Grain Builder Brad Anderson Visits and Surfs Cape Hatteras

Just thought I would send a a note from our trip down to Hatteras… When we first got here on the 14th, we had days of mostly small crumby waves. We surfed every day anyway just to be in the water, so we struggled during the first week, but had a lot of exercise paddling to beat the southerly current.

Eventually we got a surprise session that the locals described as the second best day of the summer so that was a nice payoff. There was enough wave that I was able to try our new 6′5″ single fin demo board that John Hamblett built and despite the fact that I spend most of my time on a longboard, I was able to get a few good rides. It was fun that the board got so many looks from other guys in the line up. I put a wood-grain FCS Ezi-Trim 7.75 on it which should be great and looks terrific with the light cedar.

Broke my brother’s foam board on day four of my two-week stay. It was a triple stringer long board from a reputable shaper, but it folded in half on some short, fast Hatteras dumpers and made me grateful that we had a new Grain experimental nine-footer to fall back on.

The experimental board has been surfing well in small (chest and smaller) waves – all the contours we put in the bottom seem to be working as planned. It has good stability at slow speeds and despite the channel under most of the board and the big hollow under the nose, the v-contours in the tail combined with the beveled rails still allow it to be pretty quick to turn. My brother has been surfing it more than I have (I broke his board after all) and he is very pumped on it.

I set up in front of one of the local surf shops (Ride the Wind) whose owner, Bob, we met at Surf Expo last winter. He is pumped about our boards and kits and wanted us to have a chance to show them locally.

The people that were stoked the most were local surfers; they want to build kits. I ran into one young guy that I met there named Charlie on the beach a couple of days later, and loaned him the Waka 5-10 fish. He quickly fell in in love with it and wants one.

We are really looking forward to the Wooden Boat Festival in Wilmington, NC on July 28th as it is being organized by Ed Verge, the guy who runs the boatbuilding program at Cape Fear Community College. He says that they have built a few wooden surfboards there in the past – even one hollow one. It’s also close to Wrightsville Beach where I hope to get in a session if we can find a place to park the van overnight!

Can’t wait to get back to the shop to start up some new boards and to see how the new 12-footer is coming out! I hope I am not missing any good waves at home but also that you guys are getting some.

Brad