In June of 2015 Huntington Beach notched another accomplishment in its claim as Surf City USA. 66 people climbed onto one 42-foot board to break the record for the ultimate party wave ridden on a single, massive piece of foam. Now, more than six months later, that same board has a permanent home in Huntington Beach as a monument to some of the weirdest surf history ever.
Living on a mount above Huntington Beach’s International Surfing Museum the board can be taken down and waxed up for another ride should Surf City ever need to defend their World record. In fact, with holed strong enough to be mounted on steel beams, the board can easily be taken down and out into the ocean again in about an hour. But even if the thing never moves from its new home it already has one helluva story. According to SurfcityUSA.com “The design is based on Australian surfboard shaper Nev Hyman’s schematics, while Orange County boat builder Westerly Marine and Rhode Island’s mouldCAM along with local surf industry shapers are collaborating.” It was outlined as a true shortboard (if a 42-foot long board can be classified as such) with logos and details modeled after one of Brett Simpson’s boards, Mr. Huntington Beach himself. And any board that had to be outsourced to the East Coast with a boat builder pitching in is probably going to stand alone as “special” for quite a while anyway. Aside from all that, the board will stand as a monument to the 66 surfers who pulled into one wave next to the famous Huntington Beach Pier and set a World record the entire city can lay claim to. The whole thing even got its own movie, “The Biggest Board: Surf City USA’s Epic Ride,” where New York cinematographer Nick Bowser documented everything from sanding that first massive blank to it’s record-breaking wave.
How many boards do you own with that many stories to tell and only one wave under their belt?
