A Paipo
Interview with Keith Usher
May 10, 2014 - Swansea, Wales
E-mail interview by Bob Green
Introduction.
Keith Usher started out on a surfboard but realized he could
catch a lot more
waves riding prone on a bodyboard. Ten years ago the seed of riding
something different to a standard bodyboard was planted and in 2013,
with the assistance of a local shaper and some inspiration from the
boards of Tom Wegener and Larry Goddard, his ideas became a reality.
Since
then he has ridden waves on
his
paipo boards in Wales,
California, and Indonesia. Not sitting still, Keith is experimenting
with other designs, including wooden boards.
Photograph: California adventure, February 2014. Courtesy of Jeff
Chamberlain.
(In most instance you can click on an image to view a larger version.)
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1. How long
had you ridden a bodyboard for before you first rode a paipo?
I had been riding a bodyboard since about age
19 to 38,
so about 19 years.
2. A lot of bodyboards look alike - what sort of board
did you ride? What are your thoughts on bodyboard design?
Yes,
it's very true that in the last 20 years bodyboard design has not been
very evolutionary. In my younger days I tried every new gimmick that
came on the market! Glad I have now grown out of that. Bodyboard
companies seem to work on material more than shape, I think the process
of manufacturing a bodyboard holds back its evolution as it is
hard to add complex hull shapes and rails. The pros manage the most
amazing surfing on them aerial-wise, but as far as speed and carving I
think the bodyboard design is stunted.
3. I've read that you started out on a surfboard - why
the change to riding prone (usually it's the other way around)?
I grew up in the landlocked Lake District
National Park in northern England.
In my teens I was a rock climber and road cyclist, mountain biking was
also in its infancy so I was getting into that too. I then moved to
Wales, to a city on the south coast called Swansea to attend a product
design degree (which when I found surfing suffered to the point of
non-completion). A friend I shared a student house with who was also
from north England had been a keen windsurfer and through that knew of
surfing, so after a few trips to my new local beaches I acquired a 6'3"
regular surfboard, similar to my friends.
We met at college a new friend who was from Cornwall, south England who
from an early age had starting bodyboarding. So the three of us would
head for the beach on weekends. After a few weeks of struggling with
poor paddling strength and not even managing to stumble to my feet on a
skinny 6'3", I had been watching my friend on his bodyboard flying
around, doing 360s, air rolls and kicking his way out back easily with
fins. So after about 6 weeks on the 6'3", I took it to my local shop
and
traded it in for my first Manta bodyboard.
With strong legs from my years of cycling I was out back and surfing
waves the first time out on the bodyboard. This surfing thing was now
fun! I still look at many surfers in the water struggling and not
really surfing thinking they could be having more fun from the first
time out prone.
Having fun at G-Land, ca.
2013
Photo by Dave Thomas.
4.
When and where did you first hear about paipo boards? Was it
dissatisfaction with bodyboards that prompted you to get a paipo board
made?
In my local area I have mostly surfed with
stand-up riders and being
interested in design had wondered if a small board in foam and
fibreglass would work. A friend had seen a guy on a surf trip with one
and said I should get one, but back then (10+ years ago) I did not
understand board design enough to know what I would need. It would have
just been a direct copy of a bodyboard in fibreglass and at about
triple the price of a bodyboard it never happened.
I then one day bumped into a guy at the beach handplaning. Over
time we became friends. He was also a bodyboarder and one day showed me
a wooden paipo by Paipoglide, from Cornwall, England, that he was
having built (see Note 1).
When he got the board I had a go and the seed
of something better than a bodyboard was replanted.
Leigh Evans
with his Paipoglide board at Tenby, Wales.
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Photo by Keith Usher.
5. Have you noticed much difference between riding a
bodyboard and a paipo?
The
paipo I designed is far superior to any bodyboard I have ever owned in
terms of speed. It took 10 or 20 sessions to truly dial in slight
changes in my riding style to get the real benefits out of my paipo. It
basically feels like I have got out of a van and into a sports car!
6. What were the paipo boards you've had made based on?
Any particular shapers or designs that was influential?
The paipo I designed had two main influences
and
one hidden one. With the Internet now at our fingertips the access to
information is vast and
what had held me back over ten years ago from designing was now out
there on the web to read and soak in and basically steal.
So my first paipo experience had been on my friends Paipoglide,
which after talking to the builder I feel was more a beautiful piece of
woodwork, more than a form follows function design. It was very fast,
but struggled to turn. Once I was on the wave after take off the board
struggled to
keep speed due to lack of frontal planing area.
It also had fins (tri) which I found made it track in very straight
lines and took far too much movement and effort to turn.
