Welcome to the 29th Edition of The Bodyboard Report! 🤙

I’ll be taking suggestions for a 30th birthday party, thank you very much.

This week we're digging into boards again ‘cause I found something real sexy on Facebook and one comment described it just right: “Damn! That’s a good looking board!”

Not the template, not the colors, not the name on the deck, but the bit you never see, the part that decides whether your hard bottom turn fires you down the line or up in the air… or into oblivion.

This one reminds a man of an extra well fitting bikini… Even the parts you are not supposed to see round off the overall design. 😉

“So come on riders of the world… Take off your skirt, cancel your manicure, grow a mustache, and 👉 harden the f-up at least enough so you can recoil right back…” 👇

Every bodyboard is essentially a spring… of sorts.

You load it on the bottom turn. You load it again when you push down the face. And the moment you let go, it gives that energy back as speed, projection and pop.

Flex is how the board takes energy in. Recoil is how it gives it back. Pretty much every big idea in board design over the last 15 years has been an argument about how to get more of the second without losing the first.

2 of the most interesting answers right now come from rival brands using the same foam, and they've both called it an Arc.

NMD has just dropped the ArcFlex WiFly Bat, the second board in its Experimental Series, designed with Kieran Adshead.

Check that out… like the shin bones on a sexy pair of legs with knock-knees.

I like it…

According to NMD's release, ArcFlex is the fifth evolution of its PFS core. Twin recurve Divinycell beams are curved in before you ever paddle out, so the board is preloaded with energy and releases it fast.

Let’s hit the brakes on that strange word…

Divinycell is a brand of structural foam made by Diab, a Swedish composites company. It's a rigid, closed cell foam, the classic version made from PVC, built to be the core of a composite sandwich.

The sandwich idea is simple. Put a light, stiff foam core between 2 skins, and you get a panel that's very strong and stiff for its weight. That's why Divinycell turns up in boat hulls and decks, wind turbine blades, aircraft interiors and racing yachts.

In a bodyboard, it's used differently from a normal stringer:

The man behind this board design is company founder Nick "Mez" Mesritz. He began in board manufacturing in New Zealand working for Rick Broderson, who was producing Morey, HB and O&E, then moved to the Central Coast of Sydney to work for Toobs and Rheopaipo, and spent a stint in America with Buzz at Custom X before going out on his own. NMD literally stands for Nick Mesritz Designs.

PFS first made headlines in 2010. PFS stands for Parabolic Flex System. It's the core technology Mez developed for NMD, and it's also used in his VS boards.

The Magic Carpet drew media attention when Dave Winchester totally dominated the IBA stop in Arica, Chile. Mez had studied surfboards that use 2 parabolic stringers with denser foam in the rails, but a bodyboard needs flexible rails for control, so he went the other way… 👉 A hard core in the middle with flexible rails outside.

The result is a board that's stiff through the center for speed and projection, but whose rails can still flex and bite into the wave face.

By generation 3, the beams were angled to line up with the rider's hip, elbow and hand, loading them harder through turns for more recoil and projection when the pressure is released.

ArcFlex is generation 5.

Tristan Roberts has ridden for Pride since 2012. He takes his pro model, the Realest, to Frontón this month chasing title number 3. Go Boogie Bok!

Inside is Radial Flex with Dynamic Arc. It increases stiffness through the lower body of the board while preserving flex under the elbow.

And that Dynamic Arc? It's an ultralight, high strength Divinycell batten. Same material as NMD's beams, but here we have a completely different philosophy.

Underneath is RRC we have Pride's Rail to Rail Concave. It's a shorter single to double concave with a flat central bridge connecting both rails, developed with Pride board guru Liam Lucas.

That flat section acts as a pivot point, increasing the leverage of the rider's weight in critical sections.

The Interchangeable Stringer System came out of a relaunch. Xross Design approached Rheopaipo about an unrelated product, the talk turned to bodyboards, and the idea for the ISS came up. The only visible difference on the board is a small hole in the tail. (Guess we’re lucky no one called it the interchangeable a*s hole..?)

Yesterday was 2-3ft onshore slop. Today it's pumping 4-6ft offshore. Pull the soft stringer, slide in the stiff one. (Oh, come on! Okay, no more comments…) Same goes for water temperature. Stiffen up your board as it goes up. (I can’t make this up…)

I dug into this one a few editions back. In short, no stringer at all, just a honeycomb style skeleton through the core that rivals bridge building. 👇

And then there's the opposite approach. Less stringer, a bit of stringer, a bit or a lot more flex.

Vicki Reale's 👉 Tribe Valkyrie runs a 3/4 length carbon fiber stringer in a 1.5 PP core, which leaves the nose area much more free to bend.

Jay Reale went even shorter on his 👉 Reale Deal 4.0. Its mini stringer runs from near the tail to just past the midpoint, so the top half flexes for cutbacks and late drop tube scoops while the lower half stays stiff for speed.

Jay says he “likes a bit of flex, but not too much” and this hybrid suits both his DK and prone antics on any given day.

This is something I’d love to test out myself. The stringer length… maybe even 2 of them… But that one’s gonna have to be shaped to suit. While I’m at it… wondering what short arcs… long arcs can do? Twisted arcs… plot twists… 🤔

The tech is becoming a combo playground if you consider all the options…

A curved beam, a pivot concave, a removable spine, a honeycomb and half a stringer?

Many different answers to the same question.

How much should this thing bend before it fights back?

I think we are where pro golfers, standup surfers, and many related sports that rely on technology for comfort, speed, power and performance are…

You contemplate, you pick, you test, and you’ll feel it… And only then do you learn from it.

If you’re a youngster reading this…

Go ask your dad about condoms…

But, you didn’t hear this from me… 🌊

It’s almost time… 8 days to go…

The Gran Canaria Frontón King runs from 17 to 31 October, and it will crown the 2026 IBC World Tour champions.

Tristan leads on 14,300 points, Pierre sits in 2nd on 12,925.

Amaury is 3rd on 12,500 and local hero Armide Soliveres is 4th with 12,031 points collected this year.

The Junior Men's Grand Final runs at the same event, with Louka Zaninotto back as the defending Junior Men's World Champion.

Keep an eye and watch live at 👉 ibcworldtour.com and 👉 IBC YouTube

And catch up on this one if you missed it 👇

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