Maybe it was the people you were with, maybe it was the quality of the waves (it was probably both), but we all have those surf days that just stick in our memory.
For me, it was a day in the Fall of 2017, when we had a very specific assignment, a bunch of friends, and some clean, fun surf.
The assignment was this: we had been working on a new surfboard construction method and we were approaching the part of the development process where we needed to shape a "master" board to build all of our tooling off of.
This master would be replicated hundreds or potentially thousands of times, in a new method that was unproven to both us and our customers. We were allexcited, but we definitely wanted to get it right.
So we shaped and glassed two finalists. Slight variations of the same board. (If I remember correctly one was 21.5" wide and one was 22" wide). And then we did what we always do when we make something new, we invited as many trusted friends down to the water with us to try it out.
We were going to surf, swap boards, trade waves, and then make our final decision about which board would be the true master to base our very first R-Series Surfboard off of.
Fall is my favorite season for surf (probably yours too) and the waves were unusually fun on this particular morning. Joining Griffin and I were: Drew Meseck, Alex Swanson, Wesley Francis, Joel Owen, and Jeffrey Allee was there to take photos.
Excitement was high because the stakes were real to decide on which version of the 5'4 Secret Menu was going to be the winner. The fact that the waves were better than we expected only added to the enthusiasm.
At the end of the session, we had a clear winner. We chose the Secret Menu that was 5'4" x 21.5" wide and 36.4 L. That became the master upon which our very first R-Series model was built.
We weren't sure, at that time, what the reception was going to be like for a recyclable foamie version of an Almond surfboard. At that point, it was 2017 and we were about 10 years into the business. We had only ever built surfboards one way—which was more or less the same way they had been built since the 1960's.
But we were willing to take a chance on something new that we believed in. Something that would allow us to maintain our one-at-a-time custom board operation, while making our boards available to more folks.
But outside of the pressure we felt to pick the "right" board, our concerns on this Fall morning were few. Anytime you can get a half a dozen friends together for a surf, its a very good day.
And this particular morning is cemented into my memory, and thanks to Jeff's photos, cemented into Almond history.
Go out and make some of your own memories this Fall. Send the group text and take over a peak for a few hours. You'll be glad you did.
