Channel Islands Presses ‘All Team’ Button, Drops 6-Minute Edit

Ever wonder why the Merricks shape under the Channel Islands banner?

Let’s start at the beginning — not with surfboards, but with humankind, my dear friends. The Channel Islands of California, not to be confused with their tax-havenish cousins near France, are eight windswept slabs off the Southern California coast. Five belong to Channel Islands National Park, sometimes called the Galápagos of the North. The first seafarers from the Pacific crossed to here, made camp, and became the first human inhabitants of North America.

On one of these islands — San Nicolas — a woman lived alone for 18 years. Her people, the Nicoleño, were decimated in an 1811 massacre by contracted Russian sea otter hunters.

Anyhow, the last survivor was Juana Maria, aka The Lone Woman of The Channel Islands. She lived alone for 18 years, made a hut from whale bones and sang to the birds until liberation, or capture, depending on your lens, in 1853. Seven weeks after setting foot on the mainland, dysentery got her at 43.

In 1993, a Floridian man wandered onto a different set of Channel Islands and stood firm for 23 years. Not alone, exactly, but dominant enough to earn the nickname, in some corners, as The Lone Man of Channel Islands. 

In 2015, Kelly Slater was liberated, released, extracted — depending on your lens of history, from Channel Islands Surfboards. Just like Juana Maria, he was 43. Not the last of his people, but for two decades, CI and Kelly were one.

After Juana Maria’s exit, the real Channel Islands slowly repopulated. Today, they host 2,609 humans.

Channel Islands Surfboards did the same. After Kelly left, the Merricks kept shaping, the team rebuilt, and the population swelled. Now 20+ strong, they’ve just dropped a new edit to launch their latest board: The Better Everyday.

The board is an evolution of the ‘Happy Everyday,’ which is the board that came to life after finishing second in Taj Burrow’s Stab In The Dark, and has now become one of their best sellers.

But Britt had a few tweaks in mind. So he went back in, softened the hip, threw on a swallow tail, cranked the tail rocker, and drilled five holes for your fins — a choose-your-own-adventure setup, depending on how frisky you’re feeling.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the team has been loving the Better Everyday — see Kian Martin’s first surf on it for reference. And that feeling seems to apply to the everyman as well.

How do we know? Every time we ask what board you’re riding, you mutter Channel Islands. When we pressed you for the best board in the last 24 months, you said CI again. You’ve got the fever. Maybe even the Fever.

The new edit’s up top. It features Eithan Osborne, Cam Richards, Rolo Montes, Barron Mamiya, Lucas Cassidy, Imai DeVault, and a pile of others.

Shop ’em here.