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12-11-08
2:39PM - 3:47PM
Army and Navy Academy Beach
2' to the occasional 4'
Clean and Glassy
Super Low Tide
I am starting to really get used to this board, riding it standing up, riding it prone, and riding it as a knee board.
The board can be as fast as the wave allows it, allowing me to be where I need to be, when I need to be there. I can always slow it down by putting my hand in the wave face.
Also, I've noticed that it is very maneuverable... just as maneuverable if not more maneuverable than any single fin, twin fin, fish, quad, 5 fin, tri-fin (thruster), widow-maker, 2 + 1, or whatever that I've ridden.
I used to have a quiver of over 150 surfboards, hanging from the ceilings and walls of my living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, deck, and stashed around the campus at the school where I teach.
I used to surf a minumum of 4 sessions per day... in the morning when I woke up before school, on my break, at lunch, and after school with my students. On the weekends, I would surf for hours at a time... my longest being 10 hours before I felt like a wet prune, burned to a crisp by the sun, and weak from paddleing with no food or water. I just loved to surf.
My point in telling you this is that, all of those sessions gave me the oportunity to take out a new board, or try out a new fin, or experiment with a new set-up... basically what ever I felt like doing with that board at the time. Changing boards through my entire quiver allowed me to really know what worked, what didn't, how it worked, what I liked, what I didn't, what I would have changed, How each board and fin set-up felt, etc.
All of this R & D out in the water allowed me to absorb it, think about it, and take it all back to my shaping bay to apply what I had learned to the boards I was shaping at the time.
I think that was the most valuable lesson in learning how to shape the perfect board for me and my style of surfing (and how to really surf to my highest potential), because I learned exactly what I needed to learn from each of those boards and from the waves I was surfing, so I could apply it to the surfboard designs I was refining, the shapes I was designing and the boards I shaped in my shop.
This board is one of those "perfect" boards for "me". This 5'10" is the end product of all of those surf sessions on 150+ different surfboards with various fin set-ups, countless discussions with Master Shapers and Master Craftsmen... Artisans like Mike Diffenderfer, Carl Ekstrom, Skip Frye, Bill Thrailkill, Jerry Ingham, Donald Takayama, Danny Hess, Paul Jensen, etc. -- not to mention all of the countless hours of posts, PM's, reading, conversations, and research on SWAYLOCKS!
I have finally found the perfect board.
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This Hall-of-Fame not only recognizes several outstanding dual sport contributors, but is also intended to raise community awareness of just how close surfing and wrestling really are. 
