Kneeboarding (surfsport)
Kneeboarding is a discipline of surfing where the rider paddles on his or her belly into a wave on a kneeboard, then rides the wave face typically on both knees. The typical kneeboard is between five and six and a half feet in length, with a wide round nose and constructed of Glassfibre over a polyurethane foam core. Kneeboard designers however are known for their wild experimental excess and so most modern materials including various aerospace elements such as Titanium alloys (for fins), carbon fibre and kevlar in epoxy matrices are not unusual. Modern kneeboards may have a rubber pad for the rider's knees, preventing undue wear of the knees, also preventing slipping to help the rider maintain control. Kneeboarders also typically use swimfins and an ankle surfleash.
Kneeboarding popularity increased markedly with the release of the surf movie "Crystal Voyager" by the most prominent of kneeboard riders, Californian, George Greenough. The music of Pink Floyd's "Meddle" combined with spectacular slow-motion images by Mr. Greenough, filming inside the tube whilst surfing a "spoon" kneeboard, changed surfing's direction, influenced board and fin design and earned him a Palme d'Or for short film at the Cannes film festival in the late 1960s.
The advantage of kneeboarding is the ability it gives the rider to deal with tube rides that might require too quick of a take off for a standup surfer or bodyboarder to get into and might get too tight or steep for a stand-up board surfer to deal with. Being closer to the Face of the wave, the feeling of speed is more enhanced, with a resulting increase in excitement. It seems that kneeboarding is where the best of the skill sets unique to each of the surfing disciplines "comes together".
Brendan's new Ride
Mark Rabbidge designed and shaped quad fin kneeboard.
Below is some kneeboard surfing from a few Fridays ago. I actually broke the gopro mount on my helmet, but was lucky enough to have the camera tethered and attached via a strap, so no camera loss!
kneemo's from adam williams on Vimeo.
Paul Newman below
Body Surfer pictured below
This guy could surf, no hand plane , just a pair of flippers and the ability to ride the wave, he was rolling on his back to his front, all while travelling along the wave face , so cool to see and meet! You see me riding up and over on wave in the video above.
Eric Bridges
Mat Rider Extraordinaire and Highly Paid Photographer
Love at first sight
we walked into the Coffee Garage in Wandy..all of a sudden Waka starts to drool uncontrollably…..this little board is why
Paul Newman
Albert Whiteman designed , Friar Tuck Kneeboard
‘’Hey baby you come here often!!’’
Speed Panel
It has ‘John ‘ pencilled on the tail , AW for Albert Whiteman and its length is 5 ‘6 “. I can remember Albert calling into my old place back at Dunmore and showing me these boards, but was never interested with experimenting with different designs back in a day, so when I spotted this in the Cafe , I was able to buy this from the owner. I was able to contact John Foster, who was the original owner and he passed on these comments
“ They were called 'speed panel' and they went ok and I never had any problems with nose diving with them. I think the idea was that when you were racing down the line the rocker was flatter and when you turned you had a curvy rail - it seemed to work. It was basically a twinny with a hook fin in the middle. This is the 3rd one like it Bert shaped me. This one was a replacement for a magic board I snapped and I just asked for the same again. I got this one in January 1990 and I just couldn't get this particular one to work how I wanted. I won the Jnrs at the 1990 North side contest on it (and I was using one of Bert's boards) - finals were at South Narrabeen. I went nose first into a rock at Bunga, which is why its smashed in. After I fixed it I ended up giving it back to Bert and borrowed a board then attacked him until I got a new one (a double concave bat tail)
water was also supposed to get shunted down the channel and then squirted down the sides of the 'panel'. Corban Pollard was riding them too and I think Parksey made them for him before he went OS in '88 ‘’
Albert made me this one back in 91 before he died, so to score this little speed panel board was fairly epic .My one is a 6’0 and was a copy of one of the boards he took to Hawaii, I rode my one on many a surf trip to G Land and Indonesia, with the last time I surfed it was back in 1995, GLAND EAST JAVA. Looking forward to restoring and riding this little board in the future.
Raft Riders
Saturday Afternoon fun away from the crowds, with just Paul and myself riding surfmats.raft riders from adam williams on Vimeo.
Last Monday
Just Paul and myself surfing for over 2 hours , nice clean 3-4ft waves and the ocean was like bath water . We were wondering where everyone was , but by mid morning a few more bodies started to join us. Below is the vision from both cameras and you can see how the waves were.Vision from Paul Newman
Kneelo's from Bulkheads Stuff on Vimeo.
and from my camera. There was so many clean waves, with nobody around. With Easter approaching, this should be the last of the major tourist visitors and hopefully we will swing into our quiet, crowd free winter hibernation.
Glory from adam williams on Vimeo.
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