So I spent this past week out in california working on some new designs with the guys from Firewire surfboards. If you don't know much about them already, they are the most high tech surfboard manufacturers out there, and are always coming up with new revolutionary designs to push the level of surfing towards a brighter future. Over the past couple years I have been fortunate enough to build a good relationship with all of the Firewire family, and my surfing has continued to benefit from this bond. Earlier this year I spent a few weeks on the Goldcoast of Australia working with the creator himself Nev Hyman on some new designs for this season. We came up with one particular model that we both feel was going to be insane, so he went straight to work on getting it dialed in. My description of our new model (The "Hellfire"), is a shaped down small wave board, that resembles your normal shortboard in the nose area, but has a routered out tail that helps the board to stay on rail through when you get it in a real section. The routered out tail helps you keep the volume under your back foot, while preventing it from getting to loose when you put it on rail. I know this sounds pretty crazy and something most people will "right off" as soon as they see it, but I rode mine this last week in meager surf to say the least at Oceanside harbor, and I am a firm believer in this model. The one I was riding was only 5'4 but held like my normal shortboard! For how bad the surf was I found a couple sections that showed what this board was capable of. The board I was riding actually had a ton of "V" on the bottom of the board, and actually made it difficult for the average surfer to figure out, so after discussing it with Chuy Reyna (who was riding the HellFire in a 5'8) we decided to stay with the same outline and just make the bottom of the board flat, to increase the boards speed through flatter sections. Look for this board to be coming out soon at your local Firewire dealer, and don't be afraid to look outside the box of your normal board. You never know, you may not ever look back!!! haha