#novakov

Something of value: Michael Novakov part 3

Many dismiss competitive surfing as the diametric opposite of what surfing’s all about. Nov doesn’t see it like that: after all, at Northy his development was founded on the need to surf well enough to be worthy of a wave. His first competitor was his own ability, his first prize more and better waves. While he values the trophies and titles that came later he values far more the friends he made and the humility he learned along the way.  At North Narrabeen kudos could only ever be earned from and given to those who mattered. Artis again: “By Nov's 2nd World Title he was getting recognition in the surfing media and industry but more importantly the car-park hierarchy: Nov had paid his dues.”  While competition has undoubtedly been an important side of his surfing Nov was never driven solely by a need to win and never lost touch with the reason he began surfing in the first place: he simply loves riding waves, even when he’s not the one riding them. We asked him whether Simon Farrer’s surfing at Narrabeen had pushed his own surfing along.

“I was always intrigued by Simon's surfing and was always impressed by what he could do on a wave and how he made it look so stylish and smooth. By the late 80's and early 90's, Simon was without doubt the best all round surfer at North Narrabeen, he got by far the deepest and longest barrels and he was hitting the lip and getting air when the stand ups were still thinking about it. I asked guys at the beach the other day and they agreed that they loved watching him surf more than most stand-ups. I miss having him around at Northy because people really took strong notice of kneeboarding when we went wave for wave on good days.” Even today the heart of a stoked kneeboarding grommet still beats within him.

Nov’s signature move in the 80s became the barrel-roll, something Australian kneeboarders had dreamed of for years. His account of how it came about is typically modest. “We all saw our first one at the 1982 World Titles when the US kneelo Bill Sharp pulled a roll in the final. He lay down and got back  up to his knees as he completed it, but he had the whole of the presentation at Gold Coast Playroom hooting as we watched the day’s footage on the big screen. No one had seen anything like it before. He got 4th in the final but he had done the move of the contest and I wanted to be able to do one myself. It took 2 years of trying but I finally nailed one at Point Mugu Naval Base during a free surf at the 1984 World Titles in California. I can remember my stoke to this day and it’s every bit as thrilling every time I make an attempt.”  The move was documented on video for Tim Bonython’s & Guy Finlay's “Water Slaughter” one perfect day at Aussie Pipe, a break long favoured by kneeboarders. The segment featuring Nov includes probably the most electrifying kneeboard surfing footage ever captured in a mainstream surf movie.

In the 90’s Nov slowly drifted off the radar. He and his partner Teresa finally tied the knot in 1992, the year their son Matt turned 4. Soon the responsibilities of raising a family took precedence over surf competition. Organising time off work for competitions became just too hard and then in 1996, the year his 2nd son Tom was born, Nov requested a wild card entry into the World Titles in Wollongong and was refused. “I was told no, I had to surf from round 1 in trials and that was final."   The rejection left him so sour that he simply didn’t bother with competitive surfing for the next ten years. Nov settled comfortably into a routine of work and home, surfing local breaks when he felt the need. Although he had dropped off the competition scene he was still surfing at a very high level. If you knew where and when to look he could be found throwing spray at random spots on that long stretch of sand between Turrimetta Head and Long Reef, still doing the same thing he started out doing on a pumped-up surf mat: having fun.

When his son Matt began surfingit didn’t take much to get Nov properly back into it and typically, he didn’t do it in half measures. “I tried a couple of shapers during this period but found nothing so I decided the best way to go was machine shaped boards to my exact specs. A North Narrabeen surfer, Dave Wood, said he had a machine and would build the board from start to finish. I have been getting Dave (of Velocity Surf Project) to make my boards for the past 7 years. They’re all computer designed and machine shaped, exactly what I ask for and perfectly accurate. We design the board together on his laptop and 3 days later he knocks on my front door with the new shooter ready to surf: can't get a better service than that. Dave surfs at Northy and is very aware of my surfing and contributes to the board’s design, a great surfer-shaper combo.”  This is exactly the same ethos that had Chris Crozier scratching his head back in 1977. Nothing has changed. “I design my boards to suit my surfing and the waves that I surf, but I am very hard to please and I’m still in search of the perfect board.”

