Costa Quality
A Guide to Central American Surfboard Builders January 2017
MADE IN COSTA RICA
CRAFTSMEN
Robert August
Tamarindo, Costa Rica RobertAugust.com @SurfRobertAugust
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Costa Quality
osta Rica has long been a travel destination for surfers, but only in recent years have we seen it develop into a destination for board builders. Stabilizing governments, trade incentives, and an increasingly educated workforce have fostered an environment where shapers can access first-quality materials to build world-class boards. The country’s favorable trade policies and their centralized geographic location make Costa Rica an ideal location to become the next board building hub for Central and South America. As blank manufacturers, we’ve seen a couple of indicators in Costa Rica that are remindful of Hawai’i in the 70s, where surfers left their Californian-made boards at home in favor of locally made boards. One of the initial agents of change was steady access to quality board building materials. Incrementally, tourism and purchasing of local boards increased, simultaneously elevating quality of design and construction, and Hawaiian shapers established themselves as leaders in their craft. We’ve been seeing early indicators of a similar revolution in Costa Rica and our intent with this publication is to shine a light on some of the country’s finest craftsmen. Imagine traveling with just boardshorts and t-shirts, avoiding excessive airline fees and lugging that cumbersome boardbag. You can ride your custom Carton in Jaco, your Denga in Santa Teresa, and your Robert August in Tamarindo. As an added benefit, some shapers (Mark Wooster in Hermosa) are offering board storage with your purchase so that your board is waiting for you upon your next visit. Others (Che Surfboards in Tamarindo) are offering a buy-back program, so that you can surf your new, custom board during your trip while other clients have access to a wide inventory of slightly used boards. Whether you’re a surfer who wants access to the best surfboards, a shaper looking for a residency, or a board builder looking to establish a secondary manufacturing location, Costa Rica offers an enticing package of waves, lifestyle and economic climate. Here are the stories of a few early adaptors.
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Edwin Villalobos Jaco, Costa Rica CartonSurfboards.com @CartonSurfboards
JD Evangelista
Tamarindo, Costa Rica CheBoards.com @CheBoards
Marcelo Matos Playa Grande, Costa Rica MatosSurfShop.com @MatosSurfShop
Denis Galioto
Santa Teresa, Costa Rica DengaSurf.com
Mark Wooster
Hermosa, Costa Rica WoosterSurfboards.com @WoosterSurfboardsCR
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Location,
Location,
Location!
Long traveled by surfers for the quality waves, warm water, consistent and diverse surf, Costa Rican board builders are now establishing a world-class reputation. With easy access to the north and south of Central America, Costa Rica can be expected to experience an export boom as their reputation for quality spreads.
SurfCycled, Playa Grande Robert August & Che Boards, Tamarindo
Denga, Santa Teresa
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Carton, Jaco Wooster, Hermosa
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Robert August ROBERT AUGUST SURFBOARDS
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From his bay at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, August is known for handshaping high-quality Longboards and his 50 years of shaping experience.
