North Shore Surfboard Testing With Britt Merrick And The Channel Islands Team
A month out from the start of the 2024 WSL Championship Tour and it’s time to get those boards dialed. Channel Islands Surfboards’ Britt Merrick and Global Team Manager Brent Power got their band of team riders together on the North Shore this December to put the latest designs through the paces and get everything fine tuned in time for the Pipe Pro at the end of January.
This year Channel Islands will support six Championship Tour surfer: Joao Chianca, Barron Mamiya, Lakey Peterson, Imaikalani DeVault, Alyssa Spencer and Matt MacGillivray. All of the surfers have different styles and approaches, but one thing they have in common are the conditions they’ll be competing in this year. Starting with the first two events in Hawaii, there are number of world-class lineups on the calendar, including Cloudbreak in Fiji.
“It’s a lot of good wave boards,” surmises Merrick.
The high-performance models the team have been testing include the CI Pro, 2.Pro and Happy Traveler.
We’ve been testing new construction, our eco carbon tech, ECT. It seems to work really good in Hawaii. It seems to have this flex pattern that just translates well over here. It absorbs a lot of the bumps that are in the waves over here. It seems like that construction sits in the water a little more steady, which you need in places like this,” describes Merrick.
Merrick and his team of shapers and glassers in their California factory are going to be busy from now all the way until the first horn of the season blows, but no doubt the surfers are going to have what they need under their feet when the time comes.
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With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.