Then one Fall, me and the Paipoglide board owner and another bodyboard
friend headed for Cornwall for the world bodyboard
championships. A fun event with no wetsuits allowed in the cold British
waters, using only plywood vintage bellyboards (Google it). There at
the event the owner of Paipoglide had a booth and was also working on
bellyboards, alaias and hand planes. He had a couple of prototype
paipos, one foam and fibreglass and one wood like my friend's board,
but
without fins. So I got to test them out and found with the wood one
without fins I could now turn easily and still hold a rail, and the
foam and fibreglass was more buoyant, catching waves easier and holding
more
speed in flat sections.
World Bellyboard
Championships, Cornwall, England, ca. September 2013.
Source: The website of the World bellyboard
championships.
After seeing the alaia board at the booth I became interested and
watched videos on them on YouTube and found that their rebirth had been
due to a guy called Tom Wegener. Luckily in several Youtube videos he
has talked at detail on how the alaia works and holds a rail. He had
then found that the alaia, lacking float, was very hard for an average
rider to catch a wave on so he started the Seaglass tuna project. That
board and the alaia have in the rear of the board a single concave
rolled into "V" and chine rails that I have "borrowed" for my paipo
design.
So the alaia supplies the rear hull shape, the plan rail curve I
took from my favourite bodyboard and continued the curve to a point
rather than a blunt cut of nose simply for looks at the time. And also
for looks I gave it a swallow tail fish tail instead of the standard
bodyboard crescent tail. I wanted it to look like a small retro
surfboard, not just a square fiberglass bodyboard.
Wegener Tuna
and Keith's SDF concave paipo
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Photos courtesy of Keith Usher.
7. What was the process of getting your boards made.
Were you clear on what you wanted or did the shaper have a lot of say?
After 20 years surfing I knew the whole
surf industry in my local
area. After going to SDF
Surfboards, who sponsored a couple of my
friends, and watching them get their boards shaped, I became friends
with
the shaper there, Sam Du Feu, and asked if he would be willing to build
my design.
Sam Du Feu
shaping
Keith's first paipo in 2012.
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Photos courtesy of Keith Usher.
When I presented him with my design we worked out how to get the
rocker,
nose and tail with and board thickness we would need to get my 3'8"
board out of a 7'2" USA
foam blank!
So after the blank arrived I headed to the shaping bay and we shaped
the board. The board was a mix of the design in my head, a template I
had
drawn from my favourite bodyboard, and Sam's shaping skills to turn the
foam in front of him into what was in my head. The process was
basically me
saying "here it needs to be shaped like this" and Sam having the manual
skills to make the foam take that shape.
He had very little input into
design as my board was so alien to anything he had done before. But
the shaper influenced parts as to how that had to be to get wrapped in
fibreglass. It ended up taking over 4 hours to shape instead of the
usual 6' short board he shapes in less than an hour.
Board # 1
dimensions, in inches: 44-1/4 x 21-3/8 x 2-3/8.
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Photos courtesy of Keith Usher.
8. What are the main features of your boards and how do
they differ from your bodyboards, both in design and performance?
The
main features are in the rear hull, the single concave rolled into a
"V"
and the chine rails. The plan shape is taken from a standard
performance bodyboard. And the hidden design which I mentioned earlier,
which turns out to be that by form following function, we ended up with
"up rails" forward of the chines which gave the front of the board
"belly," or a displacement hull. In time I discovered this is the same
as the
front of a Simmons hull. This belly front hull helps catching waves
becasue a
displacement hull works at any speed, rather than having to paddle up
to the speed a planning hull begins to plane.
9. Do you have plans for any more paipo boards?
Yes,
I want to recreate my next board in wood. It feels like part of an
organic evolution for me. Bodyboards always felt factory made and
plastic. The foam and fibreglass were a step towards an organic shape.
Wood is the next step in giving me an organic material which I am
hoping to source
locally from my friend's coppice (see Note 2).
(Below left)
Board # 2 dimensions, in inches: 44
x 21-1/2 x 2-1/4.
(Below right) Malcolm Edwards owns the Welsh coppice which will be the
source of cedar for my future boards.
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Photos courtesy of Keith Usher.
Board #2 rail profile.
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Photo courtesy of Keith Usher.
Keith scorching a nice left on the Gower
Peninsula, Wales.
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Photo courtesy of Keith Usher.
10. You've ridden your
boards in the allegedly non-existent waves of Wales, at G-Land and
California, to name a few places. What sort of wave is your board most
suited? Have you noticed any design limitations?
