Shane Dorian and Andy Irons christen Billabong’s boss new sea plane with a run into Mex.
Story by Fred Pawle
Billabong has kitted out the ultimate surf vehicle, a stylish old seaplane. Its credentials are awesome: two 1100kW prop engines, 4500km without refuelling, cruising speed of 360km/h, seating capacity of 12 or so. It was built in 1956, one of 300 of its type, originally designed for military, rescue and coast guard duties. When choppers made them obsolete in the 1970s, some were refitted as retro-style passenger planes for wealthy Pacific island hoppers, but most went into storage or into the hands of rich aviation trainspotters. Billabong’s Grumman G-111 Albatross can circle a break from the air, land in an eight-foot swell, drop anchor a couple of hundred metres from the take-off zone, and have you pulling into never-ridden-before pits faster than a conventional flight would take to let you into the overhead lockers.
We might never have realised this crucial aspect of the Albatross if Billy’s US boss Paul Naude hadn’t dropped six figures from his company plastic on one of these babies while goofing off on ebay a couple of years ago. Don’t be surprised if he insists Billy brings out a retro Hawaiian silk shirt in its honour. The aircraft is a triumph of passe style and technology in an era of relentless innovation. Think about it – for the past decade, the only innovations in surfing have been facilitated by jetskis, to the point where even medium-size storm swells are now being pounced on by tow-jocks convinced that they and their whiny steeds are riding the wild frontier. Meanwhile, these magnificent flying machines have been gathering cobwebs in semi-rural hangars across America’s mid-west, just waiting to ferry the first group of surfers to spots we still don’t know exist because they are either inaccessible by car or difficult to recon from a boat. Wanna scour 300km of coast in one hour? Welcome aboard. Wanna go from an aerial surf check to sitting on your craft before the next set hits the reef? Flight crew, disarm doors and cross check.
Paul isn’t alone in conceiving the dream – Quiksilver threw some decals on a Grumann HU-16 it used for an Atlantic mission back in 2004, and a tour company is using one to sniff out the best waves in the Maldives. Why didn’t we think of it before? Probably because you need a surf company to pull it off, what with the cost of keeping it and flying it and all. The one you see in these photos is actually Billy’s second. The first, an HU-16, like Quik’s, wasn’t classified to do the kind of trips Paul envisaged, so it got traded in for a G-111. But before its guts took its first cargo of surfers and boards, the equivalent of the cover price was spent updating its avionics and other stuff. This took a couple of years. Now it’s ready for action. And Shane Dorian, as Billy’s main vagrant, is the holder of the number-one boarding pass, having been on both its first two flights to Mexico.
Says Doz: “It’s so space-age to go on a surf trip on a plane, but it’s also cool because it’s kinda like this vintage ride. Inside it’s semi-raw. It’s totally outfitted for surfing. It’s got a board rack, there’s like an area if you wanna put a sleeping bag down and crash out, there’s seats – it’s like a normal small-meduim plane that has the back of it ripped out and you replace the old seats with a place for stuff like camera gear and surfboards. It’s like an old truck that’s been like redone. If you got a 50s truck and did it up, that’s the vibe. That’s how it drives, too. Me and Andy flew it for like half an hour. I’m not sure if I should be saying that. It’s probably okay in Stab, though. The pilot was supervising us. Flying it was easy. It was like driving a truck. To lose elevation is real easy. You just push it down. Then to make a left or right turn, you turn the… um, I’m not sure what you call it. It’s pretty subtle, the turn is a little delayed. It was great fun.”
Shane has his eyes on some islands off British Columbia where the only industry is logging and the only roads
lead to forests, not pits. “There are sick waves all over,” he says. “There’s these big inlets where you could land even when the weather is gnarly. I’m hoping to get up there one of these trips.” A historical irony: these planes were made redundant for the US Coast Guard in the 1970s partly because South American drug smugglers started to make tycoon-esque green, stopped using boats and foot soldiers, and launched squadrons of privately owned, fast, agile light planes instead. Mexico being the Heathrow of the drug transportation business, it is now dotted with small airstrips for this very purpose, which the Billy
crew found awfully convenient.
“It was cool, we’d surf all day, then we’d jump on the plane, fly to one of these places where there’s just a little airstrip and a little hotel there, jump out, and stay at the hotel,” says Shane. “I’m sure the airstrips have been used for that (smuggling) millions of times.”
Is there no end to the debt we surfers owe these renegade businessmen?
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Reply #2 on : Sat August 23, 2008, 00:03:36