grew up surfing ever since I was a kid. We lived in Seal Beach, California where the waves aren’t great, but it’s consistent and for a kid on a longboard it seemed like heaven. My father introduced me to surfing. He was in the South Bay when Duke Kahanamoku came through, famously spreading aloha through Southern California. There was a little surfing happening prior to Duke, but the fame and publicity that surrounded him, especially after winning gold in the Olympics, was an ignition point for surfing in Southern California. 4
The Duke would travel with this huge wooden surfboard. Imagine the hassle and the time involved. That made a huge impression on my father and all the other surfers in the South Bay. More than Duke’s surfing, his ambition to infuse Aloha spirit everywhere he went, that’s what left the impression on my father, and subsequently, me. My life of surf travel started in 1953 on a 17 hour flight to Hawai’i in a freezing cold prop plane. I brought my Greg Noll balsa board that he made in his garage in Manhattan. It had double, 10-ounce glass on both sides. USBlanks.com
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Bruce Brown filming Robert August on the North Shore, Circa 1962
We’d bring it on the plane with no bag nor anything. It was nearly indestructible, but I think that baggage handlers were a little more courteous then, too. We went surfing and my mom paddled in an outrigger canoe to take photos of me surfing. It was so different then. There was so little tourism compared to today, so few theatrics. Later as a teenager I remember the beach boys, like Rabbit Kekei, Squirly Caballo. They were all on the beach giving surf lessons, hula lessons, spreading the aloha spirit. I even got to spend a little time with Duke which was surreal, given my father’s earlier exposure to him. I had just finished The Endless Summer when they held the first Duke Invitational at Sunset. Because of my new exposure from the Endless Summer, they invited me to participate in the contest. Duke himself picked me up at the airport to give me a ride to my hotel. He was larger than life. I walked out of the terminal and there he was standing with a brand new, bright red, Lincoln Continental with a statue of himself on the hood. I was a good student and a fan of Bruce Brown’s films prior to The Endless Summer. As an A-student at Huntington Beach High School I was focused on becoming a dentist. Bruce called me on the phone and pitched the concept of The Endless Summer, but the schedule conflicted with my school agenda. The project sounded appealing but I didn’t think that it was practical at all until I told my parents about the opportunity. My dad was always adventurous and we had spent time surfing in Mexico in my youth. When I told him about the opportunity he said, “Forget about school. School will always be there. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Go!” Astonishingly, my teachers and principle all said the same thing. We were on The Endless Summer for 8 months. We went to a lot of countries that didn’t end up in the movie because we couldn’t get to the beach or the waves were flat. Arabia, Yemen, some really strange places. USBlanks.com
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When I returned I went straight back to school, California State University Long Beach. Having just experienced world travel, the classroom environment left me a bit disillusioned. I made an appointment to meet with my dentist to discuss the potential career. I just asked him, “Do you like what you do?” And he said, “I hate it.” It was before anesthesia. The drill was mechanical and dust was flying out of the patient’s mouth. People dreaded going to the dentist. It was torturous. And he said that he could never get people to pay their bills. You can’t repossess a filling, so people just didn’t pay. He was in his late 30s, still paying off all his equipment; completely chained to a job that he didn’t enjoy, working on patients who despised the experience, and who ultimately, often wouldn’t pay his bill. Poor, miserable and everyone hated him. But he said that he was happiest on the few moments during . . . August in the airport during The Endless Summer
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. . . the weekend when he was in a surf shop. He said it was the polar opposite of his work experience. The Endless Summer had international distribution and was playing all over the world, so I called Hap Jabobs, whose boards I rode in the film, and asked if I could work in his shop. He was thrilled to have me because of my affiliation with the film and I was enthusiastic to learn every detail, from retail to board building.
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It was a huge shop on PCH, right in Hermosa. And boy was my dentist right! I loved going to work every day. There were 3 shaping stalls in the back of the house. Pete Miller, Donald Takayama and Hap Jacobs were the shapers. That was my first experience with shaping and I’ve never grown weary of it. I’ve never once regretted not becoming a dentist.
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Witch’s Rock Surf Camp overlooking the waves of Tamarindo
COSTA RICAN EPILOGUE I was at Surf Expo in Florida when a gentleman came up to me and introduced himself as a developer who bought this big chunk of land in Costa Rica. He wasn’t a surfer, but some of his fishing buddies identified the location as one of the world class surf spots. He developed all the infrastructure for Tamarindo (paved roads, electricity, etc) and he needed tourists. So he pitched me the idea to come surf and film my travels here, hoping that it would attract surfing tourism. We came, and it was tough getting around, the roads were rough, but everywhere we went we scored unbelievable waves. I really fell in love with the country, the people, and the waves. Shortly thereafter, Bruce Brown was developing The Endless Summer 2 and they were scouting locations. I told them about Costa Rica and sure enough, that’s where we started the movie. The ensuing decades, and still today, far exceeded any dreams that that real estate developer would have ever hoped for. I’ve been here 25 years. I’m based out of Witch’s Rock Surf Camp here in Tamarindo. I shape boards here everyday. I’m fully accessible. Anyone can order a board in advance and I’ll shape it personally and have it ready when they arrive for their vacation. We even store boards here for clients. A lot of Americans come multiple times a year, so rather than traveling with their boards, we just store them and they have full access to their quiver anytime they visit. I host shaping lessons, where you can participate in the process of shaping a board. I hold demonstrations weekly. Yesterday this place was packed with people. I also give a lecture once a week on the history of surfing. It’s been really awesome. This town has been a great home for me and been a central meeting place for friends from all around the world to come and surf fun waves.
