2009 Shaper Of The Year: Tom Wegener

And these guys were ocean people — they sailed across the Pacific in outrigger canoes. Surfing was like their religion. They were warriors who staked their reputations, their land, their women on surf contests…You’re not going to go straight if your woman is on the line, are you?

Exactly. They were charging! On the Big Island, you have this little righthander called Honels, where Tom Morey invented the bodyboard and where Mike Stewart grew up. There was this big temple there, but it wasn’t really quite the shape of a temple. It wasn’t until years later, after it had been torn down that it really clicked: it was a stadium. It was a stadium for watching the surfing at Banisters. And that’s the best alaia wave ever. I can see those guys taking off and just driving up and doing big 360 spins and coming back and hitting the whitewash. There’s these big rocks right in the middle of the lineup and wave really hits ’em, and on a surfboard it’s kinda hard to deal with, but on an alaia it’s like a big ramp. It’s a carving wave. It’s just a fantasy alaia wave.

What’s the difference between the ancient Hawaiians koa wood and your paulownia?

Koa is heavy. That’s what trips me out about the boards in the Bishop, they had to make them even thinner than I would out of Paulownia because you have to have the flex. And that’s why those boards are so ridiculously thin, and that’s why the boards I remember being touched — the one that had been ridden — it looked like a piece of paper it was so thin, because it was Koa. But I could see that’s how thin it would have to be to ride like the paulownia. But even now, the ones that ride best are the ones most likely to crack down the middle.

Is there any modern shortboard theory applied to these boards?

I don’t think so. There’s no rocker. And the rails are straight up and down. I don’t there’s anything at all. You take the rocker out of the board, it’s just flat. All foam boards have rocker. And if you have rocker, you have to put fins in a board. That’s where Derek Hynd is coming unglued, because he’s making finless boards with rocker, and he rides ‘em great but he can’t actually drive a cut-back because with that rocker you’ll always start spinning out. But with a flat rocker you can really carve and hold in and set a rail. So, yeah, there’s not a lot of theory from modern boards. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to imagine it working, cause there’s nothing there to draw from.

“Flex” has been a big buzz-word of thiese last few years — we probably really started noticing it when we first started changing resins and core materials when Clark went out of business. How important is flex in an alaia?

I would say for the last 20 years of surfboard design, flex has been the elephant in the room. Like, it’s really, really important, but for all the boards in the states, all the boards were Clark Foam Blanks, so they all had the same flex. That was your standard thing. So once you start changing to epoxies and EPS, the flex changes and the boards change dramatically. I was shaping EPS Styrofoam in 1986, stringerless, and I loved the flex, they popped and really flexed great, but they all broke and fell apart really fast too. So, that kinda reminds me how flex matters. In the alaias, flex is really really important. You bend it and just feel it drive out of a turn.

Describe how the flex works when you’re paddling an alaia into the wave?

With an alaia, when you’re paddling for a wave and the board is stiff, it’s really hard to catch the wave. But if you can put your weight on the nose and give the board a little bit of reverse rocker, you slide into the wave infinitely easier. It’s just like with a boogie board, you push down on the board and slide into the wave. And George Greenough, he pushes on the front of his matt and he catches waves.

And then when you take off, you slide down the face of the wave and if you don’t have flex you won’t be able to catch an edge. But it’s that flex, that for some reason grabs that wave. And the more that board flexes, the more it grabs the wave. Of course, if you have too much flex it actually bogs, but there’s a fine point where that hard edge grabs that wave and it won’t let go. And that whole area right where your feet are is like one long fin, and it’s just bending into the wave just like a fin, and you can get amazing control.

Do you think the alaia teaches us anything about the modern, high-performance surfboard?

I think it will. When you see a 10-year-old pick up an alaia for the first time, you will be amazed. There’s no transition. They hop right on and surf straightaway. Harrison Roach, this 16-year-old grom at heart, well, Jack McCoy was filming and he wanted to get into Jack’s movie. So, even though he could ride longboards and shortboards and win contests, he knew he still wasn’t in that realm. So he said, “Tom can I borrow and an alaia.” His first wave he out-surfs me. And the second wave he does a top turn. And the third he does this powerful 360 spin to the shoulder, cuts back and hits the whitewash, surfing it nearly as good as Rasta. For younger kids, there’s no transition. I think in beachbreaks, like in Florida, where you get powerful little beachbreaks, the alaia will accelerate so fast in conditions like that, and get some much more speed, that you’ll be able to do stuff that you normally can’t do. When we master them, and get great shapers making them, with that flex, you can push off the bottom and it will throw you further than you would on a shortboard with fins. I could be wrong…but that’s what I see. Maybe — God forbid — they’ll be making Surftech’s with high-tensile strength and a little nose-rocker and so forth… that may help in the future.

Yeah, but now you’re sort of breezing over how hard this things are to ride. The best surfers in the world will all attest to that. How important was it to get guys like Rasta, Dan Malloy and Machado excited about these boards?

I’m so lucky that first, Thomas Campbell took it under his wing. He caught one wave on the alaia, rode it for about twenty feet and, just like us, he said, “Wow, there’s something here. There’s something massive here.” And I begged him to put an alaia piece in his next movie and he talked to Rasta and Rasta said he’ll try it. And Rasta loved it. So Rasta came back and said, “OK, if you can make me one that will tube ride, I’ll transfer over.” So, boy, did we go crazy at that time.

