On June 20th, 2015, 66 people in Huntington Beach broke the world record for most people riding a surfboard at once. We did it on the biggest Surfboard in the world with a 12 second ride. Weighing in at 1350 pounds, 42′ long and 16″ thick, I managed to win a spot on this monster through an Instagram contest.
Nev Hyman, founder of Firewire Surfboards, sent the CAD design of Pro Surfer Michel Bourez’s Quad Shortboard to some amazing boat makers/waterman at Rhode Island’s mouldCAM and Westerly Marine in Santa Ana. They scaled the design up 7.5 times bigger than the original board. All of the board’s dimensions had to stay in the same aspect ratios for the world record to be broken. Then they painted the board as a replica of Huntington’s very own Brett Simpson.
Our mission was to top the old record, set by Nev and his pals in Queensland Australia in 2005. Their board was 39 feet, managing to float 47 surfers. In 2006 the same board was brought to Huntington during the US Open of Surfing, piling on 60 surfers like sardines for what was supposed to be a new world record. The only problem was nobody called Guinness World Records. This time nothing was left to chance and the Guiness judge was standing in the waves to count each surfer as we lined up to climb on the board.
