Dave Rastovich reckons they’re fun, Andy Campbell   has been riding them at Ship sterns.and icons from Kelly Slater to Bob McTavish   say they may be the key to the future of the surfboard.                 Flex has been around   for more than 30 years – ever since the ’60s. when George Greenough carved up   Lennox on his  flextail spoons. But. despite its potential, flex remains an   unknown attraction for most surfers. LESS IS MORE                 Rasta   first rode a flextail eight years ago. “Dick van Straakn made it… he did it   out of curiosity. I was only 15 or 16 years old It went amazingly, but it was   just built with normal glass and it deteriorated fairly quickly. The next time I   got on one was when we were filming Blue Horizons with Jack McCoy and Jack had a   couple”                 “One of the reasons I like them is because sometimes when I’m surfing   I like to do less. I don’t have to do as much on a flextail.” Rasta continues.   “I like a board that gives back to me I like my board to respond. One turn can   load it up, and you let it go and it just creates its own speed. You don’t have   to push it all the time. You just load it up like a spring and let it go.   They’re a part of my quiver. On different days and in different moods, I’ll pull   my flextail out” DISCIPLES OF FLEX                 Flextails haw never   really captured the imagination of the mainstream                 surf community. Derek Hynd   says it might have something to do with the fact that just as flex was starting   to progress into a functional stand up format in the mid Seventies, pro surfing   took off and Simon Andersen’s versatile and functional thruster design took the   surfing world by storm. “Flex missed the boat slightly back then, when the   thruster standardised everything.” Hynd contends.                 Derek is a disciple of   flex. “I could see how flex operated when watching Mike Stewart getting three   barrels through Rocky Point on his bodyboard which allowed him to get flex and   release without drag. A 7’4″ Outer Island flextail that I rode in six foot   Jeffreys Bay gave me the same sensations. The board flew along the flat and   rocketed off the top.” OUTER ISLAND FLEX                 Quite a few   shapers, Dick Van Straaler, Mark Rabbidge, Chris Brock, Gary Keyes and the early   Yamba crew to name a few, have dabbled with flex, but Outer Island’s Mitchell   Rae is the man when it comes to contemporary flextail design. He’s been making a   range of flextails for a limited but appreciative clientele for more than 30   years.                 Originally from Dee Why, Mitchell was a stand-out teenage suffer in   the ’6os. Abandoning the contest scene, he was among the first wave of surfers   to populate the North Coast in the early ’705. Teaming up with boardmakers Glenn   Ritchie and David Chidgey, first in Brookvale, a Palm Beach boatshed and then   Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour. Rae was the test pilot for the other two’s radical   designs. Concaves, pintails, hard rails andflex were the Outer Island teams   domain. Mitchell has continued to pursue many of those design directions in   particular concaves and flex. After many years on the NSW Central Coast he moved   his business to the North Coast and has just built a new factory at   Urunga                 The Outer Island crew was into concaves long before anyone else an   Mitchell has developed a highly refined approach to them. He was doing deep   concaves • singles and doubles in the mid-’70s, and the current tripple concaves   he’s doing now are very sophisticated and speedy craft WHIPLASH AND   TRACTION                 Rae was introduced to flex by George Greenough. “I surfed   with George in the ’60s and ’70s, and watching him on his flexible kneeboards   was inspiring. He was prepared to swim with the boards but I wanted to be able   to stand up and paddle them.’ Since Those early days. Rae has refined the   ftextail concept through a  range of lengths, but the flex puts a real boost   into the shortboard. i like the boards to be relatively stiff under the front   foot for drive, but under the back foot I like them to be whippy and flexy, and   they twist as well. So you can reach different parts of the wave because the   flex melds the board to the wave.”                 But the real beauty of the flextail is its   reflex action When you come out of a turn the spring is loaded. When it springs   back you g« a retail of energy • the whiplash.                 “When you ride them and you   get them sorted.” Mitchell says, V» can get into parts of the wave that some   boards still can’t access. They don’t wash off speed because their directional   transitions are softened.  the flex. It’s like a car being driven fast on a   racetrack. If you lose traction you go sideways, you’re losing control and   speed, That’s one of the things  flex does in vacuuming power situations. It   will hold the line for longer j because it can flex into the wave and it doesn’t   break traction. Rae reckons his flextails are pretty versatile. “They work   really in any kind of wave that’s got a bit of power, even two or three foot as   long it’s running and got a bit of shape. And they work in big waves. Once get   really powered up they release pressure at certain points. They allow you to   come down the face of a big wave and jam it really hard straight away, where   normally you have to settle your rail and get the board in the water and then   draw out a run. I think flex offers big wave the opportunity to go beyond the   current parameters.”