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Corky: There oughta be a manual: The cool way to do the little, but important, things in surfing

March 8, 2025

In the surfing world, as is pretty much with every other world, there are cool ways to do things and there are not-so-cool ways to do those same things.

Lame would be a fitting adjective for those not-so-cool ways. Today, I thought it would be fun, not to mention educational, to point out a few of those things that seem to stick out.

Strapping boards on the top of cars. There is a right way and a wrong way.

The right way is to always have the bottom of the boards facing up. Never have the deck facing up. Two reasons for this. The sun will melt the wax on the board’s deck, causing it to drip onto the car roof. Lame. The other is that the rocker in the boards will be aiming up, which catches the wind and the boards will want to pull up and off.

I am also a proponent of putting the fins forward. This is a kind of safety measure in case the boards start to slide back, not being tied down tight enough. The fins will catch and keep the boards from coming off.

There are some who like to put them the other way. Why? I have no idea. This part is not a set rule, but the facing up is for sure a set don’t do.

Then there is just the act of carrying your board around. Especially if you have clothes on – and this is one of those “cool” or “lame” deals.

The cool way is to have the deck facing out. And some of this stuff goes back decades to when all boards had a healthy layer of wax on the decks. If the deck is facing in, toward your body, the wax rubs off on your clothes. Moms hate this. Getting wax out of cloth is almost impossible.

This is not such a big deal if you are just going in or out of the water and not wearing something that can get permeated with unwanted wax. But it just looks cooler with the deck out.

Then, speaking of wax, there is what you do with said wax after you have waxed up your board. Many people are wearing surf gear that have wax pockets in them. But, and this cracks me up, some don’t realize it.

One day, I was out surfing and there were a fair number of other people in the lineup. My board was in need of a little wax and I realized I had forgotten to put some in the wax pocket in my surf trunks. So, I asked the pack of people in the lineup if anybody had some wax? Nobody.

Then one guy looked at me and asked, in all earnest, “Where would we be carrying wax?”

I was kind of amused, as the dude was wearing a pair of surf trunks with a wax pocket right there on the side.

“Ah, maybe in your ‘WAX POCKET?’” He looked at me quite sincerely and asked, “What wax pocket?” I had to laugh. “Dude, the one right there on the side of

your surf trunks.”

The guy looked down at his trunks and goes, “Ahhh, so THAT’S what that is for? I knew it wasn’t for a cell phone.” I could see other guys also looking down at their trunks with that “Oohhhhhhh, who knew?” kinda look on their faces.

Folks, that is why it’s called a wax pocket. (I cannot make this stuff up.)

Getting a bit deeper into the wax thing. Be very careful where you leave your wax in the event you don’t have a wax pocket or place to carry it with you. I had a family visit me one time that had a teenage boy surfer. One day he waxed up his board on one of the lounge chairs on my deck (that’s a don’t right there) and then he went surfing and left the bar of wax sitting on the cushion of the chair.

Naturally the sun melted the wax and ruined the cushion. You cannot get melted wax out of those things. This is totally lame with a capital LAME.

But the kid was not done with the carnage. The next day, we drove in my car to a different spot. The little menace waxed his board and then stuck his bar of wax on the top of my dashboard in the car. Beyond LAME. Thankfully, I saw him do it. I asked him why he would do that right after he just ruined our deck cushions the day before and why didn’t he just put the wax in the wax pocket in his trunks? He just looked confused and said, “I don’t know.”

I should write a manual for this kind of stuff. But it would flop. We all know the harsh reality, and I live by this myself: “Nobody reads the stinking manual.”

Orange County Register

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Corky: There oughta be a manual: The cool way to do the little, but important, things in surfing

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