How Stretch And Nathan Fletcher SpaceX’d Surfboard Design Into The Future

William ‘Stretch’ Riedel falls into many of the stereotypes of “old guard” surfboard shapers.

He’s gruff, direct, opinionated, prideful, witty, and his shaping bay is heavily outfitted with images of women in various states of undress. 

The 65-year-old also defies many expectations. He doesn’t surf anymore, and hasn’t for over three decades. His boards are finished when he says they will be. His understanding of hydrodynamics borders on the scientific. He doesn’t give nearly anyone — even most professional surfers — deals on boards. 

He has also officially died twice.

“The accident happened when I was wind surfing in 1988,” Stretch tells me. “I was at Waddell Creek, six foot Hawaiian style. I did a big forward loop, and everything went wrong. At the time I was going pro windsurfing, and I had put an old skateboard pro helmet on just so I could try new things without knocking myself out. A big ramp came and I ended up 20 feet in the air upside down and just gave up, completely relaxed, which was a big mistake. Because I was relaxed, I slammed my chin into my chest and broke my neck. I remember laying face down in the water, completely paralyzed. At the time, I could hold my breath for three minutes, so I didn’t drown. I went into what they call diver suffocation. I suppressed the inhale response and instead of inhaling water, I swallowed it. It was supposedly around 20 minutes before I was rescued and resuscitated, and I guess I technically died then.”

“I was in the hospital for six days after that,” Stretch continues. “I checked myself out, went home and took the screws out of my head to take the halo off. Unfortunately I aspirated some food, because I didn’t have the ability to cough yet, which led to food and bacteria in my lungs. The doctor had to re-inflate my lungs, which had six holes the size of quarters in them. I guess he told my wife and my mom that he couldn’t save me, but that he had an idea for a new procedure to try. The holes were so big, they were just flapping and not opening. He ended up taking PVC tubes, wiggling them into the holes in my lungs and blowing air in through the holes.

“Consequently, during this whole thing, I technically died again. But, evidently the procedure now saves tons of people and is used worldwide. He wrote a book about it.”

The resulting paralysis from his incident is called Brown-Sequard Syndrome, which ‘manifests with weakness or paralysis and proprioceptive deficits on the side of the body ipsilateral to the lesion and loss of pain and temperature sensation on the contralateral side.’

Essentially, his left side doesn’t work, and his right side doesn’t feel. 

At the point of his accident, he’d been shaping for 10 years. After the paralysis, it took him another three to properly build surfboards again. 

“The first board back took a whole day,” he tells me. “Work for 10 minutes, rest for 10 minutes, work for 10 minutes, rest for 10 minutes. To this day, I have to shape left-handed. I can push a planer, but I have to control the planer with my left hand and I have to be able to lock the trigger on with a planer.”

Nearly 15 years after the injury, Stretch coincided with Nathan Fletcher — this encounter started a partnership that would last the next two decades and permanently evolve the experimental performance limits of heavy-water surfboards. 

“We went to Santa Cruz to shoot for Vans, it was 2003 I think,” Nate tells me. “I rode for Cole at the time, and I only had one board. I needed a few more, and Rat Boy was getting boards off Stretch. We ended up going over there and Stretch said he could make a board in the next two days. It was pretty cool to see the pride that he took in his work and the organization of his factory.

“I rode 4-fins at the time, with deck channels and everything. He was definitely a thruster, square tail, Steamer Lane point break type of surfboard shaper. I think I took him out of his comfort zone, and it really sparked a fire of innovation with him. As I got to know him and work with him more, I saw how much he was into all that unique technology as far as the materials went. Whatever I brought to him became something that he elaborated on and brought to a whole new level — that was really the beauty.”

In 2005, just two years after his and Fletcher’s collaboration began, Stretch won Surfing Magazine’s Shaper Of The Year award.

“No new concept holds water until someone actually backs it up. So, when Westside charger Anthony Tashnick went out and won this year’s Maverick’s Surf Contest on a 9’4” bat-tail four-fin, he and Stretch essentially erased 40 years of big-wave board theory in a single event — arguably the biggest design statement since Simon won the ’81 Bells on a Thruster.”

The deck-channel four-fin theory, which is now pervasive in big wave lineups, was a result of Nathan’s inspiration and openness paired with Stretch’s hydrodynamic knowledge and craftsmanship.

It began with a shortboard Nathan had commandeered off a man named Bali Joe — an undersized bat tail quad which left the youngest Fletcher brother surprised and curious. After replicating the theories with Stretch, Nate brought a handful of quads to the North Shore.

“I brought boards to Hawaii and everybody kinda laughed at me,” Nate remembers. “The only people that didn’t really laugh were Michael Ho and Tom Carroll. When Tom saw my boards, he told me how he had a 7’8 quad for Sunset that he loved. He was the gnarliest guy in the world. Michael Ho and Tom Carroll were pros from single fins, to twin fins, to thrusters. Didn’t matter if all the kids thought it was lame, because they didn’t know from experience.

