The Sunday Story Behind the Photo with Steve

This photo was taken in April 2001 during my third sidecut phase. The board is a copy of a 150cm snowboard blown up. I rode this board mostly in the spring of 2001 and found that it had great drive from the rear but at the same time I could move up on the board and initiate turns from the nose just like a snowboard. Find a surfboard you can do that with.

I've got a whole pile of these things in my garage, some that work, some that don't but for one reason or another this board never ended up in the garage. Instead this board found it's way next to my wood pile and has been there for the past 10 years.

This summer there was a fun glassy waist high day at the Wall and Bryan kicked me out of the shop and told me to go surfing w/ my boys. So I flew home grabbed the boys and realized I had left my Lost Rocket at the shop. Remembering my sidecut surfboard I walked over behind the wood pile and basically pulled this board out of the ground. It had been covered in leaves for over 5 years and was completely brown. My boys looked at me in disbelief and I said ''I got me a vehicle." We cruised over to the wall, I threw in a pair of red FCS FG3's, put some wax on it, paddled out, and had a super fun session with my kids!

I have spent over 20 years ON and OFF riding surfboards w/ sidecut and with over 1,000 sessions on sidecut surfboards I don't think there's anyone that understands how surf and snow can overlap more than me. Like I said, I have a garage full of crazy looking snowboards, I mean surfboards. I'm sure some of you are saying "a snowboard needs flex to turn" but a surfboard doesn't because it's already perfectly flexed due to the rocker it already has.

I see sidecut becoming a part of surfing starting with big wave boards first. You always see guys getting to the bottom of a 30ft + wave and they have so much speed that they can't put the board on rail due to the outline, they go straight and the wave just catches up to them and eats them up. But w/ sidecut the only thing they will have to do is lean. By doing so, it will put more rail in the water, cut through any chop and carve a perfect turn while holding speed.