Film by Daydream Surf Shop & Sustainable Surf
Editor & Cinematographer: Josh Walker
Surfers: Tyler Fox, Maverick Manne, Kyle Kennelly
Surfboards: Missing Link, Verdure, Funner, Locus, Bosiny, Jones (Agave Brothers)
Producer: Kyle Kennelly & Michael Stewart
If you haven’t met our partners at the nonprofit Sea Trees, we’d like to introduce you to them as our allies in reforesting the ocean. We are excited to join them as their first surf shop partners. In doing so, we are making a commitment to plant a sea tree for every surfboard purchased from Daydream Surf Shop!
We had the pleasure of teaming up with the Sea Trees crew and Sustainable Surf to test drive some truly unique surfboards for this Field Notes. Together we hosted an event at Daydream discussing the new materials that shapers have been working with around the world to construct surfboards that perform well while striving for a lower environmental impact than the current materials used in the surfboard industry today. This event was titled the Surfboard Sustainability Symposium which was preceded by this surf session testing out a quiver of six different boards that explore alternative materials in an effort to build a sustainable surfboard.
Each board in this quiver was unique in the ways they approached the use of alternative materials, some in ways you probably have never seen before. Here’s a rundown of the boards featured in this short film in order of appearance:
5’6” Missing Link Cold Slice - Bobby Wood runs the Monterey based surfboard production facility Missing Link Manufacturing and shapes boards under the same label. This board may come across as one made of the standard construction but if you look closely at the deck, you’ll notice that it’s not paint giving it that tan color. As a matter of fact, this board is glassed with a biobased resin and flax cloth, it’s the natural fibers that give this board its unique appearance.
5’10” Verdure Hybrid Twin - At a mere glance, you can tell something is different about this board's construction and you’re totally correct. The first notice is that there’s no resin! The exterior of Verdure’s boards consist of a cork deck and a paulownia wood bottom stained and finished with a dusting of furniture wax. Albeit there is a small application of interior resin as a binding agent to allow its EPS core to bind to its exterior shell of beauty. The way this board feels in your arms is shocking, first by how light it feels as well as the craftsmanship that one has to possess in order to have all these unique ingredients line up just right. Needless to say, the Verdure was a crowd favorite that day by everyone who rode it as well as other folks in the line up that wanted to get a look at it.
6’8” Funner Mid Twin - If Tom Blake was still alive, this style of hollow surfboard construction modified with some new tech would probably be a rabbit hole he’d venture down. Parabolic rails are designed and 3D printed from 100% recycled PETG to make up the outline of the board. It’s then skinned with paulownia wood for the deck and bottom. Basalt cloth and plant based epoxy coats the rails and interior lining of the hollow board while the exterior gets an infusion of plant based oils that smell incredible and help repel water.
5’8” Locus Asym Mini Simmons - Tyler Hopkins is a Santa Cruz based shaper that has committed to glassing all of his boards using biobased resins under this surfboard label, Locus. He built this beautiful asymmetric surfboard and added glass-on fins he custom made by repurposing wooden paint brush handles as the base for laying up these fins. The upcycled fins and board are glassed with a biobased resin.
5’6” Bosiny Comet - Bosiny consists of two friends who shape high performance, full wood, hollow construction surfboards out of a shaping bay that runs off solar energy in the UK… How does it get better than that? There’s videos of surfers blast airs all over their website and instagram and the boards are apparently unbreakable. These boards use paulownia wood for their hollow interior construction as well as the exterior deck and bottom. They’re glassed with plant based biobased resin making them extremely durable with the goal of lasting a lifetime.
5’10” Daniel Jones Agave Quad - Legendary North Shore board builder Daniel Jones teamed up with Agave Brothers to get his hands on an ultra light agave blank to shape this board out of. The blank is made out of the stock of massive Kenyan agave plants. Similar to how lumber is milled from trees, the agave stocks are cut down and milled into long planks that are then glued together to form a 100% plant based surfboard blank that is light and super strong. This board had an energetic flex that allowed it to spring from turn to turn. These blanks are just recently available to shapers on a larger scale and we expect to see a lot more agave boards in the water one day soon.
Needless to say, these are all new options for any surfer to explore. We highly encourage you to get a board made of alternative materials under your feet. As you can tell with the six boards from this quiver, there are varying degrees of separation from the standard materials, some shapers can make a simple change by glassing their boards with biobased resins while others can completely throw out the rule book and develop something that has never been seen before like the Verdure has done with his cork and paulownia construction. Whatever you’re feeling called to, give it a shot because with your help, you can contribute to a more sustainable future for the surfboard industry.