With the right boards available and two sons as keen as he ever was, well … that old Narrabeen spark is still there. “I was off the scene for more than a decade until Matt started surfing and he was keen to try his hand at a contest and that got me, albeit reluctantly, back into contests. It was great to see the old faces again and everyone was stoked to see me back. I try to get to as many comps now as I can and I really enjoy watching my youngest boy, Tom, compete.  I just wish that he had some surfers his own age to push him and themselves harder.”  

Today, Michael Novakov finds himself in a pretty comfortable place.  He’s back in competition as a serious contender: he made the semi-finals at this year’s Phillip Island contest. His son Tom took the Cadet Title at the same competition. He has a twentieth wedding anniversary to celebrate with his wife Teresa. He’s still stoked to share his love of the ocean with all his family and his love of kneeboarding with his two sons, with whom he’s planning a boat trip to the Mentawais later in the year. Above all Nov possesses something of true value: the calmness that comes from knowing what he’s achieved with his will, energy and ability and knowing also that those achievements are acknowledged by those whose opinion matters. In a world teeming with people clamouring for respect he’s one of the few to have earned it. Steve Artis put it in the most simple of terms: “Mike is North Narrabeen’s first world champion, followed by Damian Hardman and then Simon Farrer.”  Artis sees Novakov’s surfing through the late seventies and eighties as providing the template for the radical shortboard surfing that followed in the nineties. “Is it pure co incidence that Pottz often surfed North Narrabeen? If Pottz was 10 years ahead of his time, surely Michael was 20!” And Steve Artis isn’t the only one: Simon Farrer speaks for a generation of Australian kneeboarders. “To me Nov was a breakaway from traditional kneeboarding. There was some insane talent in our local area but Nov's approach on a wave was, (I hate to say this but), "New School." Doing things that were way ahead of anyone else. Along with no flippers, helping modernise board design with his rounded double flyer pintail thrusters, futuristic manoeuvres, popular with the locals: it was almost impossible for it not to rub off on me. I had the blessing of being around some of the most insane stand-up surfers in history to help me figure out what was possible on a wave but to have a guy also doing it on a kneeboard in front of me has inspired me & allowed me to put my own take on it. Thanks Nov.”

Nov’s love of surfing remains as strong today as it ever was. Ask him about the standout sessions he’s had in his lifetime and the answer is surprising. “Plenty of perfect days at North Narrabeen have been had through the years and a stack of pumping rip banks that I surfed virtually by myself across the road from my house at South Narrabeen. I used to go to school and tell my mates that I had just surfed a perfect 4 foot right hand rip bank by myself at Southie for 2 hours and no one would believe me.”  This from a man who has won world titles on three continents. A perspective that can find contentment in such commonplace treasures betrays a wisdom that a million glassy Indo barrels could never bestow.

We asked Nov if he sees a future in which kneeboarding could again become part of Australian Surfing as it was in the past.  “It’s unlikely to return to the fold because there just aren't any young kneelos that are hungry to compete. The numbers just aren't there so we can't justify our presence at these events. We just have to keep the Australian Circuit going and hopefully encourage all kneelos young and old to show up and enjoy being a part of our scene.”  As a last wordhe offered a nugget of common sense on the future of kneeboard surfing generally. “Kneeboard surfing can only grow if boards are made readily available in surf shops. Only then will people be able to walk in and make a decision on what type of surfing equipment they would like to ride. The main reason we don't see any younger kneelos is because there are no boards for them to surf so it is really a tough situation that kneeboarding finds itself in because most surf-shops aren't willing to put kneeboards on display. I can guarantee that if surf-shops stocked kneeboards, there would be interest shown. Regardless of all that, kneeboard surfing is so much fun and I kind of enjoy the fact that we are in the minority, because they don't know how much we are enjoying ourselves.”

