Slater Designs S Boss

From Dan Mann:

A performance board with more range in small to big surf than any other high-performance board I have ever surfed. It is the board that I go to every time there are good waves for the last two and a half years.

Kelly came to me with the idea of making a blunt nose performance board with parallel rails with this crazy double barrel V bottom. I liked all his ideas except for the Double barrel set into a V (instead of a concave which is what I normally prefer). I could not talk him out of it and realized as soon as I surfed my first (5'11") S Boss that I was totally wrong about the V. Right away Kelly saw a lot of promise with the shape as did Kevin Schulz and a friend he left the third one with in Bali. I made a second round with a rocker that is tried and true in boards like the Dominator2. That is when the shape was essentially set and since then we've refined the dimensions, the rail tuck, and volume distribution.

The key design elements a surfer will notice on this board that stand out from other boards is the outline with the blunt nose, the familiar FRK roundtail, the 5 deck/foot wells on the deck, and as I mentioned the double barrel set into a V bottom contour (I have thought about this bottom more than any other bottom I have put onto a surfboard). Surfers will want to ride their SBoss shorter than their regular short board and an inch or two longer than their gravellers. Pay close attention to the volume on this board and error on the side of more volume (foam is your friend). The turning radius is super tight because of the volume, bottom contour, and narrowness packed into a shorter board.