A surfer and shaper’s relationship is like marriage, just with the sex

Rod and Darren Handley talk shop

There is perhaps no more important, no more treasured and no more hot-fire sexy relationship in surfing than that between a surfer and shaper. Sure the one between a local Boardrider’s club and the local butcher is right up there. As is the tight knit, borderline homosexual love between a pro surfer and his coke dealer or the ongoing affair between the head judge of the ASP and the Brazilian surfer’s rep. And yet, as I said, all these pale into comparison, compared to the symbiotic, idiotic, episodic and spasmodic fuckmosis that is a surfer-shaper bond.

Now it doesn’t matter if you, a professional surfer earning a 100 headjobs a year, or a local dole bludger swapping 50 buck foils for six ounce glass jobs, take it from Rod, forging this bond is key. Yep from the man who knows more about fiberglass than anyone except Tom Morey, if you get that relationship sorted your surfing will go through the roof faster than I did when my uncle Ted busted me fingering his daughter with Dencorub in the attic on her 16th birthday.

Of course starting at the top, you can see the best surfers tend to stick to the best shapers. I mean take my old mate Mick Fanbelt and his shaper Derrin Handjob. Those two are so close, it borders on illegal. I remember telling Derrin and Mick a few years back when they came for advice about the court case that they should perhaps spend less time in the hay and more time in the shaping bay.

And the results were obvious. After Derrin spent more quality time with old Fandog, talking swallowtails and reverse rocker and Mick spent more time giving feedback about triple convex and nose taildowns, Mick almost won a world title. Even now when I see Derrin slaving away on behalf of Mick, counting the money and pushing the red button on his shaping machine 50 times a day, I think that, right there, is a surfer and a machine operator getting together to make the world a better place.

Now you don’t have to be world champions to have that special relationship – I mean look at Parko and JS, or Bede and his shaper Wayne – I mean those clowns haven’t won a world title between all of them, but it doesn’t stop them from going to barbies together, and talking about the thermodynamics of a how many channels you can fit in a diamond tail. In fact, such is their closeness I’ve heard Parko can order a custom board, with spray, and have it ready for pick up in just five weeks, give or take three.

And of course it is these types of relationships that can kick our sport fair up the rectum and force revolutionary change. I mean when I made the great mini-mal breakthrough of 1985, (after running over a chick on my interceptor goatboat and cutting a foot off her mal, not to mention her leg) without my local shaper Bort Mritz, I would have never found a way for fat, rich, lazy cunts to surf every weekend and make absolute skin chimneys of themselves.

The same can be said with McCoy, Horan and the ridiculously popular Lazor Zap, Webber, Herring and the universally accessible banana board, or Mr X [Glen Winton] and the five-finned flex tail, to name a few.

Look even Slater, who wouldn’t know a double veed, reverse bat tail if it came up and bit him on the arse while he was munging out Pamela Anderson has managed to stick with a resin-brained half wit like Al Merrick for more than a decade. Sure it may have cost him all is friendships and a heap of world titles, but at least he’s got a shed-load of rounded swallow fins to give to charity auctions.

At the end of the day, your relationship with your shaper is pretty much the closest thing to marriage you’ll have in surfing. There’ll be ups and downs, and Friday nights will probably involve inhaling acetone, rum and bongs in the shed. There’ll be times when you want to chase some other shaper sluts, and times when it seems all your hard earned money from petrol siphoning is going straight down a RSL or TAB’s shit hole.

But every now and 20 years you’ll get your calloused hands on that magic stick and be able to stick it right in that sweet pocket. And for those five milliseconds, you, your shaper and the cosmic world will be in perfect orgasmic harmony. Of course it can’t last, and all there will be to do is kick out, wipe yourself with a towel, and pray that it will all happen again, just once before you are forced to dump the bitch and start all over again.