Talking Surfboard Designs with Donald Takayama
The Hawaiian model – Coming Soon! We’ll have 9’2, 9’4, and 9’6 coming in. First time hearing about this model? Not many know about it, so read on to find out a little more!
TALKING BOARD DESIGN WITH DONALD TAKAYAMA
Donald Takayama has been a legend of our sport for decades, enjoying a success-ful competitive career and a second career as an influential shaper. When we lost him half a decade ago, we lost one of surfing’s greats. His influence both on a surfboard and behind a planer can never be fully quantified. He surely touched thousands of lives throughout his lifetime. I was fortunate enough to be one of those people. The time I spent chatting with Donald made for some of my favorite memories and taught me so much about surfing and surfboards in particular.
A few years before Takayama passed away, I had an opportunity to chat with him about board designs. At the time, his In-the-Pink model was one of my favorites. In-the-Pink is a high-performance nose-rider that is probably the most popular model in Takayama’s range, and it definitely worked for me.
However, on bigger, windy days, I found that the nose would sometimes get caught in the chop. I mentioned this to Donald and he decided to put together a new model. This sort of bridged the gap between the In-the-Pink and DT-2 (which was his all-rounder model).
Donald Takayama ended up scaling down the outline of the In-the-Pink model, and integrated some aspects of the DT-2, creating a model that did exactly what I’d hoped for! We ended up calling it the “Hawaiian,” named after our shop, Hawaiian South Shore.
That was one of my favorite boards, shaped by one of my favorite surfer/shapers. The opportunity to spend time with our heroes, and the people who shape the boards we develop relationships with, is what sets surfing apart as such a unique and special “sport.” For every wave we ride throughout our surfing lives, we have people like Takayama to thank.