Quick question: How many female surfboard shapers are there in Australia?
Answer: Not many. In fact around the country, around the surfing world, a female presence in the gritty, dusty, chemical-smelling bowels of a surfboard factory is almost unheard of. But right here in Noosa Anna Constable is breaking new ground, something she’s been doing in surfing for more than quarter of a century now.
Wife of surf coach, board designer and 2006 world longboard champion Josh Constable, doting mother of Jet and Jive and graceful presence on Noosa’s points whenever they’re firing, Anna Shisler (as she was then) first came to the attention of surfers everywhere back in the mid-1990s, when she was the tiny half of Bobby and Anna, the world’s most famous tandem surfing duo.
Tandem surfing had been a big deal in California and Hawaii for decades but its revival only kicked in here in the ‘90s, particularly on Noosa’s small and long-peeling point waves that seemed made for acrobatic stunts involving small, supple girls and big, muscle-bound blokes. When we started the Noosa Festival of Surfing in 1998, we just had to have Bobby and Anna as special guests, and they came.
Strangely, neither Bobby Friedman nor Anna came from surfing backgrounds. He was a crack gymnast and volleyball star; she was a ballerina who had apprenticed with the Joffrey Ballet and then performed with the Chicago Ballet Company. Coming from surf-mad San Clemente, they had both been exposed to the longboard culture, particularly at San Onofre, home break of the local tandem community. Anna could surf a bit but Bobby was hopeless.
But they stuck with it, coached by veteran champions Steve and Barrie Boehne, and soon they were revolutionising the sport, riding huge waves no tandem duo had ever attempted, performing lifts in the barrel and gouging deep turns. They rode Waimea Bay and Todos Santos and Teahupoo. They were world champs and legends, but Anna also made the time to reach out to the masses through tandem sequences on the ridiculously popular Baywatch TV series.
By the time Bobby and Anna came to Noosa they were still a joy to watch but the partnership had just about run its course. Then Anna met teenage surf sensation Josh Constable, he followed her back to California where he made an international name for himself as a longboarder, and six months later they were an item. They came back to Noosa where they continue to live happily ever after.
About a dozen years ago, Josh introduced his Creative Army Surfboards brand, which combined finely-tuned shapes with boisterous, fun graphics, and were an immediate hit. Deliberately keeping the brand low key and custom order focused, Josh quickly gained an Australian and international following, but few people knew that right from the start, there was a second set of eyes in the shaping room, watching every plane cut, soaking up the knowledge like a sponge. Soon Anna was shaping her own boards and often for the two boys as well, but only now has she come out of Josh’s shadows to introduce She Creative Army to the world.
Surfboards shaped specifically for women are not exactly new. In fact at the very beginning of surfing’s modern era, in the late 1940s, Malibu’s handsome and heroic Tommy Zahn asked the master shaper Joe Quigg to make a scaled-down, lighter balsa board for his new girlfriend, Darrylin Zanuck, daughter of the famous movie producer Darryl F Zanuck. Quigg’s 25lb 10-footer may seem like a massive log today, but back then it was a breakthrough, so much so that the poor girl rarely got to ride it until the boys had finished their sessions.
But women’s surfing had to take a back seat for decades, and has only really come into its own in this century. And Anna’s She brand is hoping to write the next chapter. She says: “I can’t explain the happiness I get from riding a board that I shaped. Now, I am shaping and designing boards that I believe have a bit of magic in them. Being an ocean woman with years of experience I have developed boards made specifically for a woman surfer.”
And it’s working! She told me last week: “Just the other day a customer came in to pick up her custom order She and took it out to Tea Tree to try it out. Three hours later she sends me a text saying, ‘I’m so in love with this board!’”
The She models are named after female members of Anna’s family who have meant a lot to her, no more so than the “Illa”, named in memory of her late older sister. Illa, who passed away in California last year, was the absolute model of the protective, supportive older sibling, and yet she and husband Brian also found the time to forge highly successful competitive careers in tandem surfing, and to raise a family of waterwomen, who also have She models named after them. It’s a beautiful touch and a strong indication of where Anna’s values lie.
Big things are happening for She and Creative Army. Watch this space. And in the meantime, check out the She range at creativearmy.com.au
