Rob Machado Is Back On Thrusters?

“I want to apologize to the general public, for putting out surfboards in the late ‘90s that were virtually impossible to ride,” Rob Machado once said to us, with a half grin on his face. 

Since the late ‘90s, Rob’s career has evolved in ways nobody might have predicted.

After being voted off tour in 2001, he began delving into the dubious performance witchcraft of increased volume, flatter rocker, and missing middle fins with Channel Islands Surfboards. 

A catalyst for the “foam is your friend” movement, the original Biscuit (which was shaped for Rob) was much shorter than the standard HPSBs at the time, unlocking Rob’s interest in shapes that were anything but WSL-sanctioned vehicles.

Since then, Rob hasn’t stopped trying to figure out how to make those boards work, and what makes them work. Eventually, he found his way into shaping alternative surfboards — creating most notably the Go Fish and the Seaside.

Now, Rob has returned to his three-fin foundation with the ‘Groove,’ an outline he first rode in 2013 but has recently decided to revisit.

“I modernized it a little bit, a little more foil, a little more flip,” he says. “A little more high-performance, we can call it that. This is still a bit of a hybrid, but it’s the closest thing I’ve shaped to a high-performance surfboard.

“All surfboards have a balance between speed and control, and the Groove is about controlled speed,” he finishes.

And yes, it still has a quad option for the anti-purists.

Oh, and Mikey C just did a Joyride in waves which truly tested the limitation of the Groove on both ends of the wave quality spectrum — that should be out around the end of this month.