Opening the Door on the Quiet Revolution
Posted on October 31, 2008 @ 11:14 AM
“Campbell Brothers Surfboards” … as brothers what do you bring individually to the company?
Duncan is more of the promoter than I am, which is good, we need that balance. Basically, I stay as invisible as possible – stay back and shape the boards. Duncan helps to keep the Bonzer in the public eye and available to the pros, but the bottom line is that the Bonzer speaks for itself. We wouldn’t be a thorn in the side if the boards didn’t work.
Is that how you see yourselves, a thorn in the side of the big players in the surf industry?
I’d like to think that we are agitators for change. The fact is, since 1973, when the Bonzer was exposed worldwide by Bing Surfboards (the venerable California surfboard label), only a couple of companies have put a Bonzer in their lines. It does beg the question as to why this has been the case. Production difficulty has been one of the excuses, but the industry dealt with the Alan Byrne Deep Six channel design, so hell, I don’t really know what the problem is. There are a few guys, such as Bill Hamilton, Gary Hanel, Rich Pavel, Fletcher Chouinard of Patagonia’s Point Blanks, Doc Laush of Surf Prescriptions, and a few others sprinkled around who have built them.
Is it a global mindset against them?
Not consciously. Over the years I personally have shown many top shapers how to shape Bonzers, but only a couple continue to pursue it. In 1990 there was an article in Surfer magazine in which we talked about how surfboard design could really move ahead if people openly discussed and shared their ideas and designs. That’s what we were doing – sharing the ideas we were working with to push design ahead. In fact we did a lot of work with Pat Rawson in ’88 to ’90, and that’s where the single-to-double concave thrusters came from. While working with Pat we showed him our five-fin as well as what we were doing with our single-to-double concave Bonzer bottom on our thrusters.
When the thrusters first came out, we took a hands-off policy to wait and see how they panned out. We’d been making three-fins for 10 years prior to that, and then some friends said they wanted to try thrusters. We said, “Okay here’s the deal: We’ll make them, but you’ve got to let us put our bottom on them because it’ll give them more drive and more speed.” This was 1981, and we’ve never made a thruster without a single-to-double concave since.
After this, we met with Rawson and shared our ideas with him. He had all these high-profile guys riding his boards – Tom Carroll, Gary Elkerton, Robbie Page, Bobby Owens, and others – and trying those thrusters with our bottom, and the boards worked great for them. With Pat’s influence and our behind-the-scenes work with him, the design spread … because those surfers were from all over the world. The modified single-to-double concave bottom has become the predominant bottom design.
What was he putting on the bottom before that?
Most people had a slight vee, and Pat was working with Maurice Cole and his reverse vee. These boards had vee forward of the fins and flat in the tail. Simon Anderson was a rider first and foremost, and he had success on a three-fin of his own design 10 years after the Bonzer’s conception. Simon wanted to stabilize his twin-fin with a center fin. The thruster comes from the twin-fin, the Bonzer from the single-fin.
They come from a different place in terms of design necessity or inspiration. Lots of guys in Australia were making and riding really short boards – 5’6”s and 5’8”s. We were doing that as well. The first Bonzer was 5’4”, and we added keel-shaped side fins to give the short single fin more speed and control. A lot of our influence in terms of style and approach was from Australians like Nat Young, Wayne Lynch, Terry Fitzgerald, Ted Spencer, David Treloar, that whole crew. The name ‘Bonzer’ was actually a serendipitous thing. My dad came across it in an Oxford English Dictionary, and that gave us the name.
You saw faults with existing designs?
Since the boards were so short, they had trouble making the waves, so our desire was to make a short board that had the drive, speed, and holding power to ride larger waves. We had such wide tails on those boards, and that’s why you needed to increase the edge control, hence the long-base, low-profile, keel-style Bonzer fins. We lived in a place that was out of the glare of the media so we didn’t have any direct influences. In our area there were very few surfers; at high school there were only a few other people that surfed. The local scene was very small. We were able to grow up and surf and build boards without a whole lot of external influences, and that allowed us the space to be creative without any peer pressure. It was a great test tube. We had fantastic waves and happened to be friends with guys who turned out to be extremely good surfers.
Among your friends is there anyone of note who won any competitions?
Some of us did a little in the local Western Surfing Association (WSA) amateur competitions, but nobody took it too seriously; everybody just surfed for fun. I know he’s my friend, but I maintain that Russ Short was as good as anyone in the world at that time. We have footage of him in Mexico in 1977, and I don’t think anybody else would’ve been surfing any better on those waves. That footage blows the minds of pros as well as everyday surfers. When you dissect what’s going on with that board and what he’s doing – the speed, the manoeuvrability, the timing – it’s amazing. We’ve got our own films from back then but it’s all on beachbreaks. You’ve got individual moves and tube riding, but there’s no time to really connect and get a long wave with a lot of turns. In the Mexican footage, Russ is doing everything – bottom turns, cutbacks, tube rides, nose riding – everything on that one wave. If you watch the board and compare it with footage of single-fins at that time, there’s a quantum difference.
