Deflow Welcomes Ambrose McNeill

We are really stoked to introduce a new talented surfer and stylish single fin virtuoso from ANZ to the Deflow family, Ambrose McNeill. A mix of a strong charisma combined with technical longboarding skills in both carving and noseriding is why we get along with Ambrose.

In order to learn more about Ambrose, our long time friend and Deflow family member Clovis Donizetti asked him a few questions.  Read the interview below and see a brief visual insight in Ambrose’s day to day life enjoying clean waves on the other side of the globe. 

• Why longboarding ? And how does it influence your approach to other crafts?

I came to surfing when I was about 15 years old after I became friends with some kids on my school bus who were surfers. These kids had longhair, wetsuit tans and for some reason they all rode longboards.  After a lot of lawn mowing, piano practice and begging, my parents bought me an old 9 2 for my Christmas/Birthday present and so it began. It was only once I started learning to surf at the local beach that I realised that everyone rode longer boards because of the slow rolling waves.

Sadly, after 6 months of surfing I ended up snapping that first longboard and learnt the hard way that there are different surfboards for different conditions! Learning to surf on a longboard and being exposed to this culture early meant that I valued style and grace as the defining factor of good surfing. These two lessons remain at the forefront of my surfing approach today.

• You’re living in a tropical dream, could you détail to us the highs and the lows of living in a surfing dream ( to many not living there at least!)

Ha yes although I live near some of the best waves in the world – these waves are definitely some of the worlds most crowded. The crowds can be fierce and at times can bring out the worst in people (myself included) so you have to decide if you’re in the right mindset to surf in these environments – which sometimes I’m not. But as you know Clovis, there are still a few magical days each year where the crowd gets thin and you can surf the most dreamy warm water waves with friends. Those days will still keep me coming back for a while longer.

• Can you tell us about the single fin mingle, the concept, what you want to achieve with it, and why every loggers with some soul should attend it?!

The Single Fin Mingle is an annual longboard festival that I started in my hometown in New Zealand in 2015. I had spent a few years competing on the NZ longboard series and although I had a great time at these events they were focused on high performance longboarding which wasn’t my thing. Once I saw the highlight videos of the Duct tape invitational on the web I was inspired to put on a contest that celebrated all of the surfing, music, movies and art that myself and my friends enjoyed. Essentially the idea was to plan what I thought was a perfect weekend in my village and invite all my friends along for the ride.

Nine years later and the festival has grown exponentially with surfers traveling from all around the world to come to our little village. But the key idea remains the same, bring great people together and have a great time celebrating surf culture.