What do you do when you’re ready for a new surfboard…  By new surfboard I mean brand new never been ridden kind? There are options.

Go to your local surf shop and check out what they’ve got. Go to the not local surf shop but has the label surfboard you’d like check out what is available, or order one to be made just for you. And when ordering one, do you order one from the store or go direct to an individual that makes them. Some of those individuals have their own glassing facility and some just shape boards and have those boards laminated at a contract lam shop, so choices there too.

Any way you slice it there is always that excitement of getting a new board. The anticipation of getting it in the water for the first time. Yeah! The next step in your surfing experience and all the fun that comes with it.

 Here’s a fun fact… I’ve never bought a new surfboard in my life. In fact I’ve only owned 2 surfboards I didn’t make myself. One was a Hobie Phil Edwards I got used from someone in High School and the other was a broken in half Donald Takayama I picked up from a friend and put back together. You can search the archives for posts on both those boards if you like.

Even though I’ve never bought a new surfboard I know the feeling of getting one, that excitement and anticipation. Getting it in the water for the first time, how it’s going to ride and feel under my feet. Yeah! I’m going through that right now because I’ve got a new board… just short of being finished.. to get in the water.

I’ve wanted to replace the Gadget I had and sold maybe a decade ago with a new one. Finally got to it…. It’s been 6 years since I’ve made myself a new board. The excitement started the day I shaped the board and has continued through the process of making it.  

The mundane stuff like, ok should I put some color on it? Or, setting fin boxes, dressing it to laminate. All the normal things you do to a surfboard. But each step ends with the thought of getting it finished and in the water.

Speaking of individuals that you could get a new board from, here are some words about Rich Harbour… from an article on Surfline.com. Sadly he passed earlier this month.

 Rich Harbour, who died on Sunday, July 11, as could any posthumous tribute to a man who made making surfboards not only his life’s work, but his life’s passion. And did so out of the very same shaping room, in the very same shop, at the very same Seal Beach address, with the very same phone number, from 1962 to 2019, when he shaped his last board: number 32,680. Each, no doubt, crafted with the same exacting care and commitment that he afforded his top team rider back in 1969, yet provided with equal enthusiasm to each and every customer who found themselves walking out of the venerable Main Street shop in Seal Beach with a new Harbour under their arm.

Over 32 thousand new surfboards someone somewhere was excited to get in the water for the first time. Impressive.

R.I.P. Rich Harbour

D.R.

My new 8'0 Gadget