The Paipo board, or something similiar, cruised Hawaiian barrels for hundreds of years - short, flat, wooden and hard.Californian Tom Morey came along in the Sixties to give mal riders Slipcheck, a spray on paint to replace wax, then he thought his Morey-Doyle soft surfboard was going to make a splash. While those two inventions barely caused a ripple, he really unleashed a revolution in the Seventies when he used that soft technology to produce the modern bodyboard.
The bodyboarders brought to surfing aerial moves and chased mutant barrels. In looking for an alternative they stumbled upon something to be passionate about.
In Australia the koolite was a must for any little kid living by the surf. Bodyboarding gave grommets a safe way to try the waves and as they progressed it provided a whole new surfing sub culture.
Guys like Mike Stewart came along and impressed surfers of all kinds with the way bodyboards can do amazing things on all sorts of waves.... young heroes like Andre Botha carry this approach into the new century.
Obviously there's a lot of crossover in the products bodyboarders and surfboard riders use, after all, most things in the style/travel/surfshops/equipment
surfinfo pages relate to both tribes....But for bodyboarders, we have created our own news updates and events calendar, as well as a directory link to find your unique forms of hardware....
Bodyboard Directory
