Building a custom board, Selling the Laird.

If anyone in Maui wants to buy a Laird, I’m selling mine. It will be November before I get back, and while I think it’s a great board for beginners, and Teddy has amply demonstrated that it surfs great in the right hands, I prefer the JL 11er.  As regular readers might recall, I bought this board with a blemish (a small fracture near the nose) and I managed to put another ding on while loading it. I’d get them fixed, but I think it makes more sense for people to be able to see the actual condition of the board and then make it perfect themselves. The Ding King is handy and superb at making boards better than new.

It doesn’t make sense to sell this to anyone on the mainland–the shipping cost is prohibitive.

I also put a deck pad on it. One of the self-stick Pohaku Beach Boy pads. The shape isn’t as pleasing as the Ding King pad on my JL 11′ 7″, but it works great.  So I’ve got about $1650 into the board and I’ll sell it for $1500. I’ve seen flogged JL 11er’s selling for more than they cost new.  The way shipments seem to be going there won’t be any new boards available anywhere until late may. So that’s a decent price for a lightly used board.

I’m also having a custom board built. I asked Jimmy Lewis to do one for me, but he’s past his nose in work, so I’m working with someone else. Once all the details are hashed out I’ll tell all here, but for now there are some aspects that are a bit secret. Basically the board will resemble the JL 11er with some changes I think will suit me. It will be about 11’6″ long and 29″ wide with a little more nose rocker. I suspect you can see where I’m going here. A bit more of an intermediate board that might surf a little better.  Soft rails like the 11er, but perhaps a tiny bit more flat in the back. We’ll see. Of course it will have a mast track, a carrying slot, and hard points to mount a carry net in the front and a bungee across the middle for holding a paddle.