Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Surfing (Paperback)

Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Surfing is a large format book of surfing, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: boards old and new, fins, wax and the leash, the shaping room, the breaks at every hour and in every weather, and a few surfers seen far off on the waves.

The boards run from the long old planks of koa and wiliwili, the olo and the thin alaia, through solid redwood, hollow wooden boards and honey blond balsa under fibreglass, to moulded foam: a white shortboard, a pale blue longboard, a short wide fish, a long narrow board for big waves and a row of boards of every length. Beside them lie fins of laminated wood and of one swept shape, a bar of wax and its comb, the leash old and new, a wetsuit folded flat, neoprene boots, gloves and hood, and a padded board bag.

The shaping room follows a board from a rough foam blank split by a thin wooden stringer, through the planer, the rasp and the template, under low side lights that show every bump, to fibreglass and resin and a finished board on its stands, with the trees whose wood made the old boards: koa, wiliwili, breadfruit and balsa.

Then the breaks, empty at every hour and in every season: points of granite boulders and round cobbles, coral and rock reefs, beach breaks over sandbars, a river mouth, a rock jetty, a desert point, coves of stone and of black sand, cliffs of limestone and basalt, at dawn, noon, dusk and under a full moon, in fog, snow, frost and storm, with pelicans and dolphins riding the waves and a few surfers far off, paddling out, waiting in the lineup and riding a long green wave.

Short notes run through the book, on the boards and how they are made, the waves and the breaks, and the history of the sport: on a surf check, surfers often time the gaps between sets, the groups of bigger waves, the olo, the longest of the old boards, could be over five metres long and was kept for royalty, most of a session is spent paddling and waiting; riding waves takes only a small part of it, and rocker is the curve from nose to tail; more of it turns tighter, less runs faster.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Perfect Bound

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-10-22

ISBN - 9671456005065

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 0.7 cm

Page Count - 100