HAND CRAFTED UNIQUE SURF CRAFT SINCE THE 70s
HISTORY
Dick & Anne Van Straalen have a rich heritage in the surfers way.
An early Burleigh Heads migration from Sydney's northern beaches in the late 60's set them up in the forefront of the surfing heritage and ocean lifestyle family.
The Gold Coast waves were empty in those days and the design of surf craft, surf wear and lifestyle was an open door
Surfing history was enriched beyond measure by Dick and those early forebears of the surfing tribal culture.
ABOUT
Dick Van Straalen has a rich heritage of shaping as the surfers way.
An early shaping venture with with Shane surfboards in Brookvale started his career as master of the craft. A move from Newport Beach NSW to Burleigh Heads in Queensland started his venture trading and producing unique surfboards.
Dick represented the new creative artistry of hand shaped designs on the Gold Coast. A tradition of one off craftsmanship carried thru in the midst of machined pop outs and still a spirited designer understanding material and form as it moves thru the energy of the sea.
BOARDS
JUST SOME OF THE MANY SHAPES BELOW. ANY SHAPE IS POSSIBLE
Glider Malibu
Reef Runner
Twin Flyer
Wasp Quad
Single Fin
Bullet
Fish
Ocean Paddler
Balsa
Single Fin
Flyer
Art Fish
Dick Van Straalen is one of the most innovative and creative shapers in Australia. A fine surfer, he started shaping his own boards as a teenager and learn his art on the Northern beaches in Sydney in the 1960’s. It was when he moved to Burleigh Heads and started shaping under his own label in the 70’s that he really blossomed. The hollow sand bottom point breaks on the Gold Coast and his shapes were a perfect match, and his down railed, pintails pioneered riding way back inside the tube at Burleigh and Kirra.
Since then he has progressed into a master shaper who over the last 50 years has hand shaped all different types of ocean going vehicles from Open Ocean Racing Paddleboards, to Longboards, Reef Runners, Guns, Fishes and the many other designs that his fertile imagination comes up with. His combinations of rocker, vee, tail lift and outline templates are unique and produce a smooth, manoeuvrable, fast ride that allows you to maintain a high speed line at all times.
ELEMENTS
HYDCARBON & EPOXY HYDRO
Pictured here is a carbon fibre on polyurethane HYDRO HULL fish. This is the ultimate and reliable combo for this type of enduring craft. Carbon fibre craft last and last and have amazing response to the energy of waves. As they mature they also become more 'alive' unlike conventional surfboards.
Dick, along with several other of the world’s leading shapers were taken up (or maybe commissioned) by Avisio. His Carbon Fish and 3 (??) of his other designs were manufactured in hollow tech composite style, like the example shown here. Aviso were a 3rd generation California Mojave desert aircraft composite manufacturer. This model is a 5’10” Rocket Fish made with an autoclave process with core cell and air wrapped around with pre-impregnated carbon. The entire board is hollow and frameless, with the trapped air becoming the frame, held in by a bung. This meant the board is under 2Kg in weight with incredible strength. This performance ratio is expressed by the equation V-M=A (Volume-Mass=Acceleration)
VIDEO
“HandCrafted” by Dick Van Straalen
An ABC classic video of an early surfari from Sydney's Northern Beaches to Noosa
VOICES
New fish, old fish, now and then.........
male straight lines and female curves......
flexible though strong, hard yet fluid........
light and dark, stillness and movement.......
quiet mind in a musical world.........
joyfull and intense........
two fins one motion, surfer and surfboard, surfboard and surf.. ......
fire and water, wind and earth, underwater, overwater......
illusory dualistic world, there is only oneness.........
in that oneness.......the universe plays..........
surfer is surfing, surfboard is surfing, water is surfing, fire is surfing......
wind is surfing, music is surfing, the universe is surfing....why?.......so it can observe the beauty of its own form
Thank you Dick Van, for allowing me this experience of oneness.
This picture captured my oneness with your creativity and the oneness of us together with our mother ocean.In love In joy
