“We make all our boards with lightweight EPS foam and recycled carbon fiber, covered with S-glass,” says Meskauskas. Weight is another factor to consider when working with exaggerated dimensions.įor example, a 9’x 4”x 29” surfboard constructed from conventional polyurethane foam/polyester resin might weight up to 30 pounds, the excessive poundage offsetting virtually all performance qualities. So on the stand-ups, you lower the entry rocker for better wave entry, put a subtle displacement hull up in the nose versus a flat bottom, so it paddles faster, and then kick up the tail to really loosen them up.” “The whole point of stand-up is getting into the wave sooner and easier,” asserts Pearson. The need to achieve both surfing and paddling efficiency adds complexity to otherwise standard design features. That’s why our custom performance stand-ups are basically just big surfboards.”īig surfboards, sure, but hardly basic. But it all evolved from surfing, which is what the original stand-up boards were designed for. “Race boards, touring boards, recreational boards. “There are lots of different types of stand-up paddleboards,” says John Meskauskas, of Flying Fish Board Co. With this in mind it’s easy to see that stand-up paddle surfboards, especially the custom-made variety, are one of the most innovative and sophisticated designs in use today. Accomplishing this takes more than mere skill with a Skil 100 planer - it requires sufficient imagination to envision a surfboard unlike any that have come before it, meant to be ridden in an entirely new manner. The exact opposite is the case with surfing’s most controversial “monster” surfboard design, when considering the difficulties presented in scaling up the performance qualities of a much smaller board to one that is capable of being paddled while standing up. ![]() Victor Frankenstein, endeavoring to reanimate lifeless tissue, scaled his infamous monster up to what he called “… its gigantic stature,” believing it would be much easier to construct a human body if the assembled body parts were made bigger. In Mary Shelley’s 1821 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, protagonist Dr. ![]() ![]() Today, Sam looks at the stand-up surfboard. He won an Emmy for his work on the 30 for 30 documentary, Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau. Sam has been writing about surfing for more than three decades and is the former Editor-in-Chief of SURFER magazine. Editor’s Note: Welcome to “By Design” with Sam George that examines the genius, and sometimes the mystery, of surfing’s storied design history.
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