Why are all these lifelong surfers trading in their boards for swim fins? Board builder and alternative surf craft artisan Jon Wegener had this to say:
“As surfing becomes more complicated, futuristic and radical, there’s a backlash of people who just want to go and have fun. You want to find something simple, and it’s just easy to go and have fun with a handplane. We don’t have Pipeline and waves like that. We have mediocre beachbreaks, and this stuff is really fun in waves like that. You don’t need a lot … you get your best tube view on a head high wave when you’re bodysurfing, so it gives you some exhilaration in our waves.”
Ed Lewis of Enjoy Handplanes added, “We all grew up going to the beach, jumping in the water and playing around. For me, getting back into bodysurfing brings me back to being a kid, and you just kind of need that.”
keep reading – Shawn Parkin’s full article on ESPN.com
// Photo by Shawn Parkin