Kelly Slater is a fan of the FRK Swallow, a board made for waves that won’t kill you. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Kelly Slater is at a point in his career where he probably doesn’t need to surf small waves. He’s spent most of his life traveling the planet to surf the best waves on the best days, so one would imagine that small waves don’t hold the same interest for him as they might for the surfer who is just trying to get in the water for an hour before work. But still, Kelly Slater is not more powerful than Mother Nature, and every now and again he does indeed surf small waves. It’s just that when he does it, he makes them look… not small.
Kelly has long been interested in surfboard design, and with the help of Dan Mann, the duo has created a handful of boards meant for smaller waves. The FRK Swallow is one of them. In this video, Slater rides a stock 5’9″ for the first time at Diamond Head on O’ahu’s South Shore.
“The FRK Swallow was crafted to unlock performance in waves five-foot and under,” the Firewire team wrote. “Dan Mann designed the FRK Swallow to be more versatile in its performance characteristics than any other FRK shape that came before it.”
There are a few tweaks to the original design. As well as the swallow tail, Mann worked with Slater to change how the volume is distributed through the board. It’s a little more under the surfer’s feet now, and they tried to “amplify the effect of the outline in the back third of the board against all-new rocker curves – both down the shape’s centerline and on its rails.”
Because of those tweaks, the FRK Swallow is meant to create speed when there isn’t much speed to be found. That, however, generally comes at the expense of dialing down the performance on rail, but Mann and Slater wanted to find a happy medium.
“Amongst the Slater Designs team, the unanimous feedback has been that the FRK Swallow feels better during downcarves and in fin releases than any other Slater Designs shape,” Firewire said.
