4/10/2023 0 Comments Akila aipa surfboards![]() The board is part of a seven-board quiver Akila made Kelly earlier this year. It lit a little candle of hope in the deep dark cave of Kelly’s retirement year.” Kelly and the turn of the day at Keramas on his Akila Aipa-shaped five eight. You don’t get these sorta bargains or how do they say it now, opportunities, very often.Īkila Aipa, a former pro surfer and the son of the great Hawaiian shaper Ben Aipa, will build for you, and according to your specific dimensions, a version of the five-eight squash-tail Kelly Slater used to beat hell out of Keramas two days ago.Īs our tour correspondent reported, “Kelly leant back into a savage back foot heavy layback hook. Whether you believe our home planet is in fact shaped like a big pancake that foolhardy sailors might fall off the edge of, or whether you take the more widely accepted view that in fact our blue and green spinning spaceship is actually ellipsoid, Akila Aipa and Slater Designs have teamed up to create a beauty of a surfboard, to unite us all under the umbrella of shared stoke.Tell me this ain't a bargain in a world of thousand-dollar boards. Overall, the FE represents a new generation of shape blending the speed and liberty of a twin with the sharpness and reliability of a high performance thruster. An aerospace composite springer controls the flex, meaning you get crisp turns and a lively feel from nose to tail. In terms of construction, Slater Designs’ LFT (Linear Flex Technology) delivers incredible lightness with a flex pattern that resembles tradition PU. ![]() In terms of volume, the recommendation from Akila is to surf the Flat Earth one or two litres up from what you usually ride. Rails are pretty medium with a slightly lower apex, keeping the Flat Earth feeling alive and reliable through turns. A slight vee up in nose gives way to a slight single to double concave, all pretty very familiar in conventional performance boards, before transitioning into vee again out the back of the tail. While many shapes in the Slater Designs/Firewire range feature radical, pronounced bottom contours, everything on the Flat Earth is much more mellow and conventional. The Flat Earth’s rocker pattern is pretty medium throughout nothing particularly extreme, but enough to keep the board feeling lively and to deal with steep drop and critical sections. Meanwhile, a slightly wider outline through the centre of the board gives way to a high performance, squash tail by the way of pronounced wings in front of the fins. Up front, with a relatively narrow nose outline for a twin, the outline isn’t a long way from a SciFi nose, in fact, the FE both looks and feels like regular shortboard when paddling. The Flat Earth outline features a combination of nice curves that for the most part, resemble a high performance shape. But if you are coming from thruster-only background, or conditions are heavier and you want that extra reliability, the option is there for you. “It can be ridden with the trailer fin” he says, “but I definitely prefer it as a twin.” If you’re already surfing twins, you’ll almost certainly prefer this set up. The general feedback is that most folk prefer surfing the Flat Earth as twins, as echoed by Akila himself. The Flat Earth is a twin that can also be ridden with a trailer, with the centre fin box provided for those that do decide they want to surf with a third fin. And while Akila’s boards have only really been previously available in a select locations, this collab with Slater Designs/Firewire has allowed his boards to become available for surfers all over the world great news for surfers everywhere. Not a step down, not a board for slop, while the FE will go well in small waves, it’ll really shine in whatever steep and critical sections you want to take it.Īkila Aipa, son of legendary Hawaiian shaper Ben Aipa, has been on the twin fin program long before its most recent reflowering, championing the extra speed and lack of drag provided by twins, before their recent resurgence on the scene. ![]() While twin fins are generally regarded as step down boards for smaller, softer days, make no mistake about it, the Flat Earth is built to perform. If you surf waves from 2ft to overhead, if you like going fast and love the ease and flow of a twin feel, you’ll love the Flat Earth. A performance twin fin surfboard designed to surf in conditions an everyday high performance thruster thrives in, Hawaiian shaper Akila Aipa designed this board with performance tune ups from 11 x World Champ Kelly Slater, to develop an electrifyingly fast, ultra responsive surfboard.
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