What constitutes a ‘fish?’ Photo: Austin Neill//Unsplash
Oh, it was big news. For maybe three days, or a lifetime for a social media skirmish. You may remember in April when Byron Shire Council made it illegal to surf without a leash. It stemmed from an incident when a leashless longboard cut a surfer’s artery at Wategos Beach.
The council voted to hit surfers with a $75 on-the-spot fine, with a maximum penalty of up to $1,100, for not wearing a leash. It attracted ire on both sides. Lauren Hill said, “The ‘Legrope Law’ is a flimsy attempt at grappling with the very real, and new-ish pressures on lineups. It will probably do very little to impact safety.” Others labeled the non-leash-wearing practice as a dangerous, selfish, hipster fad, and welcomed the legislation.
Either way, it became law. It also had me thinking about what other forms of legislation should be required in the lineup? Are the old, unwritten rules of surfing no longer fit for purpose? And so by mixing a puritanical streak with our inner Karen, we’ve come up with a few new laws, and requisite penalties, that could be coming to a beach near you.
Foils and Surfers
I recently had a surf in the Hossegor forest. Perfect, two-foot peelers reeled off a low-tide triangle sandbank, with just five surfers out. Until three proficient foilers came out and spent the next hour using us as marker buoys on their speed laps. Like jet-propelled SUPs, just with a fuselage and blade made from steel and aluminum, all lineup rules evaporated as they caught the waves of each set approximately 60 yards before we could.
Now look, the feeling of foiling is euphoric, and they could be the future. Yet, the current lineup rules can’t deal with these frictionless interlopers. Etiquette aside, their capacity to accidentally inflict serious, life-threatening injuries is unprecedented, especially as beginners come to grips with riding them. Like pregnancy and alcohol or floaters and claims, I propose traditional surfing and foilers should never mix.
Penalty: Foilers caught in the lineup with surfers will have to watch Kai Lenny’s Life of Kai series on loop for 72 hours, using an upended foil as a seat.
You can do it, just stay out of the lineup says this writer. Photo: Lechat Valentin//Unsplash
Fins First
Should anyone have the right to arbitrate on the correct way to hold a surfboard? Well, we don’t care, as long as it isn’t with the fins forward. New laws would ensure that surfers correctly carry their boards, thus saving their embarrassment and maverick inelegance. Like Hurrambi’s code of laws (the first laws to be written down in 2500 BC Mesopotamia) designed to solve arguments and protect property, it could be a game changer for the surfing society. Of course, it is from Hurrambi that we have the classic eye-for-an-eye penalty. And I don’t think that is too harsh a penalty for a fins-forward transgressor.
Penalty: Surfers found carrying boards fins first, will have to, henceforth, carry their surfboards on their heads. For eternity. Or lose an eye.
Badly Designed “Fishes”
“I’d say 95 percent of the people that surfed in the ‘90s were probably on the wrong surfboard,” says Rob Machado in Joe Ryan’s excellent Fish: The Surfboard Documentary. The return of Steve Lis’ original fish design during the last decade, which sparked the move to twin fins, and then tweaked into “fun boards” changed that, making life better for surfers all over the world. “Unfortunately, now 90 percent of ‘fish’ boards you see, are neither fishes, nor any good,” said Dave Rastovich, who was pivotal in the design’s resurgence. Just because a board is short, wide, thick, and flat, doesn’t make it a fish, or easy, or even “fun” to ride.
Penalty: Surfers that own, and the shaper that made, the rip off of the “fish” will be forced to ride a 1995, 18-inch wide, 22-liter “Banana” board thruster. At Malibu.
Kicking When Paddling
Speaking of Rastovich, he also once said in Keith Malloy’s documentary, Fish People, “No one’s got any right to tell me how to surf or experience the ocean.” But even Dave might balk at the surfer who kicks ferociously every time they paddle for a wave. If we forgive the inherent aggressiveness and showboating (and I can’t) it is the inefficiency in the action that necessitates legislation. The action doesn’t make you travel any faster on a board, and while the odd quick kick, say paddling into a Jaws’ beast, or Chopes’ set, may settle the nerves, those surfers that kick water into people’s faces as they scramble into a three-footer at the local beach need policing.
Penalty: Offenders will be made to wear swim fins when surfing for a week.
Extras
We could go on. Surfers failing to wax the area between the tail pad and their front foot could be put in stocks, or at least given free wax. Those with a GoPro mount on the nose of their board (unless it’s attached to a 12’4” quad made for 39-foot Nazare), will have to caddy for Ian Walsh at 60-foot Jaws. Surf brand employees who put their employer’s logo stickers on their boards will have to work at the local Walmart every second Sunday.
