Kelly Slater is one of the most influential surfers. This includes not only how we look at competition and high-performance surfing, but also how we look at the modern surfboard.   The Cymatic blends the best elements of the Sci-Fi and the Omni, but also has entirely new elements that thrive on their own merits. One of these is an increase in rocker throughout the board and especially in the tail. This added kick allows for control in larger waves and provides a platform, from which to maneuver. Increased rocker makes a board agile and able to turn on a tight radius. The first edit of Slater shredding his Cymatic demonstrated exactly that. Another thing that is interesting about the Cymatic is that it is definitely not intended as a groveler. It’s a short wide board that excels in real waves, but despite that fact, it does grovel really well! Since the Cymatic holds volume and rail throughout, it’s able to accelerate in small waves. The reduced length also offers the ability to turn your speed into maneuvers. It has been found that going a touch shorter in hollow waves can result in increased speed and control in the barrel. This is likely due to the narrower tail design. Whatever type of...

Slater Designs FRK Shaped by Dan Mann   Kelly Slater has been called a lot of things over the years. Champ. GOAT. The King. And, of course, the Freak. When Kelly Slater approached Dann Mann about designing him a surfboard, Dann knew exactly what he wanted to make Slater—and what it should be called. The FRK is medium-wave performance machine with an aesthetically pleasing outline, medium rails, and a rounded pintail that almost gives the surfboard a quasi twin-tip look. In a word, the board looks fast—and if Slater’s performances on it have been any indication, that’s exactly what it is. The funny thing is, the FRK almost didn’t get ridden. Dann shaped it for Slater in 2015, but Slater gets a lot of boards shaped for him, and the original design ended up sitting in a garage for two years before a friend of Slater’s took it out for a spin. He had a blast on the surfboard, and called Slater up telling him he needed to try the board out. Slater said he knew it was a winner before he even completed his first ride. He started riding the board a ton, putting together mind-blowing performances at Trestles, J-Bay, the...

Next-Generation Dominance With Dan Mann’s Dominator 2  Forget all the hippie hoopla about dancing with the waves—when you are out in the water on a shortboard, you want to dominate. You want to paddle with confidence, take waves from behind the peak, and tear the heck out of them all the way to the shoulder. That’s what Dan Mann designed his original Dominator shape for—and the new Dominator 2 is no different. It’s just better The original Dominator was an easy board for Dan to design—it virtually leapt out of his mind and onto the foam. It featured a round tail (his personal preference), a natural design, and a lot of predictability. The tweaks and updates in the Dominator 2 follow this aesthetic. It is still a shortboard with the wide point back, making it super rippable and versatile for different waves and different ability levels. The tail is still rounded, in a bit of a soft squash that has a touch of straightness added to help with release through turns. And the curvy outline between the feet allows the board to roll off the bottom especially with the buttery rails that transition into a steep tail rail that provides...

The New and Improved Sweet Potato     While Dan Mann has proven himself to be a master shaper of all types of surf craft, it was the Sweet Potato that first made him a household name. A short, wide, volume-heavy groveler with straight rails and a deep double concave that effectively “splits” the board in half in order to allow it to turn and transition from rail to rail, the Sweet Potato was an instant hit with anyone who found themselves stuck surfing tiny longboard waves but not wanting to ride a longboard. Now, Dan Mann has updated his popular Sweet Potato model with a new swallowtail and further refined his bottom contours to make the board even more responsive and user-friendly—without sacrificing any of the surfboard’s speed while paddling and flying down the line. The new Sweet Potato comes stock with five fin boxes, providing the option to ride it just about any way you please—as a thruster, twin, quad, and even quad+nubster. Built for weak to average waves in the one- to four-foot (face) range, the Sweet Potato comes in Firewire’s patented Helium construction, which utilizes the ultimate in space-age technology to produce a board that is...

Double-enders have always been a weird little niche in the world of surfboard shapes—almost snowboardish in design, with noses and tails that are difficult to differentiate between. Tomo loves unique, innovative designs, so it’s no surprise that he’d come up with his own version of a double-ender. What is surprising, however, in our world of cookie-cutter shortboards, is how popular the Omni has become. Ever since Slater tore the Surf Ranch apart on the disc-shaped board during the WSL’s test event, the Omni has been a solid staple of the Firewire/Slater Designs quiver.

Be Cautious! Fake Firewire Website They say that if it’s too good to be true, then it probably isn’t—and that’s precisely the case with a fake Firewire website that’s been tricking lots of surfboard buyers recently. As you probably know, Firewire is one of the leading surf brands in the industry. It has revolutionized epoxy board construction and has a huge stable of shapers and team riders, ranging from Tomo and Dan Mann to Rob Machado and the entire Slater Designs team. Firewire also recently added the Thunderbolt line of boards, which includes designs from longboarding legends such as CJ Nelson, Harley Ingleby, Ben Skinner, and Kai Sallas. As you can imagine, with all of these cutting-edge designs and futuristic construction techniques, Firewire boards aren’t cheap. After all, you pay for quality, and these boards are as high quality as they come. But consumers who are looking for deals have been stumbling across a website called firewiresports.club, which purports to sell Firewire, Slater Designs, and Thunderbolt boards for 90 percent off the normal retail price! I wish! Unfortunately, this website is a full-on scam, and a lot of people have been throwing their money away ordering fake boards that don’t...