Images & Thankyou

Peter Crawford (C/O Justin Crawford)

Mark Garnett

The Novakov Family

Interview Steen

Redefining style: Michael Novakov part 2 of 3

Nov’s sponsorshipwith Chris Crozier lasted five years and marked the start of his reputation as a surfer who demanded a lot from his shaper. “Chris was not the only kneelo shaper. Paul Connors shaped probably 70% of the boards but he had a different, thinner rail shape and I much preferred Chris's softer rail design, so I got Chris to shape all my boards, which in hindsight, was probably a bit of a punishment for the poor bloke.” Pushing the slabs as hard as he did Nov was soon bumping up against the design’s limitations. “The raked back single fins worked well in waves up to 4-5 ft but the board went sideways in anything bigger. PC and a couple of the other DY guys were the only surfers who could ride them properly in really solid waves. You had to really draw your turns out when it got bigger but I loved to jam off the bottom, and the single fin just did not co-operate.”  This design flaw was to prevent Nov realising his full surfing potential for a few years yet, but it also helped him develop a lasting interest in board design. “I did get Chris Crozier, back in early 1977, to shape me the first double flyer rounded pin he had ever done. He was scratching his head to draw the tail design on the blank because he only had one template, the Slab template: the nose on one side, and the square tail on the other side. We had a great laugh finding little curves to link up the flyers and the tail.”  Few appreciate just quite how iconoclastic Nov can be, nor how long he’s been that way. That at the age of 15 he was anticipating kneeboarding’s next design paradigm-shift and pushing the most successful Australian kneeboard shaper of the time to explore it says a great deal about his free-thinking approach to surfing and his relationship with his shapers and the boards he rides. Nov’s design explorations were never wild flights of fancy. They were practical, purposive: anchored in pragmatism and tempered by his increasing experience. His ability to push each design to its performance limit blessed him with a crystal clear comprehension of what worked, what didn’t and why.

Nov’s obvious talent kept him in the sights of certain Northside shapers but his odd combination of open-mindedness and conservatism made him no easy catch. In 1978 Steve Zoeller offered him a sponsorship with Clean and Natural and built three boards with Nov’s design input. These were a completely new direction at the time, with drastically pulled in noses and tails. In the end Nov’s conservative side won through. “I was a fussy surfer and I went back to the safety of the Croziers that I really loved. However, I really appreciated Zoeller’s efforts to experiment with design and it kept my mind open to the future when the 3 fin arrived.”  

Nov had been experimenting with fins from the beginning. In the single fin days it was just size. “At one point I was riding with a fin only 4" high which was so much fun because I learnt to use my rail more in turns as well as doing multiple 360's. I loved it as a 13 year old grom.”  After the slabs he had a series of flirtations with twin fins that always ended because the boards were simply too skittish.

Then one morning in early 1981 Simon Anderson showed up at Northy with a fin set-up unlike anything seen before. Nov was among the intrigued few who watched Anderson paddle out and surf it. “We were witnessing the first surf of the 3-fin thruster and he ripped on it and came in and said ‘This looks like it’s going to work’. I was looking for an answer to my surfing woes as I liked the twin fin I’d just had made but it was doing the same weird things that they did. Having started work for Craig McDonald at Aware Knees at Brookvale only weeks earlier, I went in that day and asked if I could get a fin box put in the twin fin to make it a tri-fin. I went surfing on it later that day and from the first wave my surfing had changed forever. The board felt tight but loose, I could drive off the bottom in the same track without it wanting to slide and best of all, it went straight for the lip. From that first 3-fin surf my surfing improved by the day and it is still my only choice of fin set-up.”  Considering the surfers he sought to emulate it’s no surprise that he put so much power into his bottom turns, nor that he was the first kneeboarder to fully embrace the thruster. He understood perfectly the breakthrough it represented. “It took years to develop a style that I liked and the advent of the three fin in 1981 really helped me finally sort my surfing out.”