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Another thing that I always convey to customers is that the quality of boards we are building here is no different than the quality of boards we’re building at our Huntington Beach factory. We use the exact products; US Blanks foam, same resins, same fiberglass, and the exact same techniques that I’ve developed over 5 decades. People assume that “Costa Rican Made” indicates an inferior quality, but it just isn’t true. It may have been true for a time, but anyone who’s ridden one of my boards here will attest, we are putting surfers on world-class boards in world-class waves. Learn more at RobertAugust.com and @SurfRobertAugust Robert shapes out of Witch’s Rock Surf Camp WitchsRockSurfCamp.com USBlanks.com
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JUAN DIEGO EVANGELISTA
Mom, biochemist, and former competitive tandem surfer, Valerie Duprat, shares how board building has granted her repreive from daily life.
Juan Diego Evangelista CHE BOARDS & JD BOARDS
Full Service Factory with Rentable Shaping Bays Retail Space Open to the Public Known for all styles of surfboards, specializing in Longboards, colorwork, and high-quality glassing
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grew up near the beach, Mar del Plata in Argentina. My grandpa had tools, and I started working on bicycles and skateboards at the age of 7. I was always mechanically inclined. When I got involved in surfing I immediately was curious about dismantling a board to understand it’s construction. I ordered a longboard when I was 14 years old and I asked so many technical questions about the board that they offered me a job in the shop. I made fins for $7 a set. Over the course of 3 years I learned how to Hotwire EPS, I learned about wood veneer, glassing surfboards, it was a pretty comprehensive education because they were building a wide variety of board types. I came to Costa Rica for vacation in 2005 and I brought 21 boards. I found a crazy taxi driver who stacked all 21 boards on his taxi and drove me all the way from San Jose to Tamarindo, which is a 4 hour drive! Those boards funded my travels in Costa Rica and launched the next phase of my life. I sold them to provide the travel expenses I needed for that trip. But people really liked the boards and wanted custom designed shapes. Somebody committed to an actual order so the very next day I set up a tent and within a few days we started shaping and glassing boards. That was the beginning of Che Boards. 10
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Now years later, we are making all types of boards, EPS and PU, shortboards, SUPs, everything. We’re making Che Boards and I’ve also introduced a premium label called JD Boards. That allows me to order blanks with intricate stringer glue-ups and finish the boards with beautiful colorwork and gloss jobs. We’ve developed a good reputation for our glass jobs in this region and we’re now glassing boards for a lot of local builders; Robert August for the last 4 years. We also have shaping bays that we rent out to guest shapers who either live locally or are visiting internationally.
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built here are the same quality of what Tourists are realizing that the they have built at home, whether that’s California, Hawaii, Europe, or Australia. We’re using the exact same raw materials and we’ve been building boards for decades now, working alongside iconic shapers from around the world. That’s what we aim to communicate. And customers have given us feedback that validates this idea. Surfers, notoriously, hate traveling with surfboards. It’s a hassle to travel with boardbags, especially longboards. And it’s expensive.
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Having a board built here in , from first-quality raw materials, to worldclass specifications is the perfect solution to the hassle of flying with boards. Also, our boards are built for these specific waves.
