New Hydro V Fish for Ben

Grain Surfboards / Glenmorangie Beyond the Cask

It was an honour to represent Mike LaVecchia and Grain Surfboards from York in Maine ,USA this week in Sydney at the North Bondi surf club.Grain were given the challenge of building some bespoke wooden boards from the staves of the whisky barrells, hence "beyond the cask". Given that all the staves of the barrells have curves on every face it was not easy to extract some flat timber to cut the frames from. But the boys were up to the task and managed to produce all the frame components from the White Oak from the barrels.

 The 7 foot boards designed with input from Layne Beachley

Whisky and Wood was the theme for the day

 A beautiful day at North Bondi

Yes I learnt all about how this great whisky comes together after partaking in 3 whisky tasting master classes with Brendon the master distiller from Scotland.

 These two took a couple of the boards for a few sweet waves on the day

 A number of the guests / bar tenders and restaurant owners had a surf lesson to get in the mood.

Then it was my turn to explain the workings of building a wooden board using the Grain method of frames and bead and cove rail build out.

It was interesting that the grandfather of framed wooden boards , namely a Tom Blake style toothpick was hanging up above the bar.

Yep they even had a fair dinkum Shark Alarm mounted

Brendon from Glenmorangie Whisky was such a great guy and made the day fun.

Gold Coast 600 2018

The race winner was awarded one of these boards. I got the chicken dinner. Great day in a coporate box even when the storm came. You know it will rain, yet no one else had a brolly.