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STAND-UP AND PADDLE – Get Up

The 9’6” Get Up shall forever be my favorite board. It is the board I first started to paddle with.
To be honest, from day one, I just wanted to paddle to surf, that was it. But first, I needed to know how to stand on the board and learn how to row !
“…Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk…” I needed the same faith to succeed.
Try, fall, climb, try, fall down again…curse then rebel: “It’s the shaper’s fault, this board sucks!”
Bruno was staying calm, smiling: “Relax, you’ll get it, it’s a very easy board.” Meanwhile, fish were still laughing at me and so were the surfers.
It took some time but one day I realized I had rediscovered the magic of surfing.
That board was the early 9’6” proto. It was born on the day of my first surfing session with a paddle.Thierry Pen

5 PROTOS, 6 CLASHES – Fit

We had been hard at work designing our first ever 12’6”.
Ship-bows were becoming the norm and we were ready.
One day, JP popped in for a visit and grumbled “Who is going to buy this thing ? Racers only? What about the rest of the world? Are they supposed to just sit and watch from the shore?”
He was right, we needed an “easy” board, for touring aimed at all the other people we love.
An easy board yes, but one that can glide well on the swell, one that crosses the chop with ease and still stays maneuverable, one that can also surf too, a great evolution board for beginners but still a pleaser to the experts, one that… one that…Ok, ok… we all need to calm down…
Once the dust settled, we challenged Pascal : “Can you shape that ? If someone can cook eggs, that would be good too, and in any case, 12’6 is too big…”
“it just happens that I have a 11’ blank left ! ”
Five prototypes, six yelling matches, ten long lunches and a thousand paddle strokes later, the Fit 11’ was born. Thierry Pen

THIERRY AND FRIENDS – Kool

During the summer at home, everybody wants to be on the water SUPing, touring on boards or surfing waves. Our house sits right on the water, with multiple wave spots within a ten minute drive; it seems like the natural thing to do.
I dearly needed the kind of board that I could use to go fishing with my daughter and have my grandson sit on the bow with his floaters. I needed or a board I could lend to any visiting friend who would say “Let’s go play with your toys” but knew nothing about the ocean as they’d let the waves touch their calves, their pants hiked up to their knees.
This was a personal order, finding the solution to a need, a simple no-trouble board.
So whenever some preppie-dressed vacationer would come and ask for a surf session, all I had to do was to throw this big 10’board in the pick-up and off we’d go.
I really wasn’t expecting what followed. Within a month, my daughter’s friends, my friends, the postman, the grocer, well, everyone was coming up to me and asking “Hey man! Where can I get that board? It is just too cool!”
The Kool 10’ was born that day.Thierry Pen

HISTORY OF A BOAT – SCOW

December 2011, Bruno and I are strolling down the Paris Salon Nautique (Boat Show) aisles, thinking aloud of a new 12’6 board when we fall upon this large picture of David Raison’s winning mini-Transat sailboat. This crazy fast ship has the most original shape: A squared bow.
“Wow! A squared watercraft, why is that?”
Right away we called our mentor, Jean-Paul, who’s a complete walking encyclopedia on anything that touches the sailing world.
“Hey guys, nothing new under the sun! US scow yachts have been the fastest mono hulls for over a century… Ever heard of Harry Melges?” JP laughs and adds: “The Scow comes from the Dutch word Schouwe, our friends over there have been sailing flat bottom and blunt bow boats forever.”
… And it works? Let’s try it!
In February 2012, on Chott Meriem beach in Tunisia, Bruno is paddling like a mad man with a GPS on his wrist and a bunch of chronometers hanging off his neck. When he comes back ashore, we all ask: “So?”
“It’s unreal… it keeps on going faster!” What a revelation! The Scow was born.Thierry Pen

Surf EVO Nahskwell Stand Up Paddle 2016 SUP France Bretagne boutique en ligne compétition vente en ligne FCS thruster carbone sud ouest biarritz

BURNS & SURF – Surf

In June 2009, a rushed and tired Bruno reaches Biscarosse just in time for the last French championship final qualifying leg.
In his beat up truck lies the SUP board he barely finished shaping in his garage: a large surfboard, highly rockered with a pointed nose and narrow tail. Big shock on the beach when Bruno pulls out of his bag a still sticky all white 8’ board. Everyone else was riding a 9’6 or even 12’ boards.
“It looked more like a surfboard and even if we had been talking surf when thinking SUP, we never had shaped a “surfboard” to paddle and ride waves.”
A smiling Bruno remembers:
“In the days towards the French championships, I asked Pascal to shape an evolution of that board, same rocker line but more volume in the nose, slightly longer with thinner rails and of course, not as roughly carved as mine!”
In July 2009 Bruno came second in the French championships, with the Surf 8’8.
Our Surf series was born.Thierry Pen

ESSENTIAL IS ETERNAL – Longboard

Session after session I keep moving from prototype to prototype, searching for new sensations and technical innovation.
The now reborn “ancestral” stand up paddleboard is booming with new blood. Shaping innovation is constant, moving towards the extreme surfing with shorter boards to better cope with radical maneuvers.
Yet, one must be able to consider all the options taken over time. Let’s not forget the sport’s core value, which guaranties the reconnect to the original well of pleasure that is surfing : Gliding, walking on the board, taking off from far out on the swell or right at the peak, surfing gracefully on a small wave that breaks the whole length of the beach or charging a flat out slab…
To ride a Longboard is like catching a deep breath, or in this case an inspiration!
It sums up all the reasons we love this sport more than any other.
Only the essential is eternal!
With a better glide, more carving and more fun, the Longboard capitalized on the innovations developed in the other practices. The Longboard was never a trend; it is at the base and in the heart of surfing and stand up paddle !Bruno André

MAXI-GEORGES ! – Max-G

As the discipline of racing Stand up paddleboards is moving towards uncharted territories. Lately, on spots at home, I was seeing an increasing number of surfers riding “flying carpet” looking boards. Like a straighter outline retro fish whose tail is closed by a large concave… The Mini-Simons phenomenon!
Seeing one isolated guy with such a board would have been one thing, probably a weirdo, but