Albacore

In September 2010, Global Surf Industries launched The Seaglass Project and threw the doors open to the world. Many surf shops jumped on board seeing this as an exciting and sunny moment in a dark world economy. Aside from the tuned in surfers familiar with ancient Hawaiian surfing from the alaia, the public was a little slow to put their dollars down on an extremely unusual design.

To put things into perspective, six years ago, riding a finless surfboard was essentially unheard of. When I started reproducing thin wood alaias based on ancient Hawaiian design, most people did not even see a “surfboard”. Taking the fins off a surfboard was like telling you to go out and jack your car up, take the wheels off, lower it to the ground and it will drive better!

Together with GSI we produced the Seaglass Tuna and the Albacore. The Albacore is the soft version of the same board. It is safe, with more flex than the Tuna and soft boards feel good in the water and under you feet. It is super versatile, safe in a crowd and a lot of fun.

For the full story on how this board developed check out the story in my Blog: Best Design Award for Seaglass Project