Yeah, I know this is supposed to be about surfing but there hasn’t been much this month and the water has been crystal clear. This is a very rare occurrence on the Outer Banks and I wanted to share these pics with everyone.

After the last post, the water has stayed clear for almost 2 weeks. There has been a couple of small SE swells pop up , bringing in the gulf-stream with few fun waves to go with them. On Saturday the 6th a front passed through early in the morning and there was some swell to be had on the south side. All the surf reports predicted waves this day so there were quite a few people down. There were some shoulder high sets but the wind came up with a lot of east and killed it but then backed off in the early afternoon for a bit before picking up again.

The next day there were no predicted waves and the waves were about chest to shoulder, fairly clean with decent winds. The swell increased during the day peaking early afternoon. The water was crystal clear and looking at the waves in the morning the color looked like I was in the tropics.  No swell was predicted so there was no one around. I surfed early with one other person and did a second go out by myself. Even the bath house ( one of the more popular spots and has a decent sandbar now) only had about 3 people out.

The following week had little waves and you could get a surf in for an hour or 2 if you played the tides right but the real story is how many days the water stayed clear. Everyone forgot about surfing and was snorkeling, diving and spearfishing. Frisco was clear, all the north side was clear, I heard all the way up into Pea Island was clear.  Enjoy the pics, taken at the first jetty.

All pics courtesy of Daniel Pullen

May which is usually a good month for surf let us down this year. If you were into windsurfing or kiteboarding it was the month to be here. Warming temps and sideshore winds. The first 9 days of the month the wind blew SW at least 15-25 if not more. There was some rideable days of surf when it would get just enough west to clean up some of the sideshore mess but they were mosty desperation go outs. Then there was a few days of NE wind chop, then a couple of days of SE wind chop and then 2 more days of SW winds followed by 3 days of NE wind 25-35 finally calming down some on the 21st.

The thursday and friday before Memorial day there was some fun waist to shoulder high days in Frisco.  The strange thing was all of a sudden the water went back down to the low 60’s after flirting with 70 degrees all month.  All the sideshore winds all month have worked to dig a pretty good trench down the beach on the north side destroying most of the sand bars but for some reason there is a plethora of sand bars on the south side. It is very rare that that the south side has better sand bars Read the rest of this entry »

EPS or Expanded Polystyrene is associated with Epoxy surfboards. There are 2 types of EPS blanks being used today. EPS that is extruded (XPS) and tends to look more like Polyurethane foam and the Bead foam which is more commonly called styrofoam.  Even though most people call it styrofoam it is actually a trade name used by Dow Chemical for their EPS foam. Most epoxy surfboards being made today use the EPS bead foam so that is what we will focus on.  The EPS beads are put into a mold and using pressure, steam and a blowing agent the beads are fused together to take on the shape of the mold. Most of the foam is made into large blocks and then are cut using a hot wire into either smaller blocks or what ever shape the customer may desire. The smaller block can then be cut into the shape of a blank using rocker templates and a hot wire.

After the blank has been cut it can be cut lengthwise to insert the stringer or stringer combination of your choice. This is more work for the shaper but the benefits are all the rocker templates are your own and you can design and adjust the blank to your liking. It is a great tool for any shaper as the product is completely your own , not a reshape of whoever shaped the plug in other foam blanks. By doing it this way, the blank is very true Read the rest of this entry »

photos taken by Robbie Johnson. To see more pics of the same day check out http://www.surfcarolinamagazine.com/photos.html

April, 2009 would be the best month of surf so far this year, but it was still up and down, surf and water temps. Started out with some South west winds blowing in warmer water which was a relief since it had been so cold this winter. On the 3rd of April it blew hard SW all day building a swell about head high. The wind went offshore hard about an hour before dark and there were a few fun waves to be had but I’m sure it got better during the night sometime. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Holt from Michigan came across this old Velzy and sent it down here for us to fix up and refurbish. When we saw it there was something that puzzled me about the board. First off I had never seen this particular Velzy logo ever on a board before. I also noticed that this board was glassed with a matt cloth and displayed all of the characteristics of the old popout boards.

I am sure Dale Velzy had hand shaped everything at that time so why would his name and logo be on an old popout?  I looked for a couple of board collector sites but didn’t find any that seemed like they could answer my question so I fired off an email to Steve Pezman at the Surfers Journal.

I figured he had to have seen many collections and growing up in that time in Southern California he might possibly know the boards origins. Here is the email I sent him,  Maybe Steve Pezman could give me some info about a board someone brought by for us to restore.  I’ve never seen this Velzy logo before and upon inspecting it I feel for certain it is a popout and not a real Velzy.  It looks shape wise exactly like the old Cutlass and Duke Kahanamoku’s I used to look at for sale at Sears when I was a kid.  It is also built with matt glass and as you can see the bottom has the stringer covered up with gloss work making me believe that it has the fake redwood stringer on the deck like the old popouts.

Could anyone tell me what the deal was with these?  Did Velzy lend his name to be used on pop-outs? Did they do it without his consent? Is it worth anything because of this or is it just like any of the old pop-outs?   Any info anyone could give me would be appreciated. I felt like someone at the Surfers Journal might have a clue about it’s origins.