So
far the only limitations I have noticed are
my own riding skills. I
have had this board perform better than guys surrounding me on
longboards at a weak 1-foot Welsh point break. The board enabled me to
make
sections and barrels at G-Land in up to double overhead waves. On
previous trips with my bodyboards I never thought making those sections
would have been possible. Even with no fins I can bottom turn a hard as
I like
on a big, powerful double-overhead wall holding a rail with no problem.
Fins have drag and a finite top speed. With those not present, my
board's
top-end speed seems limitless.
Launching Pad
into Speedies, at G-Land on the island of Java, Indonesia.
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Photos by Dave Thomas.
County Sligo,
Ireland and Monterey, California.
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Photos courtesy of Keith Usher.
11. Do you ride the paipo the same as
you'd ride a bodyboard? Any comments on the skills and techniques
involved in turning, getting speed and tube-riding a finless board?
There
is an adjustment from bodyboarding to my paipo, but it's subtle.
Finless
riding is about getting your bodyweight on the rail, and about driving
through your wave face rail with your elbow and hip bone. The further
forward on the board you can get used to mean the board would go
faster, but that also made the tail feel looser. So it's also about
moving about
on the board as you manoeuvre. Up on the nose for take-offs and speed,
back on the tail for big bottom turns and carving.
(Below left)
The start of
an under-the-lip reverse-360, on the Gower Peninsula, Wales. (Below
right) Riding the
tube at G-Land.
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Photos by Dave Jones (left) and
Dave
Thomas (right).
With a short stubby design like mine these forward and back movements
are small, the longer/bigger the board the more you will need to move,
and in the case of finned boards I have tried you have your weight over
the fin.
Tube riding my board was a trip at first: I would get way back in
a
barrel and wait to have the rail slip and get eaten by the foam ball
like I would when going too deep on a bodyboard. But, on the paipo all
of a
sudden it was like being a sunflower seed being squeezed between wet
fingers. Speed come from nowhere like a rocket up the bum! You feel the
water squirt through the concave and you're out wondering how that ever
happened!!
Barrels on the paipo over a bodyboard are now a calculated, enjoyed
further back in the tube experience.
I have also now started to draw more "stand-up" lines on a wave with
the
paipo, rather than the trim central position to tend to hold on a
bodyboard. This is where I hope to develop my surfing with more
off-the-tops and more sweeping roundhouse cutbacks.
12. Any particular memorable surfs on the paipo?
Last
year's trip to G-Land was an eye opener for me as to where I could take
my board on such waves. The extra speed was confirmed by several
strangers over several weeks randomly commenting, "I can't believe how
fast that thing goes." This winter I also tried the board out on some
classic California point breaks, including Rincon, Malibu and the
Hollister Ranch. But sometimes the best surfs have been where it amazed
me how much fun I have got out of tiny clean conditions where others
are struggling to get going at all, even on longboards.
More G-Land,
Money Trees section, ca. 2013.
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Photos by Dave Thomas.
13. Do you come across other paipo riders?
Last year in the G-Land camp I randomly bumped
into Terry Newcomb from
the paipo forum. We spent a few happy days in small but clean
conditions and had a few board swaps to contrast and compare.
I also met Jeff Chamberlain of Morro Bay, CA, and was lucky to be
invited on his fantastic boat for a surf trip to "The Ranch." Jeff is
also forging ahead with large-liter epoxy quad paipos from L41, a very
innovative shaper called Kirk, in Santa Cruz. I also have two local
friends who paipo and we go for a surf when we can meet up.
Terry
Newcomb and Keith Usher at G-Land. Newcomb is holding his
Romanosky paipo and Usher is holding board #2, a red SDF Surfboards
paipo.
Photo courtesy of
Keith Usher.
Californian
adventure at The Ranch, ca. February 2014.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Chamberlain.
14. Any other comments?
I'm glad to say that paipos have given my
surfing a new lease of life
after 20 years of bodyboarding and pretty much thinking well it's just
going to be more of that kind of riding and its limits. My new design
has given me a whole new angle to surf from. I have found that most
paipo riders I have interacted with are thinkers as it take a step
away from the norm to not be doing what all the other kids are doing. I
also think paipos have the biggest diversity of board designs currently
being ridden in surfing.
Not taking things too
seriously
Photo courtesy of Keith Usher.
Footage of Keith, shot by Keith using a compact camera set up a tripod
at two local beaches, in Clip
1 and Clip
2.
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Note 1: For more about PaipoGlide, see our Interview
with Andy Bick and Andy Bick's Paipoglide website.
Note 2: Oxford Dictionaries defines coppice
as "an area of woodland in which the trees or shrubs are periodically
cut
back to ground level to stimulate growth and provide firewood or
timber." Source: Coppice. (n.d.). In Oxford Dictionaries.
Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/coppice?q=coppice.
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