AT THE BEACH | Brothers craft DIY longboard to compete in SA championships

Tiaan, 28, and Robert Nel, 25, are best buddies. They are also brothers.

They really like going surfing together, and a couple of seasons ago they decided to try longboarding and ended up representing Border at the SA Longboarding championships at Seal Point, Cape St Francis.

They decided not to put in a stringer but just glass the board heavy – the next school fee, a stringerless blank is very flexi and bendy while you are shaping it, meaning you might take bites out of the rail while the board bounces as you shape it.

The lads shaped the blank with a carpentry electric door planer which is common to the surfboard-shaping industry.

Tiaan laminated the board with fiberglass and resin as he had seen in Cape St Francis with Al Brown and Robert cut from timber a fin and laminated it with fiberglass.

All of this done under the pressure of a time shortage and rapidly approaching 2026 SA Longboard Championships.

Tiaan executed the sanding, finish coating, and resanding of the board and had just one practice ride on the board before heading off to the championships.

Ever-supportive girlfriend/schoolteacher Lara Joubert, 25, headed along to J-Bay for the championships with Tiaan where they camped at a local campground for the event.

She has no qualms about Tiaan using her hairdryer to dry and fix a ding in his board in the tent.

“I think it is super cool,” she says of her experience at the 2026 championships, meeting the team and surfers like Wendy Miller, Francis Woods, Anja Bartleman, Pete Fielding, Tim Perks and the whole crew of happy wax foots at Point J-Bay.

The new green 9’4” “Pineapple” surfboard rides great in tiny waves, especially for nose rides, but is quickly a bit tricky if the waves get too big.

The build experience was such fun that the lads have improved their shaping bay, cast a concrete floor, bolted their trestles in and installed proper lighting and shade shelves.

More boards are going to be made. And Lara is completely invested. The green board is hers now.

And the bakkie is now being kitted as a camper van for surf safaris.

Eyes sparkle and smiles are wide as Lara and Tiaan tell me about their travel plans, the next surfboard, and SA championships 2027.

The joy of the adventure is palpable. A happier couple you will struggle to find.

Robert was away visiting his girlfriend in Hoedspruit at the time of this article.

I do hope she moves to the coast. I have a hunch she is going to love it here.

They borrowed a board from Jonginenge’s Dean Knox to compete in the event, as did this writer at the time.

Knox is quite a catalyst for the growth of longboarding in our region.

The brothers Nel loved the outing but the idea lay dormant for a while and they generally slowly gravitated back to shortboarding.

In the back end of 2025, Tiaan and Robert decided again that they would like to head for the SA Longboard Championships in 2026, but by now they had one board between them.

A second board would be required but for the air conditioning and refrigeration young business owner, Tiaan, and the young electrical business owner, Robert, funds were a bit tight.

The lads hatched a plan. They would make a board together.

How hard can it be? Guys made their own surfboards in the 50s and '60s in the backyard, right?

As it turns out, it is pretty hard to make a board and there are plenty of tricks to learn in the trade.

In conversation, Tiaan found out that Brad and Gary Dalbock had some PU foam panels from the refrigeration industry that they could part with.

Yippee, there was the core of the board sorted out.

Tiaan had some experience in the industry via Jonginenge, local shaper Lumpeace and Al Brown in St Francis.

The panels were too thin and needed to be laminated together to achieve enough thickness to shape a rocker or curve in the board.

This they did with resin, the first lesson in school fees — resin is too hard and becomes difficult to shape through the transition area. A softer PU foam glue is what you need.

The lads built a quick lean-to shed as a shaping bay next to the house and fashioned some wobbly trestles.

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