Swell Event - Just off Bates Road

We’ve had the absolute pleasure of making fins for the top tier of surfersturned surfboard builders for over 40 years. Skip Frye and Renny Yater arethe longest tenured (yes, Greenough, but he never cared for standing up ona wave). Slightly younger, you can certainly include Wayne Rich, anexceptional surfer across many disciplines. And the next generation startswith, now veteran, Tyler Warren, and more recent additions Ryan Burch,Derrick Disney, Troy Elmore, and Barrett Miller.This thread, working with shapers who also surf remarkably well, is incrediblyimportant to us. It’s not a full stop requirement, but it’s certainly a validator.The ability to test your own equipment, at a high level, is…priceless? Itcertainly helps us when making fins.

So, the point is, we’ve wanted to create a segment where we get these folkstogether and have a surf day. Making space for testing, idea share, and morecollaboration. Before this “just off Bates Road” day, we had a few meet ups,and great fun was had. Solid conversations sprung about board and findesign. Boards and fins traded hands, and waves. We ate sandy bagels,drank lukewarm coffee, and got sunburned, but the surf had always beenaverage at best. This time, we scored. We scored, arguably, the day of theyear. So much so that there was a solid 90 minutes of footage to condense.So much so that we decided to premiere the surfing edit in person.

Rincon is a special wave.Does it hurt just a little to share it like this? Yeah, for sure.But, The Queen of the Coast has long been on the map. And we stillget our secret, locals only days.When we saw the forecasted swell, it seemed like an appropriatetime to strike.And strike we did.From Kolton and Gato’s crossover wave, to Barrett’s (unfortunatelynot shown) rivermouth keg, to T Mo still being capable of riding a 5’4,to Mr. Elmore cruuuuuising his way through the cove, to Trevor andDevon and Dane Gudang throwing hammers…we did it.Donuts for breakfast, Deli Sandos for lunch, board changes, finswaps, interviews, hoots, hollers, and a couple beverages to finishthe day, it was all-time and everything we had hoped one of thesehangs would be.