Almost every surfer I know has a favorite board, long or short, old or new, custom-designed or off the rack. Where you got it or the name on the deck or how cool it looks doesn't really matter (although there is nothing wrong with a little hot pink wax or a paint job inspired by Roy Lichtenstein or the Laughing Buddha). What matters is that your favorite board works for you. Call it a synthesis of style:  (yours) and substance = your board.

There are many surfers who ride waves all over the world and demand different boards for different conditions:  hence the "quivers" possessed by professionals, rich amateurs and board fetishists, who can't resist adding another shiny toy to their collection. But most of us ride the same spots every day or week, and to some extent the waves are predictable. For this kind of day-to-day surfing (it's a tough life here in Sayulita), you figure out what you need and then try to get the right board, or get the board right.

Or you get a board somewhere, one way or another, and it...just...works.

I have owned and ridden many boards over the years, most of them long. I dropped out of the surfing world through the shortboard revolution, and by the time I came back fifteen years later, longboarding was cool again. So my boards have always been between seven and 10 feet long, usually in the 8/6 to 9/0 range, although I do have a nifty 7/10 Jerry Lopez (he called this particular model a "barge," but it's a shorty to me) that I've ridden at La Lancha a few times.

Through most of this surfing, whatever board I was riding was not quite right. Too long, too short, too slow, too hard to turn, too ready to sideslip out from under me on a hard bottom turn, too quick to pearl on a steep takeoff. Though I really liked the 8/6 Hammer with the gray rails, and the red-bottomed, yellow-paneled 9/0 Surf Tech epoxy, and the Lopez - these were the three boards I rode through my first year in Mexico--they weren't quite IT. Nothing was or ever had been, not even the first new board I ever got, a 9 foot 10 inch dark blue Con, a clunker so big I couldn't carry it under my teenage arm but had to balance it on my head as I trudged down Malibu Beach to First Point. I've had a surf bump on my skull ever since.

In the past year I've watched several of my friends here in town eagerly shop, scheme, design, and eventually obtain brand new boards from various sources, either shipped down from California, made locally by Rogelio here in town, Rick James at Punta Mita, ATL in Guadalajara, or bought used on the road somewhere. For the most part, these people are happy with these new boards, but no one seems to have found The One, the holy grail, the only board they ever want to ride.

Still, there are a million surfboards out there, and with dumb luck, you might find the right one. Last summer in Seattle, while perusing the surfboard ads on Craigslist, idly contemplating adding another board to my little quiver, I came across an ad for a "high performance, made in Hawaii" used, 9-foot longboard being sold by a local artist named JP Canlis. JP, or Jean-Pierre Canlis, comes from a well-to-do family renowned for the creation of the Canlis Restaurant, a Seattle landmark since the 1940s. JP is a glass artist who has spent a lot of time in Hawaii. When I went to see the board, he assured me that it was "high performance" but that you could noseride too. Made by a Hawaiian shaper named Robin Johnston, the board is finished entirely in a shade of avocado-green, and had a tri-fin set-up that you could not reduce to a single fin since the center slot was designed for small fins only. I usually prefer single fin longboard surfing, giving up stability and noseriding ease for greater speed and maneuverability, but JP convinced me that this particular triple fin arrangement would work for me.

He talked me into it, and I paid the full price of $400. I brought it down last August, just in time for the flood, so didn't get to surf it much at first. And then I took it to Stoner's up by San Blas, and on a six foot day found that I had scored THE PERFECT LONGBOARD. For me, anyway. Fast, easy to turn, easy to noseride, great for carving long walls or blasting down barrels. Easy to paddle.

It's been six months and I'm still in love with this board, although I find it's a little sluggish in smaller surf. But it is easily the best longboard I've ever owned or ridden. Considering I bought it in Seattle - hardly surf city - from a guy I'd never met, I think I was really lucky. These pictures don't explain why it works so well, except maybe to those of you with shaper's eyes, or real connoisseurs; for me, surfing mostly Lancha, Burros, and the left here in town, this is the best board in the world.

May you all be so lucky in surfboard love.

COMING IN MARCH!!!!!
Sayulita's 2nd Annual Punta Sayulita Longboard and Standup Paddle Classic will take place in just a few weeks, on March 12-13. With last year's winners all returning and a whole new crew of professional surfers and paddlers flying in from California and Hawaii to compete, this second edition should be an even bigger and better event that the first - and I seem to recall that we all had a ball last year. Come on down to the beach and watch the show!