How it all started

I guess you could say that it all started with a pizza.

My wife is a wonderful cook and she turns out one terrific meal after another every night of the week. This was one of those rare evenings when she didn’t feel like cooking so my sons and I went out to pick up a pizza.

Vincent’s Pizza on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley is right next door to a surf shop that used to be called Woody’s and is now called Therapy Surf. We ordered our pie and decided to kill some time wondering around the surf shop while it cooked.

Well that evening we went home with one large pie, a dozen garlic knots and an eight foot long BIC surfboard.

After learning to surf on that BIC for a couple of summers I wanted to try something different. I started shopping around for a new board and quickly realized what a great deal I had gotten on that first board from Woody’s.

I was complaining to a friend about how expensive surfboards are and he said “why don’t you make your own?” I said that I didn’t know anything about shaping foam and fiberglass and he said “why not make it out of wood?” He pointed me to the website of Grain Surfboards who sell complete build your own wooden surfboard kits. That got my interest but the kits from grain cost more than the foam surfboards that I was complaining about in the first place.

Somehow I managed to get from the Grain site to the site of tree2sea.com. This is a wonderful community of wooden surfboard builders headed by Rich Blundell, one of the original cofounders of Grain who later left the company.

The fellows over at tree2sea.com gave me all the information and guidance I needed to get me going on what has since become a lasting passion.

The surfboards called the Striper and the Wing are both designed by Rich himself. The Driftwood is a design that started as a discussion on tree2sea.com which we borrowed and modified. The Pintail was inspired by master builder Roy Stewart of Power Surfboards and Olosurfer.com who gave us endless hours of guidance and support and an education that money can’t buy.

Thanks to the generosity and good nature of these wonderful people, Squalyboards was born.

I should add that although what brought me to the world of wooden surfboards was a search for a cheaper alternative to a retail surfboard, what has kept me here is so much more. It is the environmental benefits of using sustainable materials, the joy of riding a hand crafted work of art, and the camaraderie of this amazing community of builders that have made this journey so spectacular.