Shaping hero – Thomas Meyerhoffer – part 04 (of 5)
Shaping hero – Thomas Meyerhoffer – part 04
by Sam Bleakley
While surfers think of ‘contour’
mostly as the bottom shape of the board, contour of course refers to any shape
or topography – the outline of a board, lay of the land, sweep of a bay, or
shape of a wave. Surfers ‘think with contours’ just as preliterate
hunter-gatherers ‘think with animals’. Subtle board curves, lines of swell
refracted by a headland into arcs, bottom shapes of beaches, are second
languages for surfers, words made concrete; and actions follow. Avoiding
ungainly or sudden movements, the best surfers torque and stretch in graceful
ways. The classic ‘soul arch’ is key to the longboarder’s repertoire, where,
with five or preferably ten toes over the nose of the board, the surfer throws
one arm into the air like a victorious matador and lets the other casually
trail, as the back is arched and maximum trim is maintained, the body
absolutely comfortable in this moon shape. A variant is to arch with the hands
clasped behind the back. Like the sound of one hand clapping, this Zen moment
is best savoured when nobody is looking, as part of mastering the classic
repertoire of body language that shapes the expert surfer and distinguishes him
or her from the crowd.
Such a surfer is long-time friend
Zed Layson, a white Bajan who has grown up in Barbados to become an outstanding
surfer on short- and longboards. Barbados is a place I used to visit regularly
to trial boards (I damn well fell in love with it on my very first trip),
train, write, spend time with my family and sometimes escape the clammy cold
winds of a Cornish winter. I’ve known Zed for nearly twenty years. He has
piercing blue eyes, tousled blonde hair and great taste in surfboards. He runs
a vibrant surf school with accommodation right on the little cove at Surfers’
Point on the south tip of the island, and also skippers a boat that takes
tourists fishing and snorkelling around the island. He knows every contour of
the coastline and every contour of the bottom shape of the reefs and beaches,
having surfed the island’s breaks since he was a kid.
Barbados is Florida’s Hawaii, only a
short flight away, where surfers used to sloppy beach break waves come to cut
their teeth on more challenging reef breaks, where the waves can really spit
and the currents can test your ocean savvy to its limits. So Barbados is like a
training ground for curves – moving away from unpredictable slop to reef-combed
bliss with waves that can hiss as they unpack their cool fury.
Kelly Slater is not just the most
successful surfer of all time with 11 World Titles under his belt and still
going strong, but probably the most successful athlete of all time. Barbados
was Kelly’s winter backyard since he was a kid, where he learned impossible
contours, fitting into waves in ways that other surfers could only dream of.
Zed grew up shortboarding with Kelly primarily at Slater’s favourite spot
SoupBowl, Bathsheba, on the East coast of the island. Zed has mentally mapped
every inch of this wild and rugged place that can produce world class, testing
waves. He has breathed in and soaked in the contours of spiky coast, gentle
sand running into sharp and sudden coral, and racing swells that suddenly jack
up on the outside reef and feather in an offshore wind, unwinding with beauty
but with the force of a jackhammer.
In 2003, Zed started longboarding on
a Chris Guts Griffiths nine footer I gave him, perfectly
suited to the waves at Surfers Point where he runs his surf school and
beachside apartments. He kept up his shortboarding at SoupBowl, but quickly
evolved his longboarding at Surfers Point, experimenting with custom shapes I
was loaning him from Guts, but always
looking out for something fresh. Surfers Point is a windblown wave that can be
quite mushy but is consistent. It is a good challenge for longboarders because
there are not long, clean sections that you can glide through, but rather you
have to keep manoeuvring the board, often subtly, to stay in trim. You have to
think contours all the time, otherwise, you stall and sink, dead in the water.
On the other hand, surfing like a cork is no good either, because you skim and
miss the meat of the wave where the action and speed is. Surfers Point is a
great place to test-drive experimental boards. Zed is totally open-minded about
surfboards.
“If you’re enjoying riding it, keep
surfing,” he says. “If not, try something new. Free your mind and the rest will
follow.” Zed’s quote-to-surf-by is from Californian shaper Mickey Munoz - there are no bad waves, only poor choice of
equipment and a lousy attitude. I agree.
I was growing tired with my quiver, feeling
like ‘freeing my mind’ in Zed’s advice, and experimenting with something fresh.
Zed, one step ahead, showed me his new epoxy longboard that…WHAT THE HELL!...
had an outline like an hourglass. These were contours that I had never imagined
as the plan shape for a surfboard. I couldn’t help but get tangled in a
mixed-up reaction of interest and put-down.
