Nixon’s ‘the Weird’ event has been running globally for a few years now, and built up quite a following. The basic premise is to get some great surfers together and present them with a handful of super weird boards – then let them battle it out in a peer judged surf comp – where the winner takes all – and walks away with a fistful of cash! For the most recent edition, held in the UK, we decided to really mix things up a bit by splitting the event into 2 sections - to allow us to highlight not only the great surfing, but also to celebrate the art of the board shapers and their craft.
Nixon gathered 6 of the most respected, innovative and influential shapers in the UK together in one place at Walters - in St. Agnes Cornwall - at the same time - and gave them the challenge of Hand -shaping a ‘weird’ (but functional) board, entirely by hand - from start to finish in just 2 hours! Each shaper was given a specific ‘Weird’ design element - eg finless, singlefin, super short etc. and then they were let lose! - What followed was such a refreshing mix of ideas, collaborations, mutual reverence and ultimately a showcase of the skill and craftsmanship that goes into creating these mind-bending dream sleds by hand. Once each board had been shaped it was time to colour match it to one of our fine ‘The Mission’ Smart watches -and then Jeremy at Walters had the challenging task of glassing and sanding these mind bending creations ... no simple feat!
Everyone involved brought something original to the mix - and the ecclectic assembled crowd on the day were ultimately left with one underlying question ... how will these boards actually surf? To find out how the boards performed (and who won the shapers and surfers events) you’ll just have have to check out the video of part 2 on thursday December 21st. Shapers/Surfers – the board they had to shape - and the colour of the Mission watch that matched each craft:
Lee Bartlett - channel bottom - Orange
Andy Gale - super short - Blue
Hugh Brockman - finless - Grey
Chris Harris - single fin - Black
Luke Young - Twin fin - Green
Brad Rochfort - assymetric - Yellow