Thanks,

Scott Busbey
Natural Art Surf Shop/ In The Eye Surfboards Buxton,  NC.
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He sent me 2 replies.

Hi Scott,
I never seen that logo either. When Velzy went out of business, closed by IRS, this guy named Bernard took over his name and built some boards in like 1960. That could be what that is.-Steve   Hobie: “There was a thing in Velzy’s book about him going bust in the early ’60s. He’s pretty accurate on that. We couldn’t figure out how he survived. God, he was giving boards to everybody and he’s got all these Hawaiians down in the shop—they were good guys—the Patterson’s and that (when they came up we got them: Bobby, Ronald, and Raymond) and he was driving that 300 SL. Then, this guy Bernard, he came to me first and I sold him 50 surfboards. He was going to take them to Hawaii.

I was to ship them to San Francisco C.O.D., freight collect, and when they got there he wouldn’t pay the freight. I said, “Oh, shit, that wasn’t the deal.” He said, “Well, I changed my mind!”  I said, “OK, just pay for the boards,” because I didn’t want to ship them back again. Well, right after Velzy went broke, Bernard got into Velzy, took the shop, Velzy’s name, and he proceeded to screw Velzy, royally.”  So anyway this is where I am on trying to find out about the origins of this surfboard.  If any of you out there know or know someone who might know, send them this link or send me an email.

Thanks Scott.

PS: Eric is interested in selling the board.

Matt Munden - photo R. Johnson

Since the last time I posted on March 16th we’ve had two pretty big lows form off the coast creating really large swells. Wednesday March  18th and Thursday March 26th the surf was really big and breaking way outside on the outer bar. The strange thing was both of them grew in size rapidly without a NE wind which is rare for around here.

These kind of swells aren’t really rideable and you have to wait for it to calm down for it to get rideable. It took a while for the first one to clean up as we were plagued with bad NE winds for several days even as the swell dropped. It finally cleaned up enough to get rideable on Sunday afternoon on the 22nd but the wind came offshore for a few hours on Monday morning  the 23rd and there was some nice cleam waves about head high. It only lasted a few hours and by 11 am the wind had come back up NE pretty hard. Those couple of hours the waves were the best I’ve seen in a while. The morning and evening of the 26th the road was closed in Rodanthe on the high tides due to ocean over-wash.

As the sea calmed down the wind would come up out of the south again creating a cross chop with a mixed up swell. A couple of souls paddled out in the mess between rain squalls on Friday the 27th in the afternoon Joey and Matt (slotted here) picked a few off as evidenced by the photo of Matt Munden, but believe me they took a beating in 49 degree water to get a few.  The southerly winds killed it and the swell dropped quickly. Since then we have gotten into this pattern of lots of SW winds so the water has warmed up quickly. Sunday the 29th, Friday the 3rd and Monday the 6th the wind has switched from the SSW to West right at dark and blew really hard all night long knocking down what little swell the SW winds had picked up.

Although each time the day after there was a small but rideable offshore day and each time the wind has blown the SW the water gets warmer. We hit 60 degrees on the north side yesterday with 65 on the south side and they are catching drum on the point. It is blowing SW again and it’s supposed to blow west again tomorrow, so the pattern continues.

- Scott

There are not a lot of kneeboarders out there, but I have always managed to build one or two of them each year. The hollower waves of Hatteras are the kind of waves that kneeboarders are attracted to. I’ve known and ridden with many of them over the years, Robert Finchem, Danny Burrus, Danny Couch, Jeff Oden and Landry  Gray are some of the kneeriders I’ve known and built for.

Most of the guys like the wide swallow tails but I’ve done some round tails also. One that comes to mind is a little 5′5″ disc made for Rob that we called the “The Breakfast Special”. It was oval looking like a plate so we airbrushed bacon, eggs and toast on the bottom, hence the name. But this is one I recently built for Jim Norton. As you can see the outline is slightly forward because a kneeboarder usually is leaning that way while driving through the tube. The tails are relatively thin for good holding power with the wider tails.

Deck of the board carved out.

Corecell ready to insert

One problem the riders have is even with the thick pads the pressure from their knees tend to destroy the decks of their board. Recently we have been using a very dense 1/8″ core cell foam on the decks of our epoxy boards and the results have been really good as far as the decks holding up. Jim wasn’t searching for the lightness of an epoxy and wanted a PU/Polyester board but wanted to increase the deck strength.

To solve the problem we inserted a sheet of corecell into the deck. Originally we planned on a raised deck but later Jim decided he would rather have it blend in on the rail so I shaped out a place to insert the hard foam into. We really wanted to add some strength so underneath the layer of corecell and between the foam blank we used a 12 0z triaxle fiberglass cloth. If we had done the whole deck like this it would have probably been to heavy so we only did an area where the knees would be doing the most damage.

The rest of the board was glassed normally with a 60z bottom and a 6/4 oz deck. It did come out slightly heavier than normal but that won’t hurt, especially the way it will be used. The board dimensions are 5′10″x 22 3/4″ x 2 5/8″.  It has a 17 7/8″ nose and a 17 1/4″ tail. The width across the tips of the swallow is 10 1/4″.

- Scott