“BIZARRE! That’s the most audacious
shape I’ve ever seen. It’s got the outline of a beluga whale.”
“A what?” said Zed. “It’s no beluga.
It’s designed by Thomas Meyerhoffer.”
“Where from?” I was curious. And as
I handled the board, nothing seemed to make sense.
“He’s Swedish, a top designer.
Living near San Francisco.” Zed invited me to give it a try. I was a little
reticent thinking I might make a fool of myself. It was so out of my comfort
zone in terms of ‘thinking with contours’.
“I’m not sure I dare to have a go
Zed.”
“Why not?” said Zed, practically
edging me towards the surf.
“I’ll either love it or hate it. I’m
not sure if I’m ready to explore such a wild design right now.” As I paused,
Zed got a little irritated with my resistance and took the board back, turning
to the beach that was only a few metres away.
“I think you’ll enjoy it Sam – watch.”
Zed paddled out and rode it like it was tailored to the very curve of his feet.
I, rather guiltily, stuck with my own board for the last few days of the trip,
but that Meyerhoffer scratched at my psyche for a year, until I had to itch. I
did my research. Originally from Sweden, Thomas Meyerhoffer had moved to
California in 1990. He studied at the Art Centre College of Design in
Switzerland, then graduated from St Martins College of Art in London, worked
for design firm IDEO, followed by Porsche, and now had a position at Apple. He
helped design the original MacBook. In
1998, Meyerhoffer left Apple to form
his own design studio and to pursue working closely with innovative startups to
bring radical new concepts to market, such as the Flow step-in snowboard binding system, a
revolution in the field. He was also a dedicated surfer who thought with
contours and then realized these thoughts in designing boards. In northern
California, between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, he set up a surfboard factory
in a little town called Montara, making surfboard quivers that clearly made Zed
quiver with excitement. Meyerhoffer’s boards are thought first in his
imagination and then translated through computer assisted
design (CAD). He feeds the dimensions into a computer-controlled router (a
shaping machine, or technically a computer numerical
control or CNC). He uses recycled epoxy blanks, then delivers the board
to a specialist glassing bay to be laminated with new formulae of plant-based
resins. This guy was more than at the cutting edge, he had taken a step into
the future and built a home there.
There’s a big difference between
people who tend to use language full of subjunctives rather than indicatives.
Subjunctivizing in language traffics in possibilities rather than settled
certainties as it looks to what may be possible – ‘this may just surprise you’.
Indicatives simply tell you what is: ‘this is curved’. Subjunctives invite
ambiguity and mood or emotion, creating narrative tension. Indicatives are more
like car manuals, telling you what fits where, but never speculating or
experimenting. Subjunctives are often replaced by modal descriptors such as
‘could’ or ‘might’, ‘possibly’ and ‘maybe’. They invite horizon thinking. Thomas
is a ‘subjunctivizer’ who has gone beyond the rainbow, but his curved thinking
is grounded in matter. He is a contour revolutionary.
On the next trip to see Zed in
Barbados, I tested the water, toe first. Zed
now had a whole quiver of curvy Thomas Meyerhoffer designs (they’d formed a
friendship and Meyerhoffer had shipped five over from San Francisco – an eight
footer and four nine footers). I paddled out on the eight footer (the mini-mal)
- it was a big day, whipped up with wind, the waves sporting whipped ice cream
hairdos and behaving in unruly ways. I like days like this – they test how well
you think with contours.
I took off, dropped straight down
and cranked a bottom turn so hard that it made an air pocket showering in
saltspray. I had underestimated the animus of the board – its built-in
tensions. I wiped out, but a feeling rose up inside me that I had never felt
from any other surfboard. No comparison could be made with the language of this
surfcraft – it was talking subjunctives to my other boards’ indicatives. I had
to learn this curveball language, and quickly. This thing was totally
different. A connection was made. I knew I wanted to work with these
boards - at first sight admittedly
bizarre designs, part beluga whale, part hourglass. True, it was difficult to
handle, but once I got to grips with it, it not only fitted curves, but carved
out contours on the wave face of its own design, into which it slotted.
I moved onto the nine footers and
spent a whole week riding all the prototypes stored in Zeds board rack, linking
up the shallow spots on the reef with razor-edge turns, riding, gliding,
floating long feathering lips and hooking under the pocket, leaving a feather
trace. I was getting them sussed, starting to surf them as I pleased - a quiver
that now made me quiver with excitement. And boy did I quiver, both in fear of
what my discerning friends would think of me riding such weird craft, but in
celebration of my own courage to challenge normality and be different.
