Executive Order

Good Lord, the shit's been busy lately. Trips in all compass directions and altitudes. Earthquakes. Two-wheeler-and-ice-cream adventures. Storm tracks and hurricanes and back-to-school sweats and shorter days and the first hints of the miraculous golden light of fall.
And through this, of course, the waves keep coming. Cold ones and warm ones and sharp pointy ones and slow thick ones that spread themselves over the reefs and sandbars like peanut butter.
And people want to ride on these waves on surfboards, and those boards have to be shaped. And the great, watery world keeps on spinning.

Speaking of shaped boards, here's Brent's new Executive (9'10), with insane artwork by local shredder/artist Blair Tom. If you've been to Bolinas, or if you're cool, you're familiar with Blair's work. You can dig deeper into Blair's creations, inspired by the first nations of the Pacific Northwest, HERE.

If you've surfed Bodega Bay, you're familiar with Brent, who catches lots of waves. If you're really familiar with Brent, you've learned to seek a second opinion when he texts, IT'S TOTALLY EPIC! GET TO S____N RIGHT NOW AND BLAST IT!!!!!!

His new stick, The Executive, is my interpretation of the Hobie Phile Edwards model (seen HERE), in a contemporary Northern California beachbreak setting.
Its standard features--triple stringer, glass-on fin, rounded pintail, pulled nose, slightly rolled entry to a panel vee off the tail--inspire Edwards-stile trim, glide, and mojo. The updated rocker, foil, and rails, however, give it the goods in juicier surf.
One might ask, Does it noseride?
To which the Executive would reply, Who gives a F*&c? Leave the obsessive, terrier-like running-to-the-nose to the young whippersnappers, and instead focus on the sweet, sweet pleasures of the rear 1/3rd of the board. The high-line finding, pocket protecting, curl seeking, steezy style-making aquatic engine zone of the whole goddamn thing.
Clearly, the Executive is a gentleman's surfboard, and should be enjoyed with a gentleman's beverage.
Recommended Pairing: I recommend enjoying the Executive with a dram of Aberlour A'Bunadh. Smooth, classic, stylish--a lush, golden complement for a board that should take you into your golden years of surfing with power, grace, and a pretty solid buzz.

Salud!

Seeing Red

Guys Up North don't fool around. When horizontal freezing rain smashes directly into their blood-drained faces in the lineup they call it offshore. They regard plaid as a color. The only other colors in their chart are jeans, mud, and doghair.

Their automobiles are often missing seats and the word pilates has never, ever escaped through their unironically moustached upper lips. They think Miley Cyrus is a constellation, latte is how Italians say Goodbye, and a decaf is some kind of move from the summer Olympics that's done by dudes in tights.

What I'm saying is that there's a dialogue the rest of the nation is obsessed with that doesn't concern these folks in the slightest.

And they like stuff that's built to last.

9'6 triple stringer for Jonny from Up North. Full board tint with freehand comp bands--done during lamination by master glasser Tony Mikus at Almar Glass Works.

Built tough (heavy-but-not-too-heavy glass job, deck patch, fin patch, tailblock), so when the sleet turns onshore and the beach fire turns to smoke, Jonny doesn't have to worry as he tosses it with frozen fingers into the back of his van.

Right where the seats used to be.

Triple Wood

Spring Daylight Savings asks for us to ditch the minutes between 2:01am and 2:59am once a year. Good riddance.

Know what I'd be doing with that hour? Getting kicked in the junk by a sleeping three-year-old on one side of me, while trying not to wake the sleeping five-year-old on the other side of me--one numb arm pinned under each tender head so they won't wake up and start telling me about how many peanuts an elephant can eat in an hour, or why the letter C and the letter K can make the same sound, or how mint frozen yogurt makes their skin itch, or how they LOVE UMBRELLAS! Crucial morning discourse.

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, surfboards. This triple stringer (balsa center with cedar offsets) is getting a crazy ass glass job and will not appear like this when finished. Although I'm not the biggest fan of shaping room shots, this will look like a totally different board when it comes back from the glasser, and there's something classic and about dark wood on crisp foam that needs to be celebrated.

Shaping triple stringers always guarantees my seat on the I'm Never Going to do This Again Train, as I spend more time tuning the sticks than I do with shaping some entire surfboards. Like, an obscene amount of time that I'm embarrassed to share with you. An exercise in precision and patience, sturm und drang (though listening to an audio of the excellent Jeffrey Eugenides novel The Marriage Plot took some of the sting out).

Cedar and balsa matching tailblock really tie the board together.

Then, immediately after the last (gentle!) pass of the sanding screen, all toils are forgotten.

Like that moment in the wee hours of the morning when you hear footsteps on the bedroom floor, then sense a 36" high body standing close to your prone form. Holding a pink blanket. Staring.

And even though the night before you were trapped on your back, fully awake, arms pinned to your sides, and you swore to your sleep-deprived self you'd never again let one of your kids into the bed with you, you feel a surge of joy.

And just as you welcome the warm, living body of your child under the covers, you welcome the moment when a customer says, "I was thinking about a triple stringer..." and the side of your brain responsible for schedules and timetables and dollars-per-hour and all that shit absolutely screams no!

Then the other part--the part that embraces your warm, semi-sleeping child under the covers with a smile and a nuzzle--says yes. It says, of course. And it says, I love this.

What single malt would I pair this with this surfboard? Obviously, Laphroaig Triple Wood. The distillation spends some time in standard American Oak, then moves onto a quarter cask (smaller casks make the whisky interact more with the wood), then, finally, oloroso sherry casks for some rich fruit flavors. The result? The brooding peaty bulldog of standard Laphroaig is kept in check by the spiked collar of blackcurrant and berries. Smoke tempered by sherry. Savory tempered by sweet. Sleep tempered by joy. Wood tempered by foam. The plot of marriages. I love this.