A Chat with Wayne Lynch

A Chat with Wayne Lynch
By Angie Takanami

The ocean is silent; rising lines creep toward a sleepy fishing bay. Barefoot, in a dark blue fleece sweater and khaki shorts, a grey-bearded man sits next to his skinny teenage son on a weathered park bench. They watch closely as the bay begins to waken. Suddenly a four-foot wall of water rises skyward, pausing momentarily as it rolls into a perfect tube, and then—boom! “Phew, that was a fast one!” laughs the dad.
Wayne Lynch is an Australian surfing hero and legendary shaper. A pioneer of the wild south coast of Victoria, Australia, Wayne was merely a teenager during the exciting transition period between longboard and shortboard surfing, but his imaginative passion for the sport made him one of the finest surfers and board shapers.
Wayne shies away from interviews, so we were lucky to spend time with him and son Jarrah during the 2009/10 Australian summer break.

Angie Takanami: I hear you’ve been to Japan a few times?
Wayne: Four or five times. I’ve been down to Shikoku, around Tokyo a bit, and up North where I stayed with a family of fishermen. They couldn’t speak any English and I couldn’t speak any Japanese, but I used to go out fishing with the dad. I lived with them for a week. It was very cold, I remember.

A: Why did you stay with a Japanese family?
W: I wanted to see old Japan and the people, how they really live. Surfing (professionally) is like living in a bubble. You go to all these countries, but you’re in the same bubble and you experience the same things. People rarely get outside that bubble, and I hate that.

A: Did you score any memorable waves in Japan?
W: Oh yeah, Shikoku was really good. Really mellow, locals dedicated to their surfing life. But I didn’t even surf around Tokyo. Like Shonan: hundreds of people, wall to wall. Wasn’t for me. I told the guys I wanted to go somewhere it wasn’t crowded, so we drove up the coast about an hour and a half. There was no one in the water so we had a surf, but within an hour there were a hundred people. They’d followed us up the coast!

A: Was that back when you were on the pro tour?
W: Yeah, a long time ago! (laughs)

A: You were on the tour while still a teenager, but quit while you were still young. Why?
W: By 18 I had seen enough. It was unreal: I got to travel the world, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I look back on that time of my life with enormous appreciation. But I also saw the other side really early.

A: The “other side?”
W: There’s no adventure, there’s no real interaction. It’s like you have to be a rock star.

A: So what’s your idea of adventure?
W: Just go to beautiful places, wild places. Get on boats if I can—I sail a lot. Just get off the track.

A: You signed on with Patagonia a few years ago as their Australian Surfing ambassador…
W: Patagonia was always the company I looked at. When you looked at the fishermen in their catalogues, the gear was really old. They were just documenting people’s lives and making gear that facilitates that. It’s such a straightforward thing. That principle is there behind much of what they do.

A: After working for major surfing brands your whole life, was it a big change?
W: It’s like the other brands didn’t want to present surfing to the public as it really was. Yvon (Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder) is a very clever man. He laid down the template and I don’t think the other (established) companies can change to that degree, but other developing companies can. The conservation issue shifts people’s consciousness.

A: Your name has been associated with single-fin boards since the 70s. What are the good and bad aspects of them?
W: The single fin is very fast—fantastic speed—and very free in its own way. But it has its limitations, like all boards. You don’t get quite the grip on the rail. When the wave’s a bit flat they’re not as alive off the top, you can’t get that lift out of the fins. In really bouncy, choppy conditions the board tends to be running fast and that’s when it’s hard to get a grip on your rail when you’re turning.

A: How similar are the single fins you are making now to the ones you were riding in the 70s?
W: Very similar. Same template, just a little bit different in the rail and the rocker. In the boards I was shaping in the 70s, the wide point was way back (towards the tail). They were very thin, with a big, round tail and the front was narrower than the tail. It meant I could stand back on the board and surf off the back, so they felt like a shorter board. They were 7’10” but they felt like a 6’10”.

But the new ones definitely go better. When the wave is really steep, it’s fantastic on the take-off and really beautiful in the tube…what the young guys call “the barrel”—I still ride “tubes,” but Jarrah and his mates ride barrels (laughs). All the words have changed, you know, it’s a different language. I don’t know what he’s talking about. He goes, “That’s really dope!” I say, “What do ya mean, drugs?” He goes, “No, that means good!”

A: What makes you want to pick up a single fin over a normal thruster (today’s more common three-fin design)?
W: For the most dangerous or most difficult take-off I ride the single fin. Or if I’m feeling terrified! If you have the good fortune to have a range of surfboards, really it’s just about the different conditions and how you feel. Some days I don’t want to have the single fin feeling.

A: Do you like a fluid style of surfing?
W: To me it has to be almost like it’s one movement from start to end. That has to be the heart of it, because surfing is a rhythm, and it gets more spontaneous because you start to do things you’re not planning. When you look at all the things in nature—the way the wind blows a tree—it’s always a fluid movement. What singles Kelly Slater out is how he linked all his surfing together. Other people can’t get that power and rhythm that he has.

