The latest video from Koa Smith starts with a sort of poetic ode to the end of the winter season, followed immediately by story time. He goes on to describe a handful of gnarly end-of-season experiences, including witnessing a gruesome-sounding injury and having his own helmet ripped off during a wipeout. From there, it’s your pretty standard (read: well surfed) Pipe session, albeit with one interesting twist.
A few weeks ago, Smith teased an upcoming collaboration with Matt Parker called Resonance Surfboards. He also showed off a CAD rendering of a funny-looking experimental model with a waved rail line inspired by a steak knife. At the time, the board was still purely theoretical, but now we finally get to see it in action.
“Today is the day: From idea to 3-d, we have the mystery board,” said Smith, as he hefted the peculiar-looking neon-green surf craft. Though the board’s origins are fairly whimsical, the execution does have at least a little bit of the scientific method to it: The experimental board has pretty much identical dimensions to Koa’s standard shortboard, in order to be able to tell what effect that crazy-looking rail actually has.
Under-foot, the thing actually seemed to perform pretty well. Whether that can be attributed to the board or just Smith’s surfing is still up for debate, but Koa seemed to think the serrated edge was helping.
“I think we’re onto something,” he said upon returning to the sand. “It honestly felt really good. I was kind of blown away. For how bumpy it was out there, it was just taking the chops so well. I didn’t feel the [mimics a chattering sound]. I was able to almost just cut through, like a hot knife in butter.”
