Papua New Guinea Wooden Surfboards

Namaste Woodies. Long time, no see or as they say in PNG, "Longpela taim mi no lukim yu".
I just got back from a recent surf trip to Tupira Surf Club on the north east coast of Papua New Guinea about two hours drive north of Madang. Great place and a great trip. Well worth a visit. Much to my surprise, the locals have been getting right into wooden board building up there of late. Tom Wegener and Bryan Bates ran a wooden surf board shaping workshop with the locals last year showing them the ins and outs of shaping everything from belly boards to alaias. All made from the locally abundant balsa timber that grows wild in the Tupira hinterland. The resulting boards were awesome and included some very new concepts including Nicki Wynnychuk's hybrid "Palang" belly board that challenges the current thinking on surfboard hydrodynamics.

Nicki's Hybrid Palang.