Rob Machado likes to take old shapes and stretch them right now. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Rob Machado isn’t really a guy who rides a standard shortboard anymore. Sure, he can — and he can ride it very well — but in the last few years, he’s been all over the map with shapes. Fat and flat, long and thin, and anywhere in between. There does appear to be one thing in common with all of them, though: they’re made for the Average Joe, and many of them are made by taking an older one and stretching it out. His newest offering to the surf-starved masses? The Xtra Cado.
As you might’ve surmised by the name, the board is a stretched out version of the best-selling, and difficult to pronounce, Machadocado.
“I have this real attraction to boards in this mid-length realm,” Machado said in a press release. “It’s not a longboard and it’s not a shortboard. It’s somewhere in between. It’s for the days when you don’t feel like trying as hard as other days, or when the waves just don’t give you the green light to try and rip. Maybe you just want to glide into a few waves and draw out a couple longer turns, and maybe that’s all it is, for simplifying the day.”
It’s got plenty of extra foam for paddling and glide, as well as a single to double concave for the transitions. Like the Machadocado, it has a rounded-off nose and a squash tail. To make it, Machado and Firewire took the Machadocado, stretched it out, and gave it a bit of a straighter outline. The rails are pulled down, and the wide squash tail is almost oddly thin.
It is, as you’d expect from a board like this, not made for performance waves. It’s made instead for waves that most surfers see on most days: smaller and gutless. But because of the performance elements, it doesn’t shy away from larger surf. It will not make you surf like Rob Machado, unfortunately, but it might just let you have a little more fun, which is what we’re all looking for.
