A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Surfboard design feature, usually consisting of four or six longitudinal bevels in the rear half of the board's underside, thought to increase board speed by directing water toward the tail.

Jim Pollard, Australian surfboard shaper from the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, produced one of the first channel bottom boards in 1974; Pollard's "beetail" featured four elliptical sets of channels—eight channels total, four on either side of the board's centerline. New South Wales surfer Col Smith introduced a modified version of the channel bottom in 1977, optimistically calling his six-channel boards "as significant a breakthrough as shortboards and lightweight materials were a few years ago."

But it was New Zealand-born shaper Allan Byrne who really brought the channel bottom to the attention of the surf world, shaping them for top Australian pros like Wayne Bartholomew and Gary Elkerton, and adapting the design to the tri-fin in 1982. On "soft" channel bottoms, the slot edges are rounded and the channels blended into the flat bottom surface near the tail. "Hard" channel bottoms, as developed by Byrne, cut up to a half-inch into the bottom of the board, forming table-edge ridges that run all the way to the end of the tail. Both versions are time-consuming and expensive to build, and neither caught on with the surfing public at large.

Channel bottom boards for the most part are used in larger surf, although a four-channel design, introduced in 2000 to critical praise (but low sales), has been used in smaller waves as well. Concave bottom boards, on the other hand, while similar in theory to the channel bottom, met with far greater success, and became a standard design on most shortboards in the mid-'90s.

channel bottom

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Interviews

Features

Videos

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Interviews

Features

Videos