What is Maurice Cole Up To?

Master Shaper Maurice Cole needs no introduction.

When someone finally writes the book of greatest surf characters, the chapter on Maurice Cole is going to be a must-read. From developing the famous reverse vee that Tom Curren rode to victory in his 1990 title to designing tow-in boards for Ross Clarke-Jones to ride at Jaws, MC has been there and done that.

He caught up with Dan from Surf Bunker at his factory in Torquay.

SB: You’ve been involved in a lot of different aspects of surfboard design over the years, especially the Reverse V with Tom Curren. What do you see as being big right now in high-performance design?

MC: Right now my short-board shapes are based on the designs I’m using with Ross Clarke-Jones. We found that really deep concaves work on our tow-in boards. I’m talking an inch and an eighth of concave! I like to call it a catamaran. It’s all about less wetted surface. Faster boards that do old school carves at much higher speeds!

SB: Tell me about the tow-in boards. How are they influencing your shaping?

MC: Well I’m interested in F1 racing. I love it. And the car companies, they aren’t just racing to win the title. They are spending all these millions on developments to put into their production cars. That’s how I see the tow-in boards. They’re my F1. When you’re towing in, everything is so much faster. If you’ve got a ding on your tail at that speed, your board is going to cavitate. Same for the fin placement. Once we get it dialled in, then I bring those design principles into the shortboards.

Ross-Clarke Jones (Testing) one of Maurices designs at Waimea.

SB: It must be a challenge to shape these big-wave boards…

MC: (laughs) Ross came up to me one day and said “I want you to shape me a 5’9” that will work in waves from 8 to 80 feet!” That was a real challenge for me. Where do you start? I took a board that already had ¼” of concave in it and just chopped into it. Huge concave. But we never surfed if for maybe 6 months. Finally we gave it a try. And Ross caught this wave and said “This is it! This is the board I can surf at Jaws”. All my tow-in boards have deep concaves, sharp edges, less wetted surface. Double concaves don’t work for me, because of the way water flows into the fins. So that’s my hydrodynamic theory. I think working on the tow-in boards has seen what I call my technical renaissance over the past 10 years.

SB: You started using polystyrene blanks and epoxy resins in the early 80s. What’s your view of non-conventional surfboard materials?

MC: Well the thing is in France in the 80s it was so hard to get hold of blanks and resin because the industry was so small. But we could get polystyrene blanks and use epoxy resin because it was used in the sailboard business. The problem was that epoxy was so toxic. You actually had to do a special course in France to be allowed to work with it, it was so bad for you. I was one of the first surfboard builders to use the first generation of non-toxic epoxies in the mid-80s and made a couple of thousand EPS epoxies.

SB: You’ve been a proponent of more environmentally friendly materials. What are you working on at the moment?

MC: Right now – today - I make 100% recyclable surfboards. We use recycled blanks and entropy bio sap resins with flax seed fibreglass. I think it’s really embarrassing that in the industry we are still using technology that’s 50, 60 years old to make surfboards. With surfing being in the 2020 games it’s going to look really bad if journalists start asking questions about what surfboards are made from. It’s a toxic cocktail. Conventional materials just aren’t environmentally friendly, not to manufacture, not to work with, not to dispose of. I’m working on it with sustainable surf, a NFP organisation (www.sustainablesurf.org).

Sustainability is a big thing these days and that’s why I’ve spoken to the guys at the World Surf League and have proposed that as of next year, every surfer on the tour will have to ride a board that’s constructed 50% of sustainable materials, and from 2018 it will be 100% sustainable. In other sports the top athletes are using cutting edge technology but our pros are still using old, dirty technology.

SB: What’s the feedback been like from the WSL and the surfing companies? Have they been supportive?

MC: Oh totally. Right behind it. And the great thing is that it won’t cost them anything. The technology is already there. There’s so many green materials that we can use these days. Recycled blanks, There’s ‘green’ epoxies, epoxies made from plants, there’s another type that doesn’t even need catalyst. It just sets. There’s flax seed fibreglass, recyclable materials, so many things out there. I’ve never been more optimistic than I am right now about the future of surfboards. The WSL are now running a Sustainable Surfboard Summit on the 6th of September. It will be a round table discussion with about 20 stakeholders in attendance.

