MAKING WAVES: Bodyboarding Warplanes product launch

Slice the Sea

Local rescue swimmers’ business crafts custom hand planes for bodysurfing

By Aly Lawson Photos Courtesy of Warplanes

Run by three naval rescue swimmers, Warplanes is a grassroots hand plane business that crafts a tool for recreational swimmers and surfers to glide through our Coronado waters and beyond. Dipping into alaia surf boards as well, the company has strong island ties.

Brainchild of active duty Navy service member Nick Barringer, Warplanes is getting its sea legs again with the easing of the pandemic. Barringer, whose family and relatives both visited and lived on Coronado island over the years, underwent spinal surgery in November 2019.

“At the time, I did not know if I’d ever surf or fly again,” he shares of not being able to stand up to surf postsurgery or return to jumping out of military helicopters. “During rehab, I started getting back into the ocean, body surfing and other water activities.” One day his friend, fellow surfer, and surfing photographer Blair Austin showed him a hand plane. “I was hooked from the first wave caught,” the entrepreneur says.

The sturdy but elegant pieces of wood Warplanes now creates with its hand planes can be strapped around a palm and furthers the body boarding experience. After that first experience, Barringer thought it would be a great idea to make one himself but had no idea where to start. He called Chris Pinar, a good friend and retired chief and rescue swimmer as well who owns T2 Woodworks.

“He’s an amazing carpenter and I pitched him the idea,” he says and adds how third teammate Jerry Lombardo is an incredible body surfer as well as retired master chief and rescue swimmer. Lombardo also works in a civilian contractor role with HSM-41 at Naval Air Station North Island as a helicopter simulator instructor.

“I wanted his advice and input on the design of the boards,” Barringer says of Lombardo. “He tested and helped design the di erent models and actually designs the straps, paints, and creates our stickers.”

Barringer describes how the Warplanes logo is in honor of his grandfather Albert Roe Ti any, who flew a Corsair and was shot down in North Korea (he is still MIA/KIA). Cody Coumes,

Warplanes teammates Chris Pinar (left) and Nick Barringer with their first alaia surfboard ready for the water. The wood used is alder and cedar, and the traditional Hawaiian surfboard stands here at 7'7" and 21 pounds.

another prior rescue swimmer who’s now a digital graphic design artist, created the Warplanes logo. This year the Warplanes team started building alaia’s, a traditional surfboard the Hawaiians first started surfing thousands of years ago, which are thin and round-nosed and squaretailed. “Our services and product are for anyone who love the ocean, water enthusiasts, those who are curious to the sport and to the experienced who want to test their skills on the alaia,” Barringer explains. Warplanes has also collaborated with Chula Vista Brewery. Tim Parker, the owner, is additionally a retired rescue swimmer and chief. This summer, Warplanes will have a new beer collaboration coming out and encourages locals to keep a lookout. For Warplanes’ o cial launch last year on Veterans Day, the team also did a collaboration hazy pale ale with the brewery. Pinar says it’s been fun to have the tools and ability to help make the equipment. He describes how they need an idea guy like

Barringer and an artist like Lombardo. Pinar, who says he’s been enjoying the woodworking business full-time for almost three years, had the capability to make a prototype and try many iterations. One of his woodworking machines laser-etches the logo into each plane.

Longtime surfer Lombardo, who also sews the straps because of his time learning sewing from his mother years ago so he could sew items for his family’s new baby, notes it’s also great to test the surfing products out. Both Lombardo and Pinar illustrate how the ideas got going simply running into

Blair Austin and Nick Barringer take turns catching waves and photographing the ocean experience with Warplanes along with body surfer Patricia Jake Stark (opposite page) o the coast of San Diego.

each other in the small world of naval rescue swimming. And they all enjoy the creative outlet as well as the sport.

“Not to be cliché, but I really truly feel like I’m living the dream — my dream,” Pinar says. “I get to wake up every day and do what I love and what I’m passionate about … I walk out of the shop, even after a really long day, and I still feel good about what I’m doing. I don’t want to distance from it. I enjoy sharing this craft with other people.” He notes he’s lucky to have realized his dream in his 40s and that he’s able to do what he loves for a living.

“For my own business I just felt the drive to do it,” Pinar continues about T2. “For Warplanes it was the network we have,” he says of the military community. The connections made sense and worked well, he adds — the audience, the team, the resources. “Why fight an uphill battle? Build your community within your community you already have,” he says, encouraging veterans to use the resources available to them.

Barringer says: “My advice to veteran entrepreneurs is to find something you love, get after it, and find people who share the same love and passion in what they do.”

Check out Warplanes at their Etsy shop (etsy.com/shop/ SurfWarPlanes) as well as on Instagram (@planes_war) and Facebook (@warplanesbodysurf). Head to their pages for more product information, apparel, collaboration brew updates, as well as photos and videos of their products in action.

• Aly Lawson is a freelance writer who lives in Coronado with her husband and children.