“Being a skateboarder, I like the way four fins feel,” Nate continues. “I feel like I surf more on my front foot and then lean back on my back foot.  I don’t think four fins are really great for everybody, but if you really transfer your weight, if you’re real front footed and then transfer to real back footed on turns, then I really like the way they carry the speed out of the turn. We’ve just been trying to get the fin configurations — size, placement, and angle — to where there’s a formula. Everybody on thrusters has an exact formula, but nobody’s really even played around with quads. Everybody’s just been stuck on thrusters for 20 years and never even questioned it.”

The latter is a point which Stretch staunchly echoes.

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“The industry is making one board that came from 1990, ideas haven’t changed,” Stretch says. “I’ve said this a billion times. Everyone makes a Xanadu single concave tri-fin. That’s what they make. And Xanadu has a huge head, but he almost deserves it. I mean, everybody is ripping him off and we haven’t progressed. There’s variations in rockers and variations in concaves for different waves, but it’s the same formula that everybody uses — Lost, Merrick, Timmy, everyone.”

It’s a heavy callout, but one that seems to substantiate itself on the caliber of surfers who have trusted Stretch’s unconventional shapes and EPS technology in waves of truth — Benji Brand, Dustin Barca, Andy Irons, Bruce Irons, Mike Ho, Holly Wawn, Harry Bryant, Steph Gilmore, Nic Von Rupp, G-Mac, Koa Smith, the Florence Brothers, and numerous underground big wave surfers. 

“Rocker is everything,” emphasizes Stretch. “Dump the nose rocker, add the tail rocker. Tail rocker equates to nose rocker. As soon as I stand up and I put my foot on the tail, if I have tail rocker, the nose comes up. Right? And, having no nose rocker, the board paddles really well. Nose rocker slows you down. Dump the nose, add the tail. That’s part of how you can have a 24 liter board with Nathan, who at the time of our first experimentations was 180 pounds, still catching waves easily.”

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As for the unique EPS construction that Stretch has become synonymous with, the inspiration came from his tenure as a clerk at a furniture store in 1980 — where he was using some of the in-house epoxy to experiment with surfboard in the early days of his shaping.

“I like the way polyester feels. It has the best flex for the human body,” he says. “I wanted to figure out how to duplicate that feeling in a stronger material. The problem with PU is, and you’ll know this, that for the first two weeks the springiness is there. But after that, it’s gone. Polyester deteriorates so fast. The resin is taking the load and the bonds of those molecules are broken down so fast because they’re taking all the load. The beauty of epoxy is that it has elongation and it allows the cloth to take the load. Subsequently, the resin never deteriorates because it’s not taking the load. The cloth is, and glass never deteriorates. It’s forever. 

“With the two pound glass heavy, if you glass it correctly, that gets you as close as you can get to PU with the longevity benefits of epoxy.”

A result of Nathan’s adrenal inclinations, the natural progression of their exploration was toward big wave boards. Though he’s hesitant to sing his own praises — and acknowledges Jeff Clark’s early four-fin experimentations — Nate was, by all accounts, the first surfer to consistently ride quads in big wave lineups.

“I was the laughing-stock, again,” he remembers. “When I pulled out a fluoro green, 9’6 four-fin with deck channels at Mavericks, I definitely got some funny looks, especially being from Southern California. But then slowly people’s minds changed. You’d do stuff or make drops where they could see the performance of the board. And then Pete Mel started riding them and it started to become more mainstream. At the beginning though, there was definitely skepticism.

“I don’t really take that much pride in doing anything first. I just like to see everybody progressing. If somebody has a different opinion, I wouldn’t blame them, I don’t know for sure who was the first.”

Now, roughly 90% of the surfers in the water at Jaws are on quads. 

“When all three of your fins are at a different angle, there’s a degree of drag,” Nate offers. “You figure if you’re on the rail, two of those fins are at different angles. One’s going straight, one’s kind of going towards the nose. But when all your fins on one rail are facing the same direction, when you get on that rail, it goes so much faster.

“We started out making ’em long and thick, so they paddled really well and you could catch a wave, but now we were making ’em narrow. You know when you drop in on a big wave with a big board, you get halfway down and it starts trying to suck you back up the face? That’s the width of the board sticking, there’s too much surface. With our guns, Stretch tries to minimize that.”

With shortboards in Stretch’s proprietary tech reaching into the four-figure price range, it’s no surprise that these boards aren’t as pervasive in our cultural periphery as those from factory-built, worldwide-licensed brands.

“I can’t believe how good some boards have been,” Nate says. “Especially when I ride the 51/50 and it’s the right conditions, or the 7’2 that I have with the bamboo bottom and the cork deck, I feel like it’s unfair that I get to even ride these boards because they’re so good.

“The boards cost so much, and he doesn’t give deals on the bamboo and the cork construction. So, they’ll last so long, but you can’t really explain it to anybody unless they try it. And then, once they try it, they’ll love it.”