aspect of your surfing are you hoping to improve by riding them?
Carving in the pocket and fitting into the curve. Basically, finding new approaches throughout the wave.
Always room for improvement.
Always. I think there's a surprisingly large amount of area that's not being used in the wave still.
And the boards are quads despite being thrusters back then?
They never rode or set them up as quads, I don't think. I think this might be a couple of the first for Greg to have set up like this.
Do you feel the design pendulum is now swinging away from shorter, high volume boards?
It seems so. You always go to extremes and work your way back. But I still think there is some room there for a bit more experimenting [with short boards] cause a lot of the best guys didn't really push their knowledge in my opinion, or maybe I wasn't aware of how much they had in the last five or so years before heading for more length again.
These boards are twenty years old, are we allowed to call ‘em retro?
Typically, but maybe not in this case cause it feels modern and functional. These boards were never widely accepted and were seen as a very out there design back then. But the guys that rode 'em loved 'em. I've always regarded Greg as a radical, out-of-the-box thinker and designer who is too eccentric for some people, so his designs may have not gotten through to some people who would've otherwise been exposed to them somehow.
Also, he got to a good phase in his design and went beyond it to a further level that was far beyond people's understanding or threshold of acceptance. When people take too many steps most people can't follow along and [the public feels] they may have gone the wrong direction. There was a really good zone on the branch Webber was creating from. It would've been interesting had more shapers climbed out there with him twenty years ago. It's not rocket science but it is unique and all about feeling. These could be great in some waves and terrible in others. I'll find out soon enough.
Lastly, Slater said he'd read comments in the Greg Webber interview that attributed his sudden curiousity in Webber's design as mind games vis-a-vis their rival wave pool ventures. On this he said:
I read some comments saying it's mind games and blah blah blah. This guy made a really good board design that I only realised I appreciated by watching an old friend in Herring shredding away twenty years later on tape. I'm passionate about design and I'm old enough to just call it what it is and not have it be anything else. I'm glad Greg chose to dust off his thinking cap and share this with me. I really appreciate it.
