MISFIT

//For the love of chasing waves//

After countless CD changes, a few petrol stops, and quite a lot of yelling songs and head hangs out the window we were on the home stretch. Six hours had passed and my tolerance for the never ending white lines was coming to an end. We'd trekked in an out of beaches, stopped at pretty much every Bakery we saw and still hadn't managed to find a wave until we reached the local break (500 plus kilometres down the road), home to one of surfing's raddest Kai Otton.

Stoked and definitely broke from the amount of money spent on petrol wave chasing we were itching to leave it all behind and fill our skin with the salt and our minds with the abyss in front of us.

A Misfit board was pulled gently from the handmade slip, the smooth rails sliding through my palms. I revelled in the fact I was being allowed to ride this beauty. It was for sure a step up from my heavily dinged and not at all new surfboard.

It was a cold afternoon, the sou'westerly wind that made it so perfect for surfing was crisp and filled with spite, winter was coming and the breeze off the mountains was a blatant reminder of toe aching mornings and wet steamers.

I can't remember what was worse, the feeling of your toes burning as they dug deeper into the frosted sand or the first duck dive under the water that filled your head with instant and un-relieving sharp stabs, the brain freeze that didn't have the upside taste of ice-cream.

This surf was different, I'd been admiring these boards for a while now, watching them evolve under the feet and influence of Otis Carey, an incredible, insanely aggressive styled Indigenious surfer, whom is currently one of my inspirations.

I didn't have the "(profanity) this is going to be cold" attitude, which only sometimes if I'm in enough of a wimpy mood and Dad isn't there to steer me in the right direction finds me right back in the sand filled bed I managed to drag myself from a few hours earlier. I was warmed purely with the stoke of being able to ride this Misfit creation, a truffle shuffle. After that surf I was adamant I was going to have one of these as my next board, it emanated everything i wanted to become as a surfer, versatile and responsive.

With a few messages to the legends from Misfit I'd sorted my next boards and a cool little sponsorship for a film festival I was chosen as the ambassador for to go with it. I went to the misfit headquarters to have a chat and meet Dave and Chris the guys behind all the brilliant chaos and madness, finding myself wide eyed and in aw of the radness that oozed out of the walls, boards hanging like milestones, art sprawled over desks and magazines in piles with names I'd never heard of. I was literally in workplace heaven, it was so effortlessly cool, my Instagram would have a field day in here #nofilter. I tried to contain my inner fan girl feeling so privileged to have crossed paths with these well-made men.

Ive been riding the same hand-me-down boards for about eight years now. As an avid surfer i was more concerned about getting out there rather than what on, it was something I did for the love (all year round despite the banter in the previous paragraphs). We didn't have extra cash just to throw at new boards every year and that never worried me, as long as I had some kind of creation under my feet that floated me everything was groovy.

I recently replaced what i called my High performance board, a 6'0 pretty old school shaped Chilli with a new 5'9 Truffle shuffle, and the first time I laid eyes on the beauty I knew she was going to ride well. She had width through the nose, a flat rocker for that dream like feeling whilst paddling and those fat sections, a double v concave through the tail and slightly clustered fin setup giving insane pivot and release. All these features added to the versatility of the board, making it a go to high performance board able to surf in plenty of conditions.

I've been told surfboards are like boyfriends, if you don't find your match you move on, luckily enough in life I've never had to deal with boyfriends, only surfboards, and I think I've finally found a match.

If you're looking for another board to add to the quiver, with a little sass and a trustworthy make, check out these guys, not only are they super rad humans they make some ridiculously good looking and feeling boards.


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Instagram: @misfitshapes or http://instagram.com/misfitshapes
Webpage: www.misfitshapes.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Misfit-Shapes/148328451870011

- Written and surfed/modelled by Kiah Carter
Location: Far South Coast