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I’ve begun leasing boards to customers. They’ll pre-order a brand new board, ride it for the 2 weeks that they are here, sell it back to me, and then I sell the board slightly used. The following year, they do the same thing. With this model, customers always have access to a wide variety of slightly used boards, new boards off the rack, or custom built new surfboards. Everyone wins and I get to continue to evolve my craft. We’ve been doing this for 3 years or so, and now we’re really seeing this program reap rewards. Learn more at CheBoards.com and @CheBoards
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EDWIN VILLALOBOS
Edwin Villalobos CARTON SURFBOARDS
Full Service Factory Retail Space Open to the Public Known for Shortboards and alternative Shortboards, colorwork, and glassing. 14
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grew up on Boca Baranca in Punta Reina, one of the first waves surfed in Costa Rica in the 70s, because it was so close to the airport and it was a heavily touristed area. My dad built shrimp boats and he’d take me to work with him when I was very young. It was there that I learned about design, hydrodynamic principles and also how to use tools and work with my hands. As I developed as a surfer it was a natural progression to explore board building. Because of my experience working with fiberglass and resin for boats, I was doing a lot of . . . USBlanks.com
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surfboard repairs. Shaping boards was tough because it was difficult to get a consistent supply of blanks and it was expensive. In 1994 a Canadian boat captain bought a board from me for $280. That money allowed me to build 5 boards and that was the beginning of Carton Surfboards. I came to Jaco in 1996 to surf and I loved the town and the waves. There are a couple heavy beach breaks so there were a lot of broken boards and not a lot of surfboard shapers around, so it made sense to relocate my business here. I helped accommodate the aerial progression that was happening by staying USBlanks.com
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current with modern design evolution and supplying boards to local rippers and getting constant feedback. In the late 90s I had increased production and was selling surfboards through retail shops. My focus was on growing my business, but I had lost sight of the quality of the boards. Andy Irons came to Jaco and I repaired a few of his boards. Seeing the quality and craftsmanship of those boards was a pivotal moment for me. It reset my focus on quality.
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Seeing how well Andy surfed those boards and knowing that his surfing would be hindered by an inferior surfboard inspired me to elevate the quality of my craftsmanship. I cancelled all my retail relationships and I reduced my production to focus on custom boards for customers that I worked with on a personal basis. It was an intentional decision to develop my craft as a shaper rather than develop my business. In the following years I’ve been fortunate to spend time in California every year. I’ve worked with Midget Smith in San Diego, Randy Walker from Pearson Arrow, and I’ve developed a close working relationship with Timmy Patterson.
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All of those experiences have not only improved my craft, but they’ve given me a much better understanding of business operations, how to anticipate market trends, and allowed me to run a much better business. I used to feel somewhat isolated in Costa Rica but now everything and everyone is much more accessible. Perhaps largely due to the Internet, we have a global market, we see the same tourists yearly or sometimes multiple times a year, then I’m in California each year. It’s great. The entire world feels like a much smaller community now.
Learn more at CartonSurfboards and follow @CartonSurfboards
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MARK WOOSTER
Mark Wooster
WOOSTER SURFBOARDS / PYZEL SURFBOARDS
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Full Service Factory Licensee for Pyzel Surfboards Known for High-Permormance Shortboards
grew up in Florida and traveled to Costa Rica to surf throughout my whole life. I’d always shape a few boards while I was here but it was always difficult to get quality raw materials so I didn’t really consider living here full-time until about 10 years ago. I had worked with Matt Biolos in the US and he wanted to expand his production to Central America, so I helped him do that and used it as an opportunity to transition my life here. Jobs here are a little hard to find, but entrepreneurs tend to do well. As a board builder I was able to find my niche and make enough of a living to support a family. The surf industry in this country has really developed in the last 5 years. A decade ago it was still third-world, but now it feels like the Huntington Beach of Central America, with lots of small factories producing really good quality boards and tourists seeking out locally made boards. It’s been really cool to be a part of that development. Because we lacked adequate distribution until recently, I used to import containers of foam, which was a tremendous capital outlay and required longterm planning for board designs and capital management. Having Surfoam Central America stock those things allows me to more effectively run my business, focus on design and customer relationships, and also allows me to make quick pivots and faster business decisions without worrying about capital tied up in inventory, etc. 18
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Glassing was always a quality issue here, too, up until recently. Customers would be happy with their board when they purchased it, but they’d fall apart, not necessarily with my boards, but with Costa Rican built boards in general. This climate creates unique challenges for glassing. It’s hard to glass a board when it’s 95% humidity. Glassers were eager to meet fast production schedules so they’d rush glass jobs and the boards would never fully harden. Customers would get soft boards that
they’d go surf in these thumping beach breaks and, of course, inevitably, the boards would break. It created a stigma of poor craftsmanship that we’re redefining today. We recently built our own glassing facility and now we are able to maintain a level of quality control that is on par with anywhere in the world. Now, we glass the bottom, wait a day. Glass the top, wait a day. Hot coat it, wait a day. There are no rushed glass jobs here. Quality is the new focus. I brought a glasser here from Santa Cruz, Randy. He worked for Stretch and Pearson Arrow, but even he had to relearn the process and adapt it to this climate. Being a glasser here requires an element of weather forecasting. USBlanks.com
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You have to anticipate when it’ll rain and perhaps decide to wait to glass the board until the weather dries up. We’ve been able to assemble a team of guys who come from a lineage of board builders, which previously was impossible, because it’s a developing region. I’m content being an underground brand, making enough boards to make a living, and then supplementing that with a larger brand. I’m building all the Pyzel’s for Central America, using John’s files to cut the boards and then finishing them to his specification. .
