Watch: Bob McTavish And The Ongoing Rejection Of Surfboard Orthodoxy

“Of course it does,” says 81 year old Bob McTavish, when asked if the flame still burns for surfboard design. “I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain just goes to surfboards.”

McTavish doesn’t shape with theories so much as he shapes despite them. No finality or fixed ideas. His factory houses everything from 5-foot stingers to 14-foot gliders, all with fins in various stages of commitment. 

Taj Richmond, his test pilot, seems equally disinterested in resolution. “Experimenting with board design, fins, and stance. These ideas perpetually scramble my brain,” he says. Together they form a sort of anti-system — two people committed to never agreeing with themselves.

In the edit above, Taj tests a range of boards somewhere tropical. The exact location isn’t given, but based on his footwork, and the fact he spends months in the Philippines with his girlfriend Josie, geography becomes a soft science. We’ll let you complete the triangulation.

Well worth your time.