BOARD STORY

"In the Spring of 2023, Shaydo came to the shop and asked for an all-purpose short board for playful and shreddable surf on the South Shore with more overall rocker. The challenge was to see how far we could push the rocker without compromising speed and flow. It seems a bit counter intuitive to take a high rocker approach to weak or small waves, but a long time ago I had a model called the Viper with lot of rocker that was surprisingly quick and forgiving. It would self correct when you over committed the rail making it easy to ride, easy to surf. That was our goal: super reactive, speed generating, and yet easy to surf.

This time Nat suggested we ignore the measurements and draw the bottom contours exclusively by eye. It was the first time I drew curves with the rocker measurements covered from view. I found it to be quite liberating to trust eyes alone. I was encouraged after the first prototype performed about 95% of the goal. All it took was a little feedback and one slight modification to the second version, and Shaydo said we hit the mark."

- Eric Arakawa