When it comes to new surfboard models, it’s one thing to watch a very adept pro put a hunk of foam through its paces. It’s quite another to assess if you need a squash tail or a bat tail, quad or tri fin to achieve the feeling you desire in the surf. Lucky for us mere mortals there are folks like Ian from Boardshop.co.uk to dissect the idiosyncrasies of shapes and cut through the fluff to tell us how and why boards work.
Here Ian takes on Slater Designs’ latest model, the Cymatic – a board Kelly was recently caught surfing during a decent day on the North Shore. And despite its appearance, the Cymatic is not just the top half of the Omni and the bottom half of the Sci-fi smashed together. We’ll defer to Ian to break it down for you.
And where does the name come from? “Cymatic(s) is the study of wave phenomena, esp sound, and their visual representations,” said Kelly in a post on Instagram. “Tomo and I had this idea to make a board that fits the ‘vibration’ of a wave in our minds. The minimal amount of board to do the maximum amount of surfing. We chopped the nose off ahead of the rail line you need and went with a pretty wide battail (like the SciFi model). With the added bite of the channels the tail still holds while giving plenty of lift.”
