Every decent idea starts from a conversation about a need or a want.
Earlier this year, a few of my friends were headed out on a surf trip where the waves were supposed to be good—like really good.
So we got to talking about travel quivers, and the importance of both:
A. Being comfortable and familiar with your equipment.
B. Ensuring you have the right equipment for the conditions you're facing.
Those two things can sometimes be at odds with one another when the waves you are traveling to are vastly different than the waves you surf at home.
We started kicking around the idea of modifying something familiar to make it more suitable for new conditions.
Being heavily biased toward the early-entry and familiarity of the Pleasant Pheasant, we started imagining a modified Pleasant Pheasant, specifically geared toward more critical waves.
Griffin enthusiastically got to work bringing this rough concept to life:
The result: a board we are calling The Wildcat.
The "Wildcat" name is inspired by my grandfather. He is a retired math teacher and for many years was a hobbyist long-range competitive shooter. He, like his father before him, had a machine shop at home and loved modifying and customizing his equipment for long-range shooting.
The term "wildcat" is a reference to taking something stock and customizing it / modifying it for more precise uses—like competition.
"Wildcats are typically developed by individual enthusiasts, hand-loaders, and custom gunsmiths who modify existing commercial cartridge cases to achieve a specific, desired ballistic performance, such as higher velocity, greater efficiency, or improved accuracy."
So in the instance of this Wildcat surfboard, we took a board that we love dearly and modified it to make it more performance-oriented for more critical surf conditions.
Pictured here is: 6'4" x 19 3/4 x 2 5/8 and 35.1L
While we do primarily focus on building boards for everyday waves, we don't want to leave your quiver lacking when the surf becomes bigger, more powerful, and higher-stakes.
Hence the slimmed down, trimmed-up, slightly-more-rockered "Wildcat" version of the familiar and proven Pleasant Pheasant.
So, next time you have a surf trip coming up and you're expecting some slighly juicier waves, you can still bring that familiar-feeling favorite with you—in a modified and refined form.
