McTavish and the wrong board for the conditions. Photo: Courtesy McTavish
First off, let me say that I’m a big fan of Michael February. In my estimation, his wave riding embodies an ideal surfing style, seamlessly blending spontaneity with the essential three standards by which we identify true masters of any physical endeavor: speed, power and economy of effort. Which is why I immediately clicked on a link to one of February’s latest video releases, keen at the prospect of watching the stylish South African applying himself to the epic right point breaks of Morocco.
And why, at first, I was keenly disappointed. Let me explain. It wasn’t the surf — it was truly epic, well-overhead bottomless right barrels. It certainly wasn’t February, who displayed the same innate rapport he seems to manifest in waves of all sorts, but especially right-hand point breaks. Yet something was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it until about the fourth wave into the sequence. Again, no, it wasn’t February. It was his board.
The ride in question: on a short, low entry-rockered, round-tailed twin, February eases himself under the curtain and deftly slows down, letting the barrel find him in clean, straightforward trim. So far, so good. It’s when he exits the tube and moves into the next section that the trouble starts. Dropping to the wave’s trough and leaning into a bottom turn, he weights the rail but very uncharacteristically catches an edge — briefly, but it’s there. Still, he slides through the slight glitch and into another tube. But after flowing out of this section and leaning into his next bottom turn, the tail of the board very obviously cavitates, causing him to dig a rail and stumble forward before recovering mid-face; for me, at least, the first time the word “awkward” has ever come to mind while watching footage of February.
Subsequent rides show more moments like this one, and I had to watch that part of the video two or three times before I settled on how I’d describe February’s surfing during this particular session: he was surfing great, sure, yet not on the board he was riding, but in spite of it. Which I found odd, considering the preternaturally talented regular-foot’s affinity for riding — and mastering — a broad variety of board designs, from fish and twins to mid-lengths and standard thrusters. And as I let the clip play out, I couldn’t help asking the question: Was it a bad board that February was riding so unevenly this day in Morocco? Or was it simply the wrong board?
Surfing’s history has shown us that sometimes a surfboard can be both, and never more dramatically than during the Hawaiian winter season of 1967. It was then that Australia’s energetic, uber-talented surfer/shaper/designer Bob McTavish showed up on the North Shore with a board that at the time could only be called a curiosity — at least by those in the Northern Hemisphere without a subscription to Aussie surf mags.
“Next to you is a battered green car and along the roof are boards…” wrote venerable surf journo Craig Lockwood, in a 1967 SURFER magazine article titled “Hawaii’s North Shore: New Thing At An Old Spot.” “…but boards like you’ve never seen before: short, wide, thin-nosed, fat vee-ed tails with long, graceful, deeply curving fins.”
What startled Lockwood, and just about every other American surfer on hand for the annual North Shore jamboree, was the radical new type of surfboard that McTavish had debuted months earlier Down Under, the disruptive design so precisely described by Lockwood that its innovator dubbed it the “Plastic Machine.” If George Greenough’s fiber-flex kneeboards and “high aspect ratio” fins represented the first skirmish in 1967’s “Shortboard Revolution,” McTavish’s “Plastic Machine” was the first frontal assault. And on the North Shore, at least, the board decisively lost that battle.
On island to compete in the annual Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, held at Sunset Beach, McTavish lost the opportunity to test ride his radical “V-bottom” in Sunset’s thundering peaks due to the Australian airline having lost his board (sound familiar?), and only delivering it right before his first heat. It only went downhill from there.
“With no warmup, and Sunset throwing out some nasty 12-footers, McTavish bungled his two best waves and failed to advance,” wrote Matt Warshaw, in his excellent History of Surfing. “He did manage to squeeze in a few good turns between wipeouts, though, and caught the eye of SURFER reporter Patrick McNulty, who said McTavish’s Duke performance proved that he was ‘one of the most creative surfers in the sport.’ Naturally, [Hawaiian champ] Fred Hemmings disagreed, calling McTavish the ‘spinout king’ of the Duke contest, and dismissing the V-bottom design as ‘…absurd for Hawaiian surf.’”
Some years later Hawaii’s Randy Rarick, although no less a staunch Hawaiian surfing advocate as Hemmings, offered a bit less inflammatory assessment of McTavish and the Plastic Machine.
“It’s not like anybody doubted McTavish’s ability,” he recalled. “It’s just that his board didn’t work in powerful North Shore waves. That wide, thick, heavily vee-paneled tail spun out every time.”
So, was the Plastic Machine a bad board, or just the wrong board? Only weeks later, a small group of surfers would have that question answered. Having flown to the neighbor island of Maui to confer with reigning design ‘guru’ Dick Brewer, McTavish and 1966 World Champion Nat Young, armed with a pair of Plastic Machines, slid providentially into a day of pristine, eight-to ten-foot Honolua Bay perfection. Equally providential was the presence of Aussie travel mates Paul and John Witzig—the former shooting his first surf film, the latter covering the Hawaiian season for Australia’s SURF magazine.
Along with the handful of more conventionally equipped surfers out that amazing day, what the two brothers witnessed was the Plastic Machine’s potential to change the entire direction of the sport. Riding the same design that so spectacularly failed at Sunset Beach, here at the Bay, McTavish and Young put on a stunning display of futuristic surfing, not always in complete control, and maybe catching an edge here and there, yet otherwise carving powerful arcs in and around the curl, aggressively springing out of turns and throwing their wild machines into previously unexplored regions of the wave. Graphically captured in the climactic closing sequence of brother Paul’s 1968’s The Hot Generation, along with brother John’s now-iconic photographs appearing in SURFER, this seismic session planted the most definitive pre- and post-markers on surf history’s timeline since boards switched from wood to foam.
Turned out the Plastic Machine wasn’t such a bad board after all — just the wrong board to ride in heavy, double-overhead Sunset. And something similar might be said for the little round-tail twin Michael February chose to ride that day in Morocco – not a bad board, but maybe not the best board to ride in grinding overhead barrels. And hey, that’s his prerogative. Back in ’97, the by-then-elusive Tom Curren gave accompanying Rip Curl cinematographers near aneurisms when he inexplicably chose to paddle out into awesome, triple-overhead Indonesian tubes on a 5’7” swallowtail, later known as the “Fireball Fish” — a decision that, despite his sponsor’s initial hand-wringing, was later hailed as groundbreaking.
Did Curren surf the little board as effectively as he might’ve on board more appropriately suited to the conditions? Not even close. Yet by choosing that particular board from his quiver, did he very eloquently elevate imagination above convention? Like McTavish before him and February after, willing to put up with a few dug rails and awkward turns to feel something entirely new on a wave that, after all, they’d only get the chance to ride once?
In regards to the first 4:16 of Michael February’s first-in-a-series Moroccan videos, I’m settling for that explanation. In any case, the remaining minute-and-a half shows him utilizing precisely the right board for the job, riding clean, backlit head-high walls on a short, twin-fin fish and surfing just beautifully, connecting turn after powerful, graceful turn, with all his characteristic style and flow intact; the world again spinning in the proper direction.
Go ahead, call me a February fanboy. I won’t argue with you.
Revolutionary hero Bob McTavish is 2024’s “Icon of Foam” honoree at this year’s The Boardroom International Surfboard Show, which is October 12-13 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. For more information, including a list of shapers competing in the show’s popular “Icons of Foam Shape-off”, go to Boardroomshow.com
