As some of you may recall, My name is Allan and I live in San Clemente, CA.
I got into paddleboard racing when I met a guy down at SanO one day with one strapped to the roof of his car. He took me out and I got hooked!!! I did a few races, using one of his boards and decided I had to have one. It has to be one of my favorite things, getting a mile or 2 offshore, where the sounds of the beach just kinda fade away. Definetely one of the better ways to enhance your open ocean existence. (better than sitting on Sways all day, which I still do…)
So I started shopping around, looking for a good used board. The 2 large sticker price of some new ones and the 1200-1500 used option wasnt cutting it for me.
See, I made one fatal mistake. I took my hyper active girlfriend out one day for a few harbor laps, then we decided to go on a little 6 miler. Not only was she keeping up, but she was kneepaddling 70-80% of the time. Not easy on a belly bottomed 20"wide board in 2-3 foot seas for your first time…
So now you see my dilemma… How can I just get one board and hog all the fun for myself. I must have 2 boards.
This of course was around the time I was gearing up to build my 12’6 beast. So when I ordered the blank from Ken at Segway, I had him throw in 2 stringerless paddleboard cuts as well, which brings the total to…
An ape$hit ton of foam to mow…
When I was researching paddleboard shaping, I didnt find a wealth of information on Swaylocks to help me out. So I figured I would try my best to add the the knowledge pool. I would love some of the guys with more experience to chime in with better ways of doing things. I went in blind as a bat, but managed to get them knocked out…
The Blanks (I capitalize the word blank, so that I give it the respect it deserves. Looking back, I wouldnt have sized them both up and asked them “whos your daddy?” because they told me.) ended up at 14’ x 22" x 6.5". Theyve got 4" of nose rocker and 2" of tail rocker. In hindsight, I would have made them about a half inch thinner for me and about an inch thinner for Jami, with both blanks having a gentler overall rocker throughout. But what do I know, I just like to make big boards.