SB: Tell me about working with Tom Curren. How did that come about?

MC: Well we were both living in France at the time. Tom had just moved there and he asked me to shape him some boards. This was late 1989 when he was thinking about making his comeback in 1990. The first board I made him was that yellow board with the red rails. It was an 8’3” epoxy. He surfed it at Sunset. They said he was the best surfer at Sunset that season. He paid me for it with a guitar! I made some other boards for him, a white 6’0” polystyrene epoxy. He loved the way it floated, it was really buoyant. He said no-one could touch him on that board, he beat Dave Macca on in France, won a contest in Portugal on it. I actually made him a quiver of boards in ’91 from the 6’0” EPS/Epoxy then from 6’4”, 6’9”, 7’3”, 7’8” and 8’3”.

SB: What about the famous stickerless board that he surfed at Haleiwa?

MC: Well that was the board with the reverse V (vee through the front half of the board and completely flat through the tail). There was a7’3” and a 7’8” actually. White with yellow rails. And the truth is the boards were shaped and glassed in France and I sent them to Tom in Hawaii without decals. But the airline lost the boards! So we got the boards just before the contest and didn’t have any stickers. Tom rides the 7’8” in the heats but the swell is dropping so I told him to go with the 7’3” and Tom’s like “Oh, I left the 7’3” behind!” So I got in the car and it’s a one hour drive to get back to Kuilima. One way. I was driving on the wrong side of the road, blind corners, and I got there and back in one hour! I pulled into the car park and the other guys have already paddled out for the final. And Tom takes the 7’ 3” and paddles out and wins the contest! He then went onto do the famous Backdoor cutback shot on the 7’ 8”.

SB: Do you think that pro surfers would benefit from shaping their own boards? Or is it too much of a learning process?

MC: (Chuckles) Well here’s the thing. These guys are riding what, 150 boards a year. That’s one board every two days. Plus they are breaking them all the time with airs. I just don’t think they’re on the one board long enough. What’s happened over the last 10 years is the surfers have lost the ability to give feedback to their shaper. The shaper makes them 10 boards at a time and they try and work out which one’s best.

SB: What do you think of the trend to surf much shorter boards compared to say 10 years ago?

MC: I think we’ve started to see it come back a little in the past year or so. I think probably they went a bit too short. Right now the rule of thumb seems to be ride a board one inch longer than your height. That seems about right. For the pros, when you go too short I think you can’t see the board come around and it’s less spectacular. I think they’ve all come back a bit longer board than before.

SB: Quad-fin setups have become really popular as well. What’s your thought on quads versus the conventional thruster setup?

MC: Well all our tow-in boards are thrusters. We’ve experimented with quads but especially on big waves you need the drive that the middle fin gives you. There’s always a bit of a transition on your turns with a quad, as you switch from one rail to the other. You don’t get that on a thruster because that middle fin is always there. You can see it when guys do big roundhouse cutbacks, on a quad it just catches a bit and the guys have to guide it around or else you spin out. With a thruster you can just bang it right around. Quads can go a bit quicker, but I have found that using the concaves I can get my boards to go even quicker than a quad and still keep the thruster setup. Quads do pivot turns, thrusters do man hacks!

SB: What’s your thoughts on shaping machines?

MC: It’s just a tool. Well you know, a lot of these guys have got this soul surfing thing going where they are totally against shaping machines. Well where do you draw the line? It’s just a tool. Well so is a planer! For me shaping machines are just a tool. Having said that, they are not really the thing for me. I prefer to use my eye. I just whittle away. I’m a whittler! Preshaped blanks are just a more sophisticated blank, which gives you a technical foundation of where to start.

SB: How many boards would you have shaped?

MC: Oh, 20 to 25 thousand. Sometimes when I was shaping with Wayne (Lynch) we’d only shape one a week! Now I might shape 500 a year. The way I see it, if I have not made you the best board of your life, I’ve failed! I guarantee that within three boards, provided you give me feedback and are honest about what you need, I’ll make you a magic board.

SB: Maurice, great to chat to you and thanks for your time!

MC: A pleasure.

Maurice can be contacted at mauricecole.com

The Reverse V Project by Nick Carroll will be published soon in a limited edition run of 300 copies. Check out reversev.com for more details.