Kelly Slater has a long history with surfboard design. He’s not a guy who’s prone to getting stuck in a rut, unless that rut includes winning world titles. Sure, he might be at least partially responsible for making a million surfers in the ’90s and 2000s believe that they should be surfing on surfboard that looks like an elf shoe made of extremely thin paper, but you know… live and learn, or whatever.
Now, he’s got some new-ish stuff with Firewire: his I-Bolic quiver in FRK and FRK+. What, exactly is FRK, you ask? Well, according to Kelly, it used to be RFK — Rocker For Kelly — but the marketing team thought RFK looked weird. So now it’s FRK. For Rocker Kelly. In the words of the great Joe Dirt, “he’s a rocker, through and through.”
Now, you would be forgiven for being a little confused about the many and varied materials that are going into surfboards these days. I-Bolic is another one, with a name that the same marketing team likely came up with. Instead of using a standard stringer, I-Bolic surfboards uses a high-density foam. The I is a nod to the shape of an I-beam, which, according to many buildings around the world, is a strong shape. The deck skin is a little different too. It’s quite a bit tougher than plain old fiberglass that a pinky toe could dent.
“These boards last forever,” says Kelly. “I never squish the deck when I have one of these out of the factory.”