What did you change to make it tube ride?

Well, the boards didn’t flex much at that time. And we realized, what holds the board into a steep face is flex. And that’s where the whole flex thing really came alive, with how thin can you make it and how much can you get it to stick into the face. Back then you’d pull into a tube and you’d just slide sideways out of it and go into the lip. You couldn’t get that deep without sliding sideways. So we had to create a board that would really hold in, and it turns out, it’s just as simple as flex. It’s nothing else. That’s the key.

Does not having fins teach us anything about what fins do?

Oh yeah. I surf so much better now on a finned board than I did before. I can appreciate it so much more now.

Does riding alaias improve your surfing on a regular board?

Absolutely. That’s one thing we all agree upon. There’s no doubt about it. You hop on a board an you know that board so much better than you did before, because you’ve seen it from a distance. Like when you move away from a town you’ve lived in your whole life, and then you come back after a while, you see it totally differently. You definitely feel that way with all the board. As a shaper I understand surfboards so much better now.

Would that same sense of understanding apply to shaping boards?

Absolutely. It already has. I’ve made subtle adjustments in my regular boards, and I ask such better questions now.

What about a PU foam alaia?

I think you’d lose the flex too fast. Wood doesn’t lose its flex. As soon as you make ‘em thicker, you lose something. The low mass and low volume makes these things click.

It must be nice, getting to just work with wood instead of toxic resins and foams.

When you make a board with wood, it’s the same board forever. Like, my 12-footer, I’ve beaten the crap out of it, it’s six years old, I’ve smashed it a thousand times on the rocks, giants waves, everywhere, and it’s the same board that it ever was. Same as the first day. You almost can’t even get dings. It’s wood, but it’s glassed. The glass smashes, but the wood doesn’t ever really get a ding. So, my 12-footer is the same board today as the day I made it.

And these boards open up new waves, too, right?

Yeah. I fantasize about riding Hospitals on an alaia. All the waves you’d snap your fins off on, you can make on an alaia. You’d just fly across it. Hospitals is in La Jolla, it’s like Big Rock, but it’s just that deep and it just heaves onto the dry shelf.

You can just go ahead and straighten out over shallow reef, huh?

You can. Or, you can just pull through the back of the wave like it’s nothing. You just pull into the wave, just like bodysurfing. You’re just like a seal. In shorebreaks you can slip right out the back. All of a sudden, shorebreaks that used to be bodysurfing only, now you can surf ‘em on an alaia. They open up crap waves. We all love ‘em in good waves, but they really open up crap. If you look at all the pictures drawn of the ancient Hawaiians, these guys were riding crap — onshore garbage.

What’s some of the most radical stuff you’ve seen done on an alaia so far?

I’d have to say Rasta’s cutback is the most intense thing I’ve seen. Another thing he does is that tuberide where he’s sideslipping inside a tube. But Jake Stuth has put a lot more time in than anyone else, and it’s beautiful to watch. Nothing flash, but after you see him ride you just wanna paddle out and do it yourself. He makes it look so easy. [laughs] He has it in his blood. He’s the most underrated surfer ever — and he wants to be underrated. He’d be bummed if I was telling you how good a surfer he was.

How is all this different from some surfing side-niche like SUPs or goat boats?

Well, I think this will always be a side niche in surfing, but it will never go away. And the reason it won’t go away is because it’s the fastest thing going across the wave in trim. You simply can’t go faster on a board with a fin. I really like riding them bellyboarding and the reason is, you push down on the nose and you really go fast. No one else does it, but I love it. I think where it’s gonna go is make people mix it up between bellyboarding and stand-up surfing, and they’ll mix it up in the less perfect surf. Again, Southern California and the East Coast, they’re not surfing perfect waves, and that’s where the alaia is gonna open up a whole new world of waves. And you’ll go back to your other board, but I don’t think you’ll ever forget the alaia. You’ll vacillate between the others. You can put it in your office, your car, you can travel with it. They’re really easy. You can always throw it in every board bag and it actually protects your boards. And if it’s in your office and you hear the surf is good, no matter what the conditions are, you can ride anything on that board.

And these boards are completely green, as well, right?

The trees are grown on plantations just south of me. I mill the wood and use all of the by-product. The sawdust goes into my mulch pit or on the gardens. The big pieces go into fins, stringers, and the medium pieces go to the elementary schools for kid to learn about hammers, nails and saws on the soft wood. There is essentially no waste.

We’re probably gonna have a few nay-says as to our selection this year for Shaper of the Year — how would you respond to them if you were us?

In defense, the alaia has been under everybody’s nose for 100 years…and nobody has tried it. It brings together all types of surfboard riding — longboarding, shortboardind, bellyboarding. And it’s quite simply the fastest board in the water. And it’s totally green. AND you can get ‘em and make ‘em yourself and bring back the stoke of making your own board that we all had back in the ’70s. Maybe that’s why it’s coming on like a religion, because I can show you a laundry list of people making they’re own alaias…and they’re PUMPED on it.