Fishcuits and gravy

For the unfamiliar, Dane Reynolds is in his early twenties and lives in Ventura—a northern suburb of southern California. Reynolds is a pro surfer whose days as a grom (jargon for "young surfers") were funded by world travel, scoreing great waves and clips for surfing videos, including the “Young Guns” trilogy put out by his main sponsor, Quiksilver. He was hailed as the next great thing, seen as leading the avant-garde in surfing that made big airs (tricks that use the wave face as a launching ramp) a requirement for any legit surfer’s evolving trick stash. (This was in the early to mid-2000s when “pushing the envelope” was the popular, and cliché, euphemism often employed to depict Reynolds’s style.) Expectations were heightened after Kelly Slater lauded Reynolds after the two traveled and surfed together for Quiksilver.

Reynolds’s aggressive wave riding brought plenty of attention, highlighting the contrast between his out-of-the-water personality. Appearing somewhat shy, almost to the point of awkward, during some video interviews on surfing sits, Reynolds voiced his ambivalence towards competitive pro surfing. Like most sports, surfing’s contending schools of thought pit free-surfing against competition—the former viewed as a soulful, “for the love of it” lifestyle, the latter commercially driven. Dane was regularly asked how he reconciled these two different approaches. Unsure how or where his self-proclaimed absence of competitiveness would fit into the World Championship Tour (WCT), he seemed conflicted, repeatedly denying finding any joy in beating opponents, instead claiming to extract inspiration from their surfing rather than from winning. But Reynolds began competing anyway. Was it a career move bred from a new competitive motivation in its primitive stages?

Reynolds—and his much hyped, industry manufactured rival, South African Jordy Smith—invested hundreds of hours and thousands of miles traveling to surfing contests across the world in the World Qualifying Series, the WCT’s minor league. The WQS's top 15 each year earn a spot on the WCT, replacing the bottom half of the Tour’s 45 annual competitors and forcing them to requalify for the next year. It was an unremarkable year for both surfers as they adapted to the lifestyle, the increased talent level, and dealt with injuries and mystery illnesses. Neither matched Bobby Martinez’s 2006 success when he won two events. Although Reynolds, like Martinez, took home 2008 Rookie of the Year after finishing ranked twenty-second, despite not participating in all eleven contests. (Reynolds thumped Smith in thier first heat against each other in tiny surf at Teahupoo, Tahiti.)

Towards the end of last year, Reynolds boosted an insanely high air at a beach break in France, landing awkwardly, busting his ankle. (See above about not making all eleven contests.) An injury, in fact, prompting Dane to lament the end of his air-boosting days. (The permanence of which remains to be seen.) So, he rehabbed over the winter and, although residual pain lingers—Reynolds told Surfing magazine, “I can’t believe it’s been four months and it’s still fucked”—has been preparing for the season-opening event at Snapper Rocks on the Aussie Goldcoast at home in Ventura and north at Rincon, in Santa Barbara, a dreamy pointbreak that unravels atop a few hundred yards of cobble stone ocean bottom that resembles the wave at Snapper. Which brings us to the video segment.

This is a clip of Reynolds surfing his local spot in Ventura on a pretty small, but clean day (judging by the lighting, it’s probably mid- to late-morning) riding a Channel Islands (board maker) "Fishcuit" (model). The board, designed by CI in the last two years, is a fish/thruster hybrid—two boards surfed in varying wave types. A thruster is the pointed-nose shape, usually with three fins, used by almost every competitive surfer; they can range anywhere from short in the five-foot range to upwards of 6’5”-8” depending on the characteristics of a particular wave. Ideal in smaller surf because they cover more area, Fishes supplement a lack of wave power with greater buoyancy. But fishes aren’t merely small-wave specific. Says the CI Web site, the plank is fit for "knee-high to head and a half" surf.

It’s not certain Reynolds's Fishcuit will carve over tradition this season. Taj Burrow was one of the early wanderers, keeping with the basic thruster shape but switching to boards produced by Firewire that use newer, more durable materials than conventional fiber-glassed foam boards. Much of the surf media has been chirping at the metamorphisizing of the pros' board collections (or "quiver"). Of course, had Kelly Slater not won the Pipe Masters, or spent a month training at Rincon, on boards he's shaped that deviate from the conventional thruster template, the discourse might have veered elsewhere. However, it’s odd that a pro surfer would train on a board that he didn’t plan on riding so close to an event; Reynolds is at least considering paddling it out. Here he is cruising on his Fishcuit with fitting tunes, at his home spot, clearly where he’s most comfortable. We’ll see if Reynolds’s tender ankle and his board choices bring about success on the 2009 World Championship Tour.

In the meantime, be captivated by the smooth style of a person riding liquified energy.