While a dozen of the best surfboard creators and innovators in the country held a large audience captive at the Vissla Creators and Innovators Forum at the Noosa Surf Museum during the recent surf festival, two local high school students sat transfixed in the front row, wide-eyed at the stories of legends like Hayden Kenny and Maurice Cole.
They needn’t have been. Jayben and Zion Poy almost stole the show. Their one-minute video of Jayben, then 13, creating a surfing handplane out of found objects, filmed and edited by Zion, then 11, captured the very essence of the sustainable surfboard movement, and got a huge reaction when it opened the show.
The story began back in 2018, when Jayben skinned an old surfboard and used the foam core to fashion a handplane that featured bottle cap inserts and a grip made from an old leg rope. Simple, basic, and very clever.
He entered it in the first Vissla Creators and Innovators competition at the Vissla Pro surfing contest in Manly, NSW, and came second overall against opposition of all ages.
This resulted in him flying to California for the international Creators and Innovators exhibition at the Ecology Centre in San Juan Capistrano. Jayben’s handplane won the under 16 division and now hangs in pride of place in the boardroom of Vissla’s world headquarters in California.
Jayben’s mum Angela heard about Creators and Innovators coming to Noosa and offered the short video for screening in the hope that it would inspire other young surf creators. The screening was a complete surprise to Jayben, who struggled to find words. Fortunately he has no such problem with his creativity, in both designing and surfing, where he has become an accomplished young competitor.
Both boys are students at Sunshine Beach State High.
