Every now and then, you come across somebody in the lineup that simply makes your jaw drop. It was a moment exactly like this when I first laid eyes on Juan Hernandez, A.K.A Zancudo, one evening in El Salvador. Understandably, it wasn’t long before I decided to document his incredible surfing.
The standup bodyboarding community is seemingly comprised of lone rangers, just barely in existence and almost entirely unknown to the wider populace. I knew I had stumbled across a rare sight. However, beyond the mere ability to ride a bodyboard standing up, he had a style all of its own completeness. The man rips.
Rail to Rail is a short film about how Zancudo came to be what he is today and why he pursues the art of surfing upright on a bodyboard. He grew up riding borrowed bodyboards, but he didn’t ride them quite like everybody else. In a small village of El Salvador, Rail to Rail is the story of one surfer equipped with little more than a bodyboard and his own ingenuity, surfing the way he always wanted.
I’m glad that there are people out there who tread their own path and push different boundaries. I love that surfing can be done in so many ways on all kinds of craft. This is Juan Hernandez showing us just one of those ways.
Rail to Rail from Joel Sharpe on Vimeo.