Steve Artis was there to witness it. “Enter the thruster. He immediately adapted to the concept. I’m sure he pushed the performance parameters beyond Simon Anderson’s expectations, not only Simon’s but the whole surfing world - performing high risk manoeuvres 10 years before they became part of the judging criteria and 8 years before Pottz won a World Title in 1989 which apparently redefined competitive surfing by performing high risk manoeuvres such as Nov had been doing.”

When Nov was at his peak, amateur kneeboard competitions still nestled under the organisational umbrella of Surfing Australia. Regional, State and National titles were contested as part of larger events that included other forms of surfing and usually had real atmosphere. It was a scene Nov loved. “I was constantly travelling to kneeboard contests up and down the east coast as well as State, Australian and World Titles. It was great to be a part of the whole surfing scene, watching all the great Aussie surfers develop and them watching good kneeboard surfers in action. The stand-up surfers would often say that the kneelos were the stand out surfers of the day’s action. I would really like to go back to the days when we were a part of Australian surfing competition.”  The battle for the Australian Title was always tough, as Nov points out. “By the time I was getting to the Australian Titles and the main events of Pro Contests, kneeboarding’s fiercest and almost unbeatable competitor, Peter Crawford, was fading from the contest scene and David Parkes had emerged as the guy to beat, winning 3 Aussie titles in a row (1979, 80 and 81) and many of the pro events during that period. Of course once Simon Farrer emerged on the scene in 1983 and 84 he was the guy … we were in awe of his smooth and stylish surfing from the beginning and as he got older, his surfing got more radical and he stamped his authority on kneeboard surfing in a very strong way.” 

Mention of Simon Farrer begs the question: what happened when these two prodigious champions crossed paths at North Narrabeen? Simon doesn’t remember the first time he saw Nov at Northy. “Nov was at this other level that wasn’t accessible to me for one main reason: localism. As a grommet at NN I couldn’t just go out the back in the line-up. There was only one place allowed for me, which was the inside rights (Alley rights) and if I wanted to play with the big boys I had to prove myself. Blood sweat and tears were lost doing it. Thankfully Nov loved the Alley rights and he would be regularly doing these ridiculous 360's off the lip in front of me that no one has ever matched to this day. I would say that was his trademark manoeuvre. He had it all but that was the one manoeuvre that no one else could match.”

Nov’s competitive career includes two Australian and three World titles. World surfing champions are usually associated with a particular shaper - not so Nov. “My first World Title (Gold Coast, 1982) was on an Aware Knees and I would have kept on going there but Craig McDonald had enough by 1984 and shut up shop. I went to see Terry Fitzgerald at Hot Buttered and he was great so Albert Whiteman shaped my boards for the World Titles in USA in 1984.” After a series of boards from Albert that didn’t quite meet his exacting standards Nov decided to move again in late 1985. “I went and saw Peter Daniell at Mona Vale. He was very interested in shaping my boards so I went to England in 1986 and won my third World Title on a Daniell.”  This was a surfer with unshakeable faith in his own ability, fully conversant with board design principles and able to make his boards work for him when it counted. Nov was a formidable competitor, but his impact on surfing went far deeper than the engraving on any trophy: he redefined style. Farrer again. “Contests wins, world titles, etc. I had no idea what Nov had achieved early on as it meant nothing to me at that time as a grommet. I do remember bouncing back and forth from DY point to NN and saw some amazing kneeboarding going down but Nov was in my eyes by far the most radical and stylish kneeboarder.  His approach on a wave with his rail-to-rail turns & fluent style was very different to the majority of kneelos back in the day, more upright & less grabbing of his rail to do powerful turns. It was pretty cool to see Nov at his home break in his peak.”

Images & Thankyou

Peter Crawford (C/O Justin Crawford)

Mark Garnett

The Novakov Family

Interview Steen