Stab Caddy 2.0: Dane Reynolds’ Haleiwa Channel Islands

Dane’s turn at Haleiwa, believe it or not, was two years ago. And yes, we’re still talking about it. Forget Julian’s slob this year, Dane’s turn in 2012 was, as they say in Hawaii, da nutest, and considered, by Stab, the best turn ever done in a jersey.

“I remember watching it live and thinking, ‘What did he just do,’” recalls Channel Islands board guru Travis Lee.

And that’s where the story begins. Mr Reynolds had been working with the Channel Islands’ shaping team for some months to devise a board that “worked on a big open face, but allowed him to surf the way he wanted to surf.”

Beginning with Al Merrick’s outlines, and the reinvigorated shaping machine that is so Britt Merrick, Dane got busy with the team in their Santa Barbara skunk works. Starting with the standard Kelly Slater step-up, over a series of months, tunes and tweaks were made. Foam was redistributed, entry rocker re-evaluated, and the board was transformed from a classic Kelly design to a Dane Reynolds hot rod.

“We had been modifying the design quite a bit to get Dane what he wanted,” explains Trav. “He wasn’t looking for a board for Pipe or anything like that, he wanted a board that felt free on an open-faced wave. Something that would still hold in decent waves, but he could still turn it and wrap it.”

After spending majority of his time riding trusty 5’11”s, what Dane ended up with was a 6’5” x 18 7/8” x 2 7/16”. But the fin set-up was an unorthodox mix. A Futures thruster set up and also a set of FCS plugs for the quad option. It had a slightly lower entry rocker than the original K Step-Up model they started with, and it was also wider with more foam under the chest. Overall, the board carries a little more foam to get into waves early and get setup right off the takeoff.

As for the fin cluster: “He’d been trying different stuff and bouncing ideas back and forth,” says Trav. “He had this set of back fins for an FCS quad set-up that he knew would work and that he liked, so we built the fin setup around that to give him the four-fin option.”

He rode the board as a quad at Off The Wall and a few other sessions, but the turn to end all turns at Haleiwa came from the thruster setup.

Twenty-four months later and the model is now becoming a staple in most of Channel Islands team’s quivers. Jordy Smith, the Gudauskas clan, Conner Coffin, Zeke Lau, and a number of others have been on them and the feedback’s been positive.

“It’s always surprising to me how long it takes for a board like this to get under the feet of guys like Jordy and Zeke, but we wanted to make this a very dependable board in the big, open faces of Hawaii,” adds Trav. “Just because one guy did one amazing turn on the board it’s undergone extensive testing by our team, and it’s proved to be a favourite this winter, which shows how far ahead Dane was with his design concepts.”