Simon Travels: NSW, Australia 2007
March 2007: MAITLAND TOYOTA PRO, NEWCASTLE
2 hours drive north of Sydney, home to Mark Richards, Matt Hoy and Andrew Johns. The Newcastle contest this year held at the potentially better venue of Merewether Beach (previously Main Beach) was quite amazing.
When I arrived at 9am Friday 16 March the surf was pumping, a solid 6-8 feet steaming through the outside Merewether reef. Primarily I was there to drop off boards for some of the competitors specifically Jay Bottle Thompson. Bottle impressed me when I first meet him on the Gold Coast earlier in the year, he wasn't mucking around and was looking to get good boards (if not off me then someone else). He did well in 06 gaining entry into the top 50 on the WQS securing a good seed for 07, gaining a 2nd at Sunset (Hawaii) in the ONeill World Cup along the way. He wasn't going to waste the opportunity to go to the next level and qualify for the main tour (WCT) by being let down with sub standard boards. Bottle and I had been down the path of a 5 board program with a couple of thickness variations thrown in. One of those boards was the new XFC rocker which I was getting good feedback on elsewhere but wasn't cutting it with him. Actually I was getting fed up he is demanding and determined to establish the magic feel in his equipment which seemed very elusive. For insurance Bottle was getting a few boards off Murray Bourton at the same time.
So there I was at Merewether Beach the next day (Saturday), I'd delivered the 5th and final installment to Bottle that morning. He already had with him the 4th board from our program and carried that down to the waters edge, along with one of the Bourton board for his heat. The swell had dropped to 2-3 feet, still clean good beach break waves north of the Merewether reef where the surf had been epic the day before. Bottle chose to surf the Murray board, getting through the heat and surfing impressively along the way. He looked sharp surfing at speed with good floaters. I was impressed, but not impressed with the fact that after all the work we had done the best we achieved was a back up board.
I headed back to Sydney, tail between legs, only to get a text two days later from Bottle saying he had won the contest on our number 5 board. Finally we achieved the feeling he was looking for. This was a good lesson for me, Bottle had taken me out of my comfort zone and as a direct result we've come a long way to understanding and manipulating the PSS pre-shaping program to create rocker variations to suit the individual, thanks Chief.
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