The idea of the so-called “quiver-killer,” a surfboard suited for most conditions, has been around for a while. A board that works in knee-high slop and barreling, head-high runners. One board to rule them all, as it were. Torren Martyn, a guy who does a whole lot of surf travel, is a person who would definitely benefit from such a thing, so he got together with shaper Simon Jones to see what they could come up with.
“Shaper Simon Jones had met a fellow surfer who had been riding a bike across Australia with a surfboard in tow,” Need Essentials wrote. “With room for only one board, the choice had to be made — what would suffice for small north coast point breaks, a variety of beach breaks, reefs, and large surf?”
Jones and Martyn came up with something pretty wild: a mid-length channel bottom keel twin. Torren Martyn, of course, is not your average surfer. He’s one of the most stylish surfers in the world. A guy who makes the impossible look easy. But that mid-length changed Martyn’s life.
“It was the first mid-length I ever surfed,” he remembered. “At the time, I was surfing boards all sub-six foot. I can confidently say it changed surfing — my experience of surfing at the time.”
In the years since, they’ve been working on a variety of boards to fill the gap between six and eight feet in length. But that original board, after being well-loved and well-used, ended up at one of Martyn’s friend’s houses, where it languished in the basement, all but forgotten.
“It disappeared for about four or five years,” Martyn said. “I didn’t know where it was, but I recently — nearly a year ago — got it back.”
If you’ve been following Torren’s carrer, you might’ve seen that surfboard in use back in 2017 at J-Bay. The footage from that old session can be seen in the video below. So when Martyn found it again, he knew he needed to blow off the dust, throw a bit of wax on it, and get it back in the water.
“She was soon cleaned up, slipped into a board bag, and headed south to meet a Southern Ocean swell making its way toward the Victorian coast,” Need Essentials said in an email. “The last time this board had been given a real run was in perfect Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, many years ago — an experience that inspired numerous iterations and evolutions of its original form. Not retrospective in any manner, but instead existing within a new space in surfboard history that had not previously been witnessed.”
As it turned out, the board might’ve looked a little worse for wear, but it still performed the way it did before it landed under a house.
“True to its original intention, the 7’9” came alive quickly in the Victorian swell and again proved to be one of the most enjoyable experiences,” Need Essentials continued, “allowing early entry, long drawn-out lines, and hyper speed and flow, the kind where you just lay back and enjoy the canvas reeling off in front of you.”
In a heartbreaking turn of events, though, Martyn wound up taking a few waves on the head and snapped the poor old gal. Luckily, he had another, newer version on hand.
“It’s kind of a product of the journey we’ve been on since that board was made,” Torren said with the new board in his hands. “This one’s more pulled in throughout; slightly narrower, maybe a smidge more rocker.”
