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SURFERMAG.COM ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

SURFERMAG.COM: When I see the older Fish designs and I compare to the newer ones, I think, “Man, they’ve pulled the nose in a lot and they’ve done some trippy stuff with the bottom and lift and stuff, and hey, these boards have got four fins.” Why? Can you talk specifically about your Pavel SpeedDialer design, and the aspects of it, because I know that its rail is interestingly full and pinched, which I think is rather unique. I know none of these concepts are new, but if you can talk about it…

RICH PAVEL: The combination is what’s new. So you have a fully integrated working board with a complete combination that wasn’t ever in existence prior to now. And there’s different types of innovation: there’s innovation where you come up with a concept that wasn’t ever before defined, and then there’s also people that were integrators, and I would have to hold that up as an example of an integration that wasn’t there before. I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that it’s new, like, “Hey, no one ever thought up this concept and I have a new concept.” The way it’s defined and the way it’s put together, the complete combination, yeah, it’s new.

SURFERMAG.COM: And certainly that’s what Parmenter talks about, and I imagine what he spoke about with you. It’s not that I’m trying to belittle the ‘70s Fish—just this kneeboard wide-nose keel-fin--it’s that now we’re moving forward with these integrated design concepts, making the Fish design more relevant today than ever, and perhaps in California, more relevant than any other shortboard design. Is this a true statement?

RICH PAVEL: There’s this quote of Isaac Newton, where he says if I’ve seen farther than others it’s ‘cause I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants. And the people that I’ve been influenced by, and some of it’s been very intentional, the work that I do with Brewer, I pay him, he deserves to be paid; the work that I did with Malcolm Campbell, I paid him, he deserves to be paid; these people deserve to be paid and not just recognized, but paid [laughs] money. All those guys that were out there building Fishes…I like what Matt Biolos was basically proclaiming to the world: “Hey all you guys that have thrusters. Give Simon a buck.” If he had a buck for every fin that went on a thruster, that would be appropriate, it would be totally appropriate. That’s where that way of being has a disconnect, between what’s at me and my essence, that whole thing of where something comes from and giving not just acknowledgement but acknowledgment in a way that goes beyond recognition. That’s really, really an appropriate way to be. And when you’re in business, it’s like whether there are shareholders or not, the real thing is to maximize profits and if you aren’t willing to hold to or honor that whole concept of acknowledging others because it might somehow take away from your money, that’s not cool. So, to lay it out as far as who deserves recognition as far as being an influence on me as it has shown up here, the thing that Maurice Cole got into with the forward vee and the way he defined it with Tommy Curren, that might have been a new combination that was never that highly defined prior to him doing it that way with Tommy. I have boards that were done by Stevie Lis that have forward vee in them from ages ago, that pre-date that whole experiment with Tom Curren. And in turn I had done boards with forward vee. But to say, “Oh yeah, I’ve done that already, and –yawn–” or whatever, well, wait a second, let’s not be so chintzy, let’s step up to the plate here and just be good about it, really. Was what Maurice was involved with with Tommy extraordinary? Depends on how you want to look at it. I think it was exceptional. I really do. Really, really great what he did. He switched people’s thinking around and got them understanding things in a way that it wasn’t really understood before. And I don’t know if Maurice was drawing on influences or whether they kind of cooked that up over there in France or what.

SURFERMAG.COM: Can you give a little bit more background regarding the forward vee and Maurice and Tom and exactly the concept that you’re talking about so that the reader gets a better feel?

RICH PAVEL: In the old way of creating a board you would have vee off the tail. And the board would have more outline rocker than center-line rocker because of that vee and what Maurice did, he actually reduced the rocker in the rail-line and increased the rocker in the center-line by having the forward vee the way he had, it would kind of lift the tail in a way that at the time was kind of like, whoa, hang on Maurice, [laughs] that’s a big breath. So, that was a very different way of having the board set up, where you had less rocker in the outline and the rail-line, and more rocker in the center-line. That was very interesting.

SURFERMAG.COM: Call me a geek, but I’ve never even thought that rocker can exist more on the rail than in the center and vice versa.

RICH PAVEL: Yeah well he was trying to get the board straight up the face, straight down the face. Those boards wound up having a real nice takeoff about them. Because of the way the tail fit in the wave face and not only did it have a really nice takeoff, but in the way it would rotate and lead coming off the bottom because of that vee, it would set the rail and come up and then off the top and the way that tail-rocker was, it really, really was incredible, the way that they felt. So there’s something to that that’s in these boards. One of the things that these boards (Pavel Speed-Dialer) have, and it’s actually something that goes with the Fish design and I don’t know that people understand the Fish design, even though it’s really popular right now. And it’s a board that’s not known to the industry. And there’s a lot of very good reasons for that, but you’ve just got to stick with defining characteristics between the Speed-Dialer and the Fish from the ‘70s. The ‘70s boards had really, really very shallow rockers that were pretty straight and it was all about speed-surfing, and it still is. But back then the thinking was, rocker’s slow. But what has been proven and corroborated time and time again, well, bad rocker is always going to be slow. Even if it’s not very much. And good rocker isn’t necessarily slow at all as long is it’s a good rocker or appropriate rocker and a correct application. So, rocker would be a huge part of that, but to be more granular about it: the Fishes that were done in the ‘70s by, say, Steve Lis, they had a panel concave in them. And that panel concave really created a sweet spot as far as the way the water would flow across the bottom of the board. And what Stevie was doing was creating a beautiful, beautiful rocker for the board. A really nice accelerating curve and the concave allowed the board to plane really high and you could ride it on each panel.

SURFERMAG.COM: Was it a subtle concave throughout the bottom or was it really fixed?

RICH PAVEL: Very subtle.

SURFERMAG.COM: So it was flat but the concave gave it some rocker?

RICH PAVEL: Yeah. And the way he would flare that concave in there, his bottom rockers were incredible, along with his bottom contours. Greenough was the same way. Those guys, I think it’s because they were kneeboarders and they were riding on their knees, you know that rocker really meant everything and they were much more attuned and sensitive to the rocker because they weren’t using this standing upright body position to manipulate the board and subsidize it if it didn’t work quite right, you know, they couldn’t get around it by using body-english or something like that. It had to be tuned, like really tuned, incredibly tuned. And those guys were super, super into it.

SURFERMAG.COM: Something about that lower center of gravity and like you said, not having the ability to manipulate as a standup surfer could.

RICH PAVEL: Made it a very pure approach. A very pure approach. And they had to have it functioning. So the thing that I put more emphasis on was shifting the rocker back out off the tail. And I’ll run a single concave off the tail in a way that I think is deliberately done and defined probably for reasons that other guys haven’t hit on. I refer to it as an “afterburner.” It’s just a big exhaust pipe, water’s going back out off the tail and that’s a good place to have the water going out off the tail. And with that swallowtail, a lot of guys probably don’t have a sense of how viscous water is and how much effort it takes-- literally to detach water from water. It’s a lot of force. The water that’s attached to that water is also attached to the water; I mean it’s like a taffy pull. So, once you get that water flowing off the tail, it’s pretty much drawing and bringing other water with it that way, so you’ve got to get that going. The other thing is, water is going to go the path of the least resistance. But it takes a little something to get your head around that. The amount of time you spend thinking in that way is probably not very flattering—people are like, “Dude, take a hit.” But you do, you know, your inclination is what it is. So that whole thing with the way the concaves are set up and how it’s different than those ‘70s boards. Stated simply, it’s more like a double into a single whereas the conventional thruster is a single into a double. That’s kind of what’s different. And without getting so granular [laughs].

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