Channel Islands Happy Spine Tek Futures Tri Fin Surfboard

Surf better. Be happy. That's the message of Channel Islands' latest creation, the Happy, designed to give surfers "the freedom to easily go wherever their mind takes them". We've not been this excited about a good old high-performance thruster in a while!

Features:

• Shaper: Britt Merrick
• Construction: Spine-Tek (stringerless EPS blank with composite "spine" and epoxy resin). The feedback on these has been unanimous, from CI team riders and Surfdome customers alike: amazing feel and flex, and reliable performance in all conditions (i.e. without the chattery feel epoxies often have in big and/or choppy surf).
• Outline: Classic performance shortboard shape
• Tail: Narrow-ish squash
• Rails: Refined and responsive
• Rocker: Pretty continuous curve, with relaxed entry and aggressive kick out the tail.
• Concave: Single under the front foot and double between the fins, going flat out the tail
• Fin System: Futures
• Fin Set-Up: Tri-fin
• Level One ECOBOARD: Certified by Sustainable Surf
• Suitable Conditions: Anything from chest-high to double overhead. Goes best in good surf, although the Spine-Tek construction should help you out in smaller waves
• Rider Ability: A great board for any intermediate surfer upwards. The Happy's being heralded as a high-performance sled for the everyman/woman!

Dimensions:

Britt Merrick says:

“We designed this new shortboard for Dane, but now the whole team is riding it. We’re calling it the Happy, because when people surf better, it tends to make them happy. And just about everyone has felt improvement with this board.”

Stab says:

“Some boards just work. The Happy is one of them. […] From the first wave I felt an effortless connection […]. There was no learning curve with the Happy. No need to adjust my stance, line, or general approach to the wave. The Happy did exactly what I wanted with limited backtalk. It's a submissive surfboard in the very best sense.”

We say:

Decades of surf history and shaping expertise condensed into a classic high-performance thruster, one that incorporates all of the common-sense developments (friendlier rocker, dimensions, etc.) of the last 10+ years.

SPINE-TEK:

Developed by Shapers Australia in collaboration with Clayton Nienaber (of Clayton Surfboards), then co-opted by Channel Islands at the request of their team riders, Spine-Tek construction consists a stringerless EPS blank embedded with a unique composite spine and then glassed with epoxy resin. That combination of the EPS foam and the composite material in the spine results in an amazing flex pattern, which (according to a growing number of surfers) surpasses that of standard PU. Not only do you get heaps of pop/spring/liveliness in smaller surf, but also the requisite stiffness when it picks up, so the standard criticism of epoxies (good when it’s small, too light and chattery when it’s big) doesn’t apply. Exclusive to Channel Islands and Clayton Surfboards.