New in the Board Showcase

Three new boards in the showcase–all representing the performance trend in Paddlesurfing. The SRX4 from Sandwich Island Composites is an aggressive little ripper. Tightly pulled nose and tail, hard rails and a lot of leading edge shaping by Mark Raaphoorst (who said he was NEVER going to build a small SUP board). Mark is usually seen on boards from sixteen to eighteen feet long, this thing is really different, and the performance is wonderful I hear. Big guys like me need not apply. Maybe there’s a version for 250 pounders in the future. When I was in Mark’s shop yesterday he was building a custom SUP board for a 400 pound guy. It reminded me of one of those giant pencils you used to see advertising stationary stores. Same shape as usual, just huge!

Lightning Bolt Maui has two new boards in the showcase, showing off their new semi-custom approach for SUP. Take a proven longboard shape, digitize it and use a computer-controlled shaping machine to replicate it with SUP dimensions. The result is a high performance board you can order tuned to your weight and skill level. Out evaluators loved the board, though unfortunately no beginners tried them. The boards arrived late to the showcase, so we didn’t have evaluators assigned, the evaluations came from people who saw the boards and wanted to try them. I suspect the high-performance appearance scared of the newbies.

We’ll be adding new boards as we have the opportunity. I’m expecting Ed Angulo’s new line of boards to be available soon. I’m looking forward to trying them myself.