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It’s a great relationship, where he is able to trust our quality control, we’re able to build plenty of boards, and his team manages all the marketing and distribution. And of course, John John Florence wins world titles riding them. With every single board I make, my goal is to redefine the perception of Costa Rican made surfboards, from that of third-world quality to reality. And the reality is, we’re making world-class surfboards from the same raw materials that they are made in California, Hawaii, Florida. There are sectors of the Costa Rican economy that do produce poor quality craftsmanship, but there’s also some sectors that we lead the world in. Look at our farming of coffee. Starbucks sources a huge amount of their coffee from Costa Rica. We’re now establishing ourselves as world-class surfboard manufactures that are also perfectly positioned, geographically and economically, to supply the rest of Central and even South America with surfboards.
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Furthermore, there’s absolutely no reason to travel with surfboards to Costa Rica. You wouldn’t bring your California groveler to Hawaii in the wintertime. You’d order an Arakawa or a Tokoro. My boards are made from first-quality materials and they are designed for Costa Rican waves. Sunny Garcia came here last year and I made him a batch of boards. He went home to Hawaii and got the cover shot on a Hawaiian magazine on one of those boards; a board made in Costa Rican. That’s never happened before. So with little achievements like that, perception will slowly change. I used to be a sales manager for Channel Islands in the 80s and oversaw all of United States. I learned from Al (Merrick) about how to protect a brand’s image and how to elevate customer’s perception so that it matches the quality of the product. Those lessons for me resonate now more than ever. Sometimes it may have fallen on deaf ears for me 30 years ago, but I understand it now.
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Kyle Garson shot by Jennifer Lopez
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The other great thing about purchasing made surfboards is that it stimulates the local economy beyond the surf industry. When I earn money from a surfboard, I spend it to pay the teacher who teaches my daughter. I spend it at the grocery store. Tourism has helped Costa Rica to grow in very positive ways in recent decades and supporting local board builders is just an extension of that. I know I’m not going to get rich making surfboards, I’ve been in the this business for 30 years. I have no delusions about that. But I will catch a lot of waves and help others do the same. Learn more at WoosterSurfboards.com and follow @WoosterSurfboardCR
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MARCELO MATOS
Marcelo Matos SURFCYCLED ALL OCEAN SURFBOARDS
Matos Surf Shops, in Tamarindo & Playa Grande.
