Archive for May, 2009

We took the beginning of this week as a bit of decompression time… laying around and catching up with friends. Southern California was a whirlwind tour for sure and a crazy mix of fun, meeting friends old and new, endless driving and exhaustion. While the Sacred Craft show was the early focal point, meeting with the Channel Islands guys up at their un-believable facility near Santa Barbara was great because we got to recap response to the Biscuit demos, talk about next steps and finalize some of the plans for getting these boards under feet and into CI flagship stores.

And the rest of the week was pretty great as well. We unexpectedly met up with one of our workshop students who spied us wearily checking the menu in a pub window, and he and his wife Megan stood us to a nice dinner and some beers which we shared with the West-coast Wegener folks, John, Rosa and Matt. We slipped over to the student’s house near the beach after, and worked on his almost-complete class board which should even be in the water as of this writing (right, Dave?) We also had a few minutes to jam in a drive-by with another Home Grown builder (Ed from the Leucadia Project) to gawk at Dennis Murphy’s award-winning chambered balsa step-rail fish and to meet a few of the local crew in Ed’s backyard. Super guys, and good people all.

Photo by David Gray

We visited some of the premier shops that we have long admired and as a result, west-coasters should be seeing some Grain boards popping up in a few of them over the next months. Coincidentally Scott Toth, manager at HSS in Huntington Beach, has a brother who had built a Home Grown kit board – which Scott promised to take off the living room wall and get into some liquid walls even if it means breaking into his brother’s house to do it.

We were invited to put a board or two into the famed Beach House Surf Shop in Santa Barbara where you can see a collection of the most amazing boards you’ve ever seen in one place hanging from the ceiling (not for sale) and standing in the racks (definitely for sale). All we could think is that anyplace you’re greeted on entering with a couple pristine Da Cats hanging in front of you is a place you want your boards.

We love to stop at Wetsand in Ventura as well. Chuck is one of the original good-hearted guys, and his shop is peopled with wonderful women, friendly dogs, choice sticks and unique surf-stuff of all kinds. For those anxious to get on Grain boards and don’t want to wait for a custom, he has a Root with cool-green paint detail and a distinctive Wherry in stock right now.

So we’re back at it now and happy to be home, building boards, shipping kits and scanning the horizon for swell.

Here’re some pics from the Sacred Craft demo days at C-Street in Ventura… long after all the other demo trucks split, we stayed around and handed out boards. It was just too fun.

Thanks to Allen Anderson for the photos…

The big news for us at Grain Surfboards that’s been tough to keep under wraps: we’re building Channel Islands Biscuits designed by Al Merrick and Rob Machado. The license to make these great boards was worked out on our last trip west, and it’s been painful to keep quiet about it for months while we built the first three. But they came out great and were christened at Ventura’s C-street while Sacred Craft was thrumming at the Fairgrounds across the street. The CI demo team handed out lots of great CI designs, and had the Grain Biscuits out pretty much all the time.

Ronnie and Shannon handling the CI demo

Waves were middling most of Saturday, and Sunday looked like longboards only, but even in these conditions, most people loved the feel of this terrific design rendered in wood for the first time ever. I got a chance to sneak out for a couple hours while Mike wasn’t looking and had my first crack at one of the Biscuits. I was pretty astounded at how easy it was to catch waves on it – I was making waves that I normally would only paddle for with a longboard, and could get them when I was miles from the critical spot.

We’re seeing that these wood Biscuits are on the road for demos on both coasts, so stay in touch with the Channel Islands demo tours and subscribe to our mailing list to find out where you can try one. You’ll be smiling just like all these guys were.

Kyle Sheer: “Two longest waves of my life!” Gotta lotta life left to go, Kyle!

Jason: This happy camper came back twice!

Grain Surfboards is proud to partner with Channel Islands Surfboards, combining state of the art designs with time-honored New England craftsmanship. Perhaps not enough to be a revolution, it’s more like a return to the roots of surf culture, picking up where the evolution of wood surfboards left off. A re-evolution.

More news to come!

Mystery board unveiled – 6′2″ CI/Grain Biscuit

In classic Grain form, we’ve decided last minute to head to California for the Sacred Craft show in Ventura. The show that focuses on surfers, shapers and boards. Period. While we won’t have a booth of our own, we will have a presence at the show. If you’re there roaming around, keep your eyes peeled. You might just see a new shape for Grain and a new offering that we couldn’t be more excited about.

Mystery board to be revealed in under 48 hours

After the show, we’ll be spending a few days driving around Southern California, visiting shops, meeting up with old friends, and showing off some of our newest boards. Hope to see you along the way.

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you might remember almost exactly a year ago, a post about Andy Davis coming to town. The story is, Ando and Friends were spending a night in Portland, and we had pulled together a group of friends to head north for a big night out.

Well, I was behind the wheel of what’s become fondly known as the Pug, and some might say that I was pushing the envelope of speed just a little… To make a long story short, after 42 years of service, that old Chevy straight-six decided it was time to call it quits.

Little by little, we explored options for a replacement engine, but with little money to throw at it, we had no option but to park it for the foreseeable future. Believe it or not, we even had it flat-bedded to a local surf event that we were committed to being at, just for its curbside appeal.

One cold winter day a few months ago, we decided that we might as well pull the engine out of the truck. At least we’d be making moves in the right direction. The rest of the story is entirely thanks to two local surfers and good friends of ours, Mike C. and Tom B. These guys have really gone the distance for us. Mike has spent countless hours helping us around the shop, and came through again when it was time to yank the engine. Once it was out, Tom B. a Home Grown Kit builder and sod farmer, took it on to have the original engine re-built, top to bottom. We really cannot thank them enough.

So as you read this, we’ll be putting the final touches on the re-install, hooking up the radiator, re-wiring the ignition, and hopefully firing it up. Keep an eye out this summer, we’ll be out there, cruising the coast, spreading the word, and keeping it under 55.