The southern-hemi swell that carried Slater into the top of the ASP also provided fast hollow barrels for the inaugural SWELL Demo Day in San Clemente, Ca. The conditions favored faster, lighter models able to drive through the rifling close-outs, making it obvious which boards and riders could make the cut.
With over fifty sleds lining the sand, even grommets found it hard to choose a board to sample. Shaper for both current world champs Mick Fanning and Steph Gilmore, shared his trade secrets by lending out DHD’s Bobby Martinez small wave Monster. Darren Handley himself gave everyone a free lesson in hung-over hacking after a long week of waving the Aussie flag at lowers.
Other standouts of the day came from Firewire’s ex-WCT soldier Chuy Reyna who brought down a whole trailer of boards, and made everyone look bad in the water by schralping every wave to the beach. The Firewire En Fuego model’s versatility made it a favorite throughout the day’s varying conditions.
Scotty and the boys at T.Patterson owned the south peak, blowing up lips like collagen with The Weapon.
Johnny from Catchsurf and Sean from SWELL back-doored the bigger peaks of the day and got funky with some fins-free spins in the pocket on their Beaters.
Dave Boehne of Infinity Surfboards busted out some hyper-progressive shapes to the likes we’ve never witnessed. His fin-less green egg featuring reverse winged rails and deep channels, baffled SWELL’s own resident-ripper Billy, who flailed over the falls all session.
When the sun retreated, so did our beach-goers back up on the bluff to throw back some coldies provided by Firestone, followed by an amateurish horse-shoe tourney. Everyone in attendance grinded tons of local mexi grub and heckled one another around the fire all night.
We’d also like to thank; Bobby Lockhart from Billabong for a sneak peak at new wetsuit technology, Scott from Dakine for showing off the “hide-a-board” board bag to save $$$ at the airport, big Johnny at Lost who showed of Kolohe Andino’s magic board The Scorcher , and Nick at Thalia Street Surfshop.
Click all the links to peruse the cutting edge gear you coulda sampled, and don’t blow it next year.
Check out the Demo Day 2010 video above and water shots below –taken with the Go-Pro– to see what you missed.
Picture captions in order (Click thumbnails to view individual picture sequences): Johnny from CATCH SURF pulling in with the Chode Chomper; Sean cruising by on his Infinity Single Fin; Dave Boehne on an Insider; One of the DHD boys flying down the line and throwing some water; Unknown Demo Day-er on a liner; CHuy & the DHDers
Also check out this video made by the guys down at Infinity
Surfboard Demo w/ Swell.Com from theINFINTREE on Vimeo.