Before you take a board

Terms

March 2026. If the whiteboard at the counter disagrees with a price on the site, the whiteboard wins. These terms are the rest of it.

Hiring a board

You hire from Neonaveiro at the shed by the Bluff camp. The car park we send you to is 10 SH 1, Bluff, Southland Region, New Zealand. A hire starts when its written in the book and youve paid, or when weve agreed youll pay on the way back. It ends when the board, the leash and the wetsuit are back on the rack, rinsed if its a suit.

Times are 2 hours or the day, as priced on the boards page. Day hire is back by closing. If youre going to be late, ring. A board that comes home after dark can be charged as another half day. We are not trying to be clever about it. We just want the rack full for the morning.

You have to be straight about your level

Tell us what you can actually do. We can refuse a shortboard. We can refuse the water entirely. Thats not a debate. Lessons are for the wash, in conditions Tane is willing to teach in. A group lesson is up to four people. If you dont show, and we held the board, the hire stands. If we cancel because of the sea or the wind, you dont pay for the lesson.

Damage, loss, the usual

Look at the board before you walk off. Dings that are already there get a mark in the book so they stay ours. A new ding, a broken fin, a leash you left on the rocks, a wetsuit that went home in your boot — those are yours to pay for, at the cost of the repair or the replacement if its had it. Pressure dings from normal use we grumble about and usually wear. Rails snapped because the board was on the road, or fins kicked out for fun, are not normal use.

Gear you buy off the wall (togs, wax, booties, the rest) is yours once its paid for. Hire gear is not. Dont take the steamer to Invercargill “to dry it”. It dries here.

The sea is not our shop floor

Surfing, and mucking about in a south coast shorebreak, can hurt you. Rocks, rips, cold, other people on boards. You go in on your own decision, even on a lesson — the coach is there to teach, not to cancel the ocean. We will tell you when we think its a bad idea and we will close the water when the sign says so. If you go anyway youre on your own and youre not covered by “but the website looked friendly”.

To the extent New Zealand law lets a small shed say this: we are not liable for injury, lost days, or a board you wish was longer, except where the law says we cant contract out of it. The Consumer Guarantees Act still exists. We are not pretending it doesnt. We are saying the sea is not a product.

On the deck and in the shed

The house rules are part of these terms. Short version, so its here as well: no alcohol before you paddle out. Beer and the gaming machines (pokies, slots, same two machines) are 18+. Kids under 16 in the water with an adult. Be sound to people who were already on the wave. If we ask you to leave, the hire ends and we settle the money for the time you had. We dont refund a lesson you spent arguing.

Prices and this website

Prices are in New Zealand dollars. They move when wax and steamers do. The page can be wrong for a week before someone fixes it. What you pay is what we say at the counter that day, before you take the board, not what you remember from a screenshot.

The words on the site are ours. The map is Google’s. Photos are of our shed and our coast. Nothing on here is an offer that stays open forever. If a sentence fights another sentence, ring and ask. The phone is better than a close reading.

Law

These terms sit under New Zealand law. If it ever needed a courtroom, which we would rather it didnt, Southland is the sensible place. Talk to us first. Most of this gets sorted with a pen and the repair price.

Privacy, separately: that page. To argue in person: contacts.