The first true displacement hull I rode was a Scott Anderson shaped Bojorquez in about 2006 (actual pic from that first session below!) Instant froth ensued, and that sparked a 10 year love affair with predominantly riding only displacement hulls every session. It was the spark that birthed Vouch for me and has always been the inspiration behind most of our mid length boards to some degree.

That classic feeling of the rolled entry gripping the wave face and helping the board to climb and drop effortlessly, gaining speed as it does so, and all with just subtle tweaks of pressure from your toes and heels. That’s what I’d been chasing surfing The Pass since I was a little kid, this board design offered me the feeling I had been searching for.

Obviously I spoke at length with Hutcho about this revelatory surfing experience, and naturally began hassling him to shape me up his version of this tried and tested design. He’d shaped boards through the late 60’s that had all the same design aspects, S-Decks, rolled nose entry, high rails in the nose to low rails in the tail, all with subtle bottom curve tweaks like tri-plane hulls and roll blending into sometimes single concaves. All these things singularly sound quite easy to achieve in shaping, but try and incorporate them all into one board/design and it quickly becomes a lot more difficult to do properly and still come out with a beautiful looking surfboard.

Funny story…

After a solid 6 or 7 years of riding and refining the hulls we were making, and moving into other areas exploring the design aspects, a friend was toying with the idea of visiting Hawaii and picking up some custom handshapes from Greg Liddle himself for the 3 of us. This really got the excitement levels up. The other guys were tossing up, “What model? How do you decide?”. There was no decision for me, it was always going to be a Death Machine/Jaws board/Dirt Krajewski model. 6’10”, just like the man himself used to ride. Keep it as legit Liddle as you could possibly get. Greg wasn’t sure I knew what I was getting into. Saying they were really fine tuned for the avid hull rider. Bring it on, I told him, I’m ready.
Payment up front. Dollar was 1:1 at the time so we were laughing. $850 if I remember correctly. After a long 3 month wait, the time comes, my mate leaves, meets up with Greg on Kauai, total legend. Stoked the boys have tapped in so solidly with his boards. And suddenly they’re on their way home. Mate gets to Gold Coast airport, no boards. WTF? Jetstar, “Sorry sir the boards are in Hong Kong”. Great. “We’ll get them here as quick as possible”. 4 weeks of phone calls and back and forth-ing and it seems the boards are lost. Stoked.
I resign myself to the fact that it obviously wasn’t meant to be. Easy come, easy go.
Then one afternoon, BAM, mate rocks up with a board bag, the excitement level was something I’ll never forget. It was here, FINALLY. Ran out the back to grab the polisher (who was the 3rd mate who joined us on the order) and we basically freaked out all together opening them in the showroom. Photos standing with them out the front of the shop in front of the big Bear Surfboards sign (Greg was especially excited about that as he’d shaped some of the boards for the Big Wednesday movie!) They still needed to be wet sanded, as Greg liked to leave them just finish coated so you could dial in the finish yourself and really get to feel the lines of your new board.
The bank at The Pass was pretty much all time that year (2013) and we were straight out there that afternoon after furiously cutting them back and wet sanding them to 600. I’ll never forget that first session. Felt a lot like what I’d been riding of Paul’s for the last 6 years but it had that extra spark and just something special about it, of course. One turn in particular still stands at the front of my mind whenever I look at the board. Proper roundhouse (no easy feat on a hull) right in front of a mate, right at the Point, on a set, super critical. Felt incredible.

My custom Greg Liddle hand shaped Death Machine ^

The board was ridden hard for the next 3 years and I’ve since let it collect some dust and wait for the banks to get good enough again to warrant riding it. Hulls are a handful to a dozen sessions a year thing usually. You want the EXACT type of waves they were made for to really gain that proper feeling you’re chasing. Especially with something as refined as the DM. My last session was 3 foot Tea Tree and it felt good to leave it at that until the next time.

Over the past 2 decades we have still been actively riding and shaping this design and as mentioned previously, every single one of our models or designs has some Displacement Hull DNA incorporated into it. Whether it’s the rolled hull entry in the nose, the nearly entirely flat tail rocker, or something even as simple as rolled up rails in the nose flowing down to low, downturned rails through the tail, every little aspect of a Displacement Hulls design has it’s place when chasing certain feelings on a wave. If you’re really serious about them then you’ll delve into a world filled with personal satisfaction but also plenty of humbling/frustrating moments. All the things that make surfing what they are!

Thanks for reading.