Can you explain how the Bonzer system works?
The primary purpose of the Bonzer system is to efficiently organise water flow. We have done this by designing fin and bottom systems that work in a synergetic fashion in order to maximize the use of the energy that is created by the water passing through the tail area of the board. To fully explain this can be a bit tedious, so I’ll try to be as clear and succinct as I can. When you’re doing a turn, the water travels diagonally across the bottom of your board. The Bonzer side fins have a base totaling 9-3/4” on each side, and a maximum depth of only 2-3/4”. The angle, combined with the shallow depth of the fins, allows the fins to come in and out of the water with little resistance. This makes rail-to-rail transition much easier, which in turn allows you to keep your board on the rail with much less effort.
While turning, the fins on the inside rail are fairly vertical in the water, providing very refined edge control. As the water races across the bottom, the outside fins deflect it down and back through the tail. We have always looked at the water that escapes off the outside rail as unused energy. The combination of the Bonzer concaves and the long base of the side fins redirect far more water through the tail area than other designs. This maximizes the use of the force that is created during turns. The fins are essentially an extension of the concaves and, since water adheres to curved surfaces, there is very little disturbance as the water passes through the fin area. This dramatically reduces drag. Basically, we have tried to create surfboards that you can get more out of with less effort and energy input. It’s all about reducing entropy, which needs to become the emerging paradigm of the 21st century. Sorry about that last bit, but with us it is never just about surfboards. I can’t help myself.
So what are the fundamental differences between Bonzer and thruster performance?
If you watch a Bonzer, you can see it gets up and down the face quicker, performs floaters with much more control; it’s maintaining the speed through cutbacks, being able to stay on the rail longer. Thrusters tend to want to settle back flat. If you watch any film of thrusters, there’s always a setup turn, especially on longer waves – guys will come back down after re-entry, and it’s rarely just one turn and back up the face. It’s back down, slight setup turn, then the big turn to go back up the face. That’s a style that’s developed but has been dictated by the limitations of the fin system. It’s a whole other can of worms discussing how style has evolved in relationship to the particular designs. Some of what are now considered moves are actually recoveries from where the boards are just maxed out. People go up off the top radically, then will turn to come off the top and get that bit of sideways motion before they come back down. That’s evolved into lip slides and so forth. You can do that on a Bonzer if you want to, but you don’t have to. You can get up and right back down the face quicker, and you’re basically ahead of the game. The other thing you notice on thrusters is that two thirds to three quarters of the way through a cutback, especially on a wave with less juice, the board wants to settle back down flat. You’ve got to do that secondary little turn in the cutback to get yourself around and back up on the white water. With a Bonzer you can maintain your speed through the cutback.
You can obviously apply physics theory to qualify how the Bonzer system works, but a lot of design modification must come from the riders themselves?
Well yes, although it’s hard to quantify what’s going on with surfboards. Almost all innovations with surfboards are due to intuitive design combined with experiential results. There’s so much variation going on with surfboards, in terms of variety of waves, variety of surfers, changing densities of water, etc. It’s very difficult to get accurate tank testing. Basically the data that everybody gets is through experimentation, practical usage and application of the resulting experiences.
So the more people you can get to use them in more conditions the better idea you can have?
The Bonzer still thrives simply because it works for all kinds of people in all conditions. Now with more top surfers giving our boards a go, it’s showing that they are more than able to stand up to tough scrutiny.
Do you think for Bonzers to do well on the open market they’d have to be seen to do well in the competitions?
At large, yes. For general public acceptance, yes – competition would send it over the top. We maintain that it is possible for the boards to do well in contests, but it’s going to take somebody with the guts to really go out and do it. A lot of people feel that because your approach is slightly different on a Bonzer, you’re not going to get scored as well. It’s visibly different. It’s cleaner, and there’s not so much water flying around because the water flow out the back of a Bonzer is much more refined and controlled. It may not look as crazy in terms of initial impact, but when you watch what’s going on it’s just as radical but much more efficient. I really think a difference in perception is on the horizon and that bodes well for the Bonzer competitively.
Obviously we’re hoping that we’ll gradually see more and more top surfers checking the boards out and riding them recreationally as well as competitively. In the last few years we’ve made boards for guys sponsored by other people, so they’re not going to be riding them in contests – Taylor Knox, Rob Machado, Dan Malloy, Mick Fanning, Brad Gerlach, Joel Tudor, Tyler Warren, Nathan Hedge, Mikala and Daniel Jones. We’re hoping that someone will step out and ride them more seriously in contests.
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