RUBBER SOUL |
|
|
|
| Features - Surf | |||
 Photograph courtesy of Rip Curl Keeping warm in the water has been pivotal to surfing’s evolution – so much would remain undone if it weren’t for a few men and their hand-stitched dreams. We explores the origins and horizons of the wetsuit. Words by Luke Friend (First published in Stranger issue 12, November 2006) The frigid waters of Ocean Beach, San Francisco was all the inspiration Jack O’Neill needed. He wanted to surf for longer. To prolong his time in his new playground. And to do it without turning blue. “I remember one guy who sprayed a sweater with Thompson’s Water Seal,” O’Neill said. “But that didn’t work. He just sat out there, stinking in his own little oil slick.”
 Early O'Neill wetsuits Like most innovations, the wetsuit’s birth is surrounded in myth, claim and counter-claim by various die-hard pioneers intent on being the first. While O’Neill was making his breakthroughs in Northern California, Bev Morgan and Bill and Bob Meistrell, who would later form Body Glove, were also making waves down the coast in Hermosa Beach, using blueprints for a wetsuit designed by Hugh Bradner for the Navy Seals. And while the importance of being the originator is still relevant to those involved, with O’Neill and Body Glove being the industry’s two biggest players today, for most surfers all that matters is that the wetsuit had arrived.
 Gul wetsuits from the 1980s Wetsuit technology today reads like something from a NASA manual. It’s a high-tech world of x-foam closed cell neoprene and modular closure systems, with the suits looking like something your favourite superhero would save the world in; the day-glo faux-pas of the 1980s and early 1990s now a distant memory. Brands like Snugg have lead the way in offering a bespoke, made-to-measure service that means you can get a suit designed for your exact body shape – a far cry from the unwieldy plastic-lined jackets and beavertails. Meanwhile Hurley, a relatively new player in the wetsuit business, uses Japanese pattern makers who studied under the ergonomics wizard Dr. Nakazada, the man responsible for designing Ian Thorpe’s aerodynamic swim suit he wore at the Sydney Olympics. Billabong too has embraced the land of the rising sun, long recognised as the makers of superior neoprene, in their recent progressions. “Our top teamriders were coming back from Japan with custom-made suits that felt and fit like butter,” says Hub Hubbard, Billabong’s wetsuit product manager. Billabong now offers The Solution Platinum Airlite, a Japanese quality, custom-feel suit available at affordable prices that took a year to develop. But despite the laws of economics, the spirit of creativity that underpinned those early years still exists. Patagonia, albeit not confined to working from the back of VW van, have applied their environmental ethos to the wetsuit. And it sounds like the future. Just as Jack O’Neill and others, through trial and error and sheer persistence, sought to discover the right materials to use, Patagonia have sought to discover how to produce these materials with less environmental impact. With Gerry Lopez and the Malloy brothers as their test pilots, the Californian based company have developed a wetsuit that is lined with recycled polyester and chlorine-free wool. This is combined with a neoprene that is made from 80% non-petroleum based ingredients. This combination, because of its increased warmth, allows their 3mm suits to act like a 5mm, meaning it’s not just lighter and more flexible but it uses less neoprene and therefore less petroleum, which is a limited resource. If it sounds like marketing hype, it isn’t: the Regulator wetsuit recently won the EuroSIMA award for ecological innovation. 
Meanwhile Rip Curl is soon to launch the H-Bomb, the world’s first power heated wetsuit that comes with two temperature settings. It’s a futuristic solution but more than 60 years on from the first wetsuit, the inspiration and the purpose remains the same. To surf for longer. To prolong our time in our favourite playground. And to do it all without turning blue. |
|||
Once our surfing dreams could be wrapped in 5mm of neoprene insulation, there was no looking back. Today, surf exploration has extended to all corners of the globe, with every coastline, every ocean full of possibility. Chile. Alaska. Even Antarctica. And it is the wetsuit that has made it all possible. But the early innovations, still the work of a few single-minded men, were less about global discovery than they were about the development of burgeoning local scenes in coldwater spots like the UK and Victoria, Australia. England had its own Jack O’Neill in Dennis Cross, a surfer from Cornwall who made his first custom two-piece suits in the back of his VW camper in the early 1960s. Roger Mansfield, the 1970 British champion, remembers buying sheets of neoprene, creating and cutting out the pattern and then gluing the suit together. “These suits were stiff but they worked,” says Mansfield. “But because they didn’t have a nylon lining, you would never go to the beach without your talcum powder.” And it wasn’t just getting into the suit that was a problem. They also caused abrasions to the body, particularly under the arms. “But it was a small price to pay,” adds Mansfield. Twenty-minute sessions had been replaced by hours in the water, even in the British winter. “It was cosmically mind-expanding. Everything became possible,” says Mansfield. 
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