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y primary experiences at the ocean really informed the rest of my entire life. I had no idea at the time, but my limited access to information and raw material was a blessing and it stimulated my creativity and resourcefulness. When I was growing up in Uruguay, we were so far removed from any “surf industry” or surfboard builders. We had seen surfing and we had a crude understanding of boat construction, but we didn’t really have access to materials. We did, however, spend tons of time at the beach and, of course, children are very creative so it wasn’t long until we figured out how to ride waves. We once made a skim board out of the top of a wine barrel. We just sanded the bottom edges to make it glide and prevent it from catching on the sand. USBlanks.com
MARCELO MATOS We’d often find styrofoam on the beach. It would wash up, perhaps from bobbers on fishing nets, or ice chest, or who knows where. We had the idea to collect it and glue it all together to build a surfboard blank. During the months long process of doing this, I sent a letter to a surfboard shaper in Florida who’s address I’d found in a surf magazine. I explained what I was doing with the foam blank and asked him a few basic questions about surfboard construction. 5 months later I received a letter back. He gave me his phone number and offered to answer any questions over the phone. It was very generous of him, but I didn’t have money to make a long distance phone call! I knew a woman in town who had a telephone so I negotiated a deal to mow her lawn for 1 year in exchange for a 5 minute phone call! Then, I had to find a translator to translate my phone conversation! Forget about the improvising required to shape that board, it required ingenuity just to orchestrate this phone call! Anyway, I finally got the shaper on the phone and he did provide a good general outline for the process of shaping and glassing the board, but it’s impossible to convey everything in a 5 minute conversation. Further, we didn’t really have access to the materials and the tools that he was talking about. Plus, some things got lost in translation. For example, he referred to fiberglass cloth simply as “cloth”. We understood that to mean “cloth”, like what a t-shirt is made from. So we cut up old t-shirts and covered the shaped foam blank in t-shirts then covered the t-shirts in resin! USBlanks.com
But he also didn’t specify to use epoxy resin on the EPS foam. So when we poured the polyester resin, it melted the EPS! I did, however, notice that it didn’t melt the glue that was holding the foam together, so we made another blank, covered it in t-shirts, then we did an entire layer of glue, to seal the blank. We poured the resin over the glue and that hardened properly. We knew that some surfers used 1 fin, some 2, some 3, and we’d even seen 4. So we just assumed that more was better. We put 6 fins on that board, all lined up, side-by-side. But we didn’t adhere the fins properly, so it never really ever had all 6 fins in at once. We also used a shower mat for traction, and then eventually candle wax. That board was an absolute disaster! It was however, the impetus for SurfCycled. Once I was getting settled in here in Costa Rica, there were always so many broken or damaged boards, just laying around unused. I remember reading that, in the 60s and 70s as surfing tran-
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sitioned out of the longboard era, nearly every famous shaper told stories about striping down old longboards to make shorter, more maneuverable boards. I thought, why aren’t people doing that today? We have, seemingly, endless inventory of discarded boards, and modern design and surfing allows for smaller and smaller surfboards to be ridden; a 6’0” can be shaped down into a 5’5”, for example.
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SURFCYCLED
Our objective with is to extend the lifespan of the products and materials that we generate as consumers. These are boards that often end up in the trash, but often, it’s just the exterior layers that are damaged, or sometimes, just yellowed. We’ve found that with some simple re-shaping and some fresh fiberglass and resin, our SurfCycled boards have incredible pop and life, the same as a brand new board.
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Matos on his 4’10” SurfCycled MP Model
The other incredible discovery through this improvisation is that we’ve pushed preconceived design barriers. This tiny little 4’10” seemed unsurfable when we built it. Everyone thought it too small, too fat, but it works incredibly! And I’m not the only who thinks so. It’s become a community board. Everyone rides it and we’ve had customers actually order custom boards, attempting to recreate it. I think that some of the magic in SurfCycled comes from the fact that these boards have had previous lives. They are reincarnated and the good karma from the environment has provided some really memorable boards and surf experiences. Marcelo Matos’ boards are available through his 2 surf shops, in Playa Grande and Tamarindo. Learn more at MatosSurfShop.com, SurfCycled.com and @SurfCycled @MatosSurfShop
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DENIS GALIOTO
Denis Galioto DENGA SURFBOARDS
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Full Service Factory and Retail Shop Known for high-performance Shortboards and Fish