A: Looking at what you were doing in the 70s, was success a combination of a state of mind and good equipment?
W: Oh yeah, but back then making a good board was a fluke. I didn’t know what I was doing, not even a little bit. We were making it up, and not that well sometimes. I went through periods where my surfing just fell apart because I didn’t know what elements of the surfboards worked, so I couldn’t reproduce them.

A: Machines have become a big part of the surfing industry; do you still shape by hand?
W: Mostly—sometimes not, but mostly. When the machine does the boards, they’re a lot thicker and bulkier. I don’t like to just finish a board that’s been made by a machine. It’s not as satisfying—it’s not shaping, it’s finishing. Everyone thinks the machine copies a board exactly, but it doesn’t. I spend a lot of time on the boards; I’m very slow. I take hours. They feed me under the door, like in prison! (laughs).

A: Do you still surf every day?
W: I don’t like to surf a lot. It becomes like a habit, and I don’t like that feeling. Maybe two or three times a week is good. Plus when you get older it becomes very demanding. It hurts! (laughs) Your back aches, your shoulders, your neck. There’s a lot more to life than just surf. I like to sail, there’s a lot to it.

A: Has sailing been a big part of your life?
W: I grew up sailing, and my family were fishermen. A lot of older-generation surfers were sailors as well, or went sailing or did trips through the Pacific. Surfing’s become a lot more one-dimensional, and people only think about the surfing, especially because of the pro circuit. A lot of the old guys out of Hawaii and California were sailors and boat designers.

Sailing is hard; you have to be very strong, and sometimes you’re up all night. You have to concentrate, and it’s very easy to lose your boat. But I just love sailing. It’s an endless thing that you can learn as long as you are alive. Surfing after so long isn’t like that.

A: How have you coped with the growing crowds along the Victoria coast?
W: It’s only been in the last six or eight years that it’s gotten crowded. Down south is still quite a wilderness, but the early years down there were really uncrowded. It was fantastic. But like everything it’s become more commercial. The surfing population has expanded so much down here. All of us that grew up here hate it. The sense of community is shattered. The housing prices go up so much that people can’t buy anything and generations can’t stay, and there’s so many laws, rules and regulations. When I was Jarrah’s age this place was so free it was amazing.

That’s why I go sailing—to get away. Sailing on this coast is like the surfing used to be. No one does it because they’re all scared of it. It’s big, gnarly and windy. In the early years of surfing around here you looked for someone else to surf with. You’d be terrified some days, because it was quite sharky. A lot of people thought I used to like surfing by myself, but that’s not true. I’d be begging guys to come out, or just sit in the channel! Especially Case (Glen Casey, head of Patagonia Australia). He’d be on the beach crying, or in the channel! I nicknamed him channel boy! (laughs) Nah, I’m just ragging him.

The other reason I don’t surf that much is that it’s just too crowded. Not just the crowds, but the attitude: too aggressive, competing for waves. We grew up in such ideal conditions that people took their turn and there was no pressure. You surfed with people, not against them, and you knew each other. You looked out for each other and made sure someone was OK if they lost their board.

A: I’m sure you’ve got a good wipeout story.
W: Down here, about two miles out to sea and (the waves were) about 20 foot. I spun around really late to catch a wave and freefell and landed on the wave and skidded. It broke on me and threw me up into the air. I went forward and rolled, but all that energy had a hold of me because I hadn’t gone underwater. I just held on and held on—I thought I was dying for sure. You know how you read about people seeing a white light? I went through that whole thing. Then I popped back up onto the surface and the board was right beside me. I spent three months out of the water, all my back, muscles, nerves were shot. When I went to see someone to fixed up, he said I had looked like someone who had been in a head-on collision. It was a long time ago, in 1974 or 75. It took me ages to work out what happened at the end of that white light. The end was like, you’re going to live, you’re going back. And, yeah, I popped back.

A: And that didn’t put you off surfing?
W: Nah. It’s just life, you know. You can’t give up something because of an accident. You just become a bit more wise and a bit more settled.

A: Most would say you are a surfing icon. Do you feel like a celebrity?
W: My life’s nothing special. If you saw how I live….I hardly have any situations where I’m even aware that I’m a so-called “legendary surfer.” I make fun of it. I’ve always had a distrust of celebrity life. It just doesn’t seem authentic. I don’t like the attention.

A: What’s your plan from here on?
W: To go somewhere new and pristine. I’ve seen the results after things are exploited too much. Suddenly there’s thousands of people, agro in the water, and they build tourist parks and surf camps. I’m not really against all that stuff but I just don’t like creating it. I just love the wild untouched life. That’s where I go. That’s what I do.

Wayne Lynch Profile
• Born 1951 in Lorne, Victoria, Australia.
• Won the Australian Junior Surfing Championships four years running from 1967-1970.
• Pioneer of the Victoria coastline. A teenager during surfing’s groundbreaking transition period from shortboard to longboards in the late 70s, developed epoxy-making, fluid, carving tracks in a figure-eight style.
• Although he had success in competitions, was most famous in surfing circles for his laid-back, love-of-surfing-for-its-own-sake approach to the sport.
• Master surfboard shaper whose early designs were avidly sought after in the 1980s and 90s; he recently released a line of modern single-fin boards based on his boards from the 70s.
• Patagonia Australia men’s surfing ambassador.