DAN MANN ANSWERS QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS NO BRAINER MODEL Dan Mann is an avant garde surfboard designer and shaper who has recently joined the stable of shapers at Slater Designs. Dan recently took the time to answer some questions about his No Brainer model, covering topics such as fins, sizing, skill level, ideal wave, and more. If you’ve ever considered adding the No Brainer to your quiver, here are some guidelines straight from the man who created the board. Fins: The No Brainer works best with a quad setup, giving you drive and speed through flat sections when you are groveling. Use your favorite template upfront, and then a slightly smaller template for the trailing fins. The reason for this is that the board is pretty narrow up front (compared to Dan’s other boards), so you want slightly less fin in the trailer. If you decide to go with a thruster setup (which is better in the pocket), do the same thing in terms of fin selection—go with your favorite front fins, then use a slightly smaller trailing fin for your middle fin. Here at Hawaiian South Shore, we suggest the Power Twin with Trailer setup for the No Brainer....

🍒 Cherry Picker 🍒 Ben Skinner is one of the world’s best performance longboarders, and a master shaper as well. But lately he has had to step outside of his comfort zone and focus more on traditional logging. Over the past year, the Longboard World Tour (under the guidance of Devon Howard) transitioned away from performance surfing and more toward traditional surfing, emphasizing single fin logs, extended noserides, and powerful, traditional turns. Ben loves logging as much as the next guy, and is an excellent noserider, but over the years had specifically focused on performance longboarding because that’s what was required in world tour events. Now with the focus returning to traditional surfing, he started tinkering with a single fin log, which he ultimately took with him to New York for the world tour event last year. After that event, Ben realized that this was the perfect time for him to really focus on developing a great traditional longboard—both for himself as a surfer and for his customers as a shaper. He took the board from New York and started refining it, going through three or four different versions before finally settling on the shape that would become the Cherry Picker....

The Dominator II with Dan Mann  “The Wire” Podcast Summary Shaper Dan Mann recently sat down with The Wire podcast to talk about Firewire sandwich construction and his new Dominator II shape. Feel free to check out the podcast, or read on for a summary of the highlights from his conversation. Kevin Schultz has been ripping on the Dominator II, which has been a pleasant surprise for shaper Dan Mann. Kevin tried one of Kelly Slater’s Dominator II's awhile back, and is now genuinely stoked on the board. He is especially excited about the sandwich construction, which is something Dan Mann first heard about in 2003, in the context of windsurfing boards. In 2006, when he went to Australia, a bunch of guys were doing sandwich construction boards there, and that was an eye-opener for him—especially once they were able to use balsa rails. Sandwich construction is at the core of Firewire boards. It turns boards into something like a set of Legos, in that you can build the board how you want. Shapers have refined their designs to the nth degree, but now that you can open up materials with sandwich construction, you can tweak layers and weight and...

The Slater Connection—How Akila Aipa Became a Household Name Akila Aipa was content to quietly create beautiful, custom boards in the Waialua Sugar Mill, without much fanfare or hype. But when you are a master craftsman (and an excellent surfer with an undeniable pedigree, to boot), people will eventually begin to take notice. A few years back, Kelly Slater (which is from the same generation of pro surfers as Akila) asked Akila if he would like to collaborate on a quiver of boards, to see if they couldn’t dial in something special. Akila ended up shaping seven boards for Slater—a handful of thrusters between 5'7" and 5'9", and a 5'5" twin-fin. Slater ended up surfing the boards in a number of events, and putting together amazing performances at Keramas and the Surf Ranch—and just like that, Akila’s name was on the map. From there, things started happening quickly. Demand for Akila’s boards skyrocketed, and suddenly he couldn’t keep up with demand from his small shaping bay in Waialua. He started looking for a larger area to produce boards, and at the same time began dialing in a twin-fin board to add to Slater Design’s quiver of models, produced by Firewire. ...

NEWSLETTER JULY 2020 Staying Safe in the Sun   Understanding the UV Index and How to Stay Safe in the Sun   I was chatting with FCS rep Keoni Watson the other day, and he mentioned that the UV index was going to be super high this weekend—pushing as high as 11. That sounded pretty gnarly to me, but I realized that I didn’t really know what the UV index meant, or where it even came from, so I decided to do some research. I found an online guideline from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and discovered some really interesting information.  As it turns out, the UV index was created in 1994 by the EPA and the National Weather Service, as a guideline to help people plan outdoor activities but avoid overexposure to UV radiation, which can cause a variety of health issues (including sunburn, cataracts, and skin cancers such as melanoma). The UV index was then updated in 2004 to serve as a more comprehensive, global UV index that provides daily guidance for UV radiation in different locations. The number provided on the UV index for any given day is projected for the time of day with the most...