grew up surfing in Cefalu, Sicily. We only have windswell, so not real waves, but it’s a beautiful location and one of the most consistent surf spots in Sicily. I was a professional motocross racer, but winding down my career and looking for a replacement sport that would be more gentle on my body. I took up windsurfing and my favorite part was riding the little windswell waves. That’s how I found my way into surfing. 26
We didn’t have access to proper surfboards in Sicily, so I made one myself, built from 4 pieces of styrofoam glued together with fiberglass and resin that I got at marine yard. I remember basing it off surfboards I had seen on Baywatch. Of course it turned out horribly, but as soon as I put it in the water, everyone wanted one. Because Sicily is an island and so much of our life revolves around the sea, everyone had a fascination with riding waves. There was tremendous demand for surfboards, but virtually zero supply. I met a surfer from Rome . . . USBlanks.com
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Claudio Mazzone by Mario Rubbino and he invited me to come visit a proper surfboard factory in Rome. That experience gave me a much better appreciation and understanding for what is involved in both design and construction. I was able to procure some materials and build a few boards back in Sicily. That was my introduction to board building, but again, the waves are so marginal there, that it wasn’t long until I was traveling in search of better surf. I came to Costa Rica in 1997 on vacation. The waves were so diverse and so consistently good, that I came back every year. I fell in love with people, the climate. In 2002 I decided to buy this land in Santa Teresa and make my dreams come true. At the time, there were no shapers in this area and hardly any boards available. Santa Teresa has become more trendy and more heavily touristed, but in 2002 it was a lot less accessible. USBlanks.com
The original business concept was humble, we just built a little surf shop and a skate bowl with my living space on the property. We had so little business in those first few years, but I developed a reputation for doing quality ding repairs, and we mostly sold leashes, wax and accessories. There were also a lot of tourists who wanted to rent surfboards, but they were actually pretty good surfers. The waves right in front of my shop are good and it gets hollow so you can’t really send a customer out on a soft-top longboard, so I began shaping high-performance rental boards. I made 3 basic models, that would fit a wide range of needs, but had high-performance contours and design characteristics and then I’d finish them with heavy cloth and glass. This rental program became hugely popular and has been largely responsible for the success of my business. 27
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During the last 15 years, and especially the last 5 years, tourism has increased dramatically, and so has new board sales. I’m now building about 1,500 per year. We have a lot of demand from retailers throughout Costa Rica and Central America, but keep all my Denga label surfboards here and make them exclusively available through this shop. Santa Teresa is such a unique and beautiful part of Costa Rica, I want to share it with everyone and create a draw or attraction for surfers to come here. I want Denga Surfboards to be synonymous with the waves of Santa Teresa. Learn more at DengaSurf.com
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All of our Costa Rican relationship are fostered through the hard work and dedication of Curtis and Sharon Custer of Surfoam Central America. We began our partnership in 2013 and over the course of the past 4 years, we’ve seen Surfoam Central America supply Costa Rican board builders with a level of consistency, reliability and service that rivals our own standards of excellence. Supplying every board builder’s need from resin and cloth to tools, foam, fins, leashes and wax, Surfoam Central America has established fast and efficient distribution through the entire country from their headquarters in Tamarindo.
US Blanks’ necessity for hard-working, detail-oriented, service-conscious distribution partners is paramount to getting our foam to shapers around the world. We cannot overstate our gratitude for Surfoam Central America in helping us achieve this goal and in helping surfers in Costa Rica execute their goals.
Curtis’s military background is an unlikely, yet perfect qualification for distributing board building supplies. His organizational planning, tactical precision, and dogged execution are key factors in the success of Surfoam Central America. Sharon’s experience as an Executive in corporate America provides the perfect compliment for ensuring that fine details are always accounted for.
Address: Local #6, Commercial Plaza Palmas de Tamarindo, Villarreal, 50309, Costa Rica Phone: + 506 8447-1283 Email: info@surfoamcentralamerica.com
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SurfoamCentralAmerica.com USBlanks.com
SPECIAL THANKS In addition to Surfoam Central America, we’d like to thank the people who helped us find accomdations and waves while in Costa Rica.
CABINAS RANCHO GRANDE Highway 34 Playa Hermosa, Jaco +506 26437023 Facebook.com/Cabinas-Rancho-Grande WITCH’S ROCK SURF CAMP Playa Tamarindo, 152 Provincia de Guanacaste Tamarindo, 50309 (888) 318-7873 WitchsRockSurfCamp.com
PUEBLO DORADO SURF HOTEL 1100 Camino Principal, Tamarindo +506 2653 0008 PuebloDorado.com RITMO TROPICAL HOTEL 100 meters left of the Mal Pais & Santa Teresa crossroads. Santa Teresa +506 2640 0174 HotelRitmoTropical.com
REAL SURF TRIPS Playa Negra & Playa Avellana RealSurfTrips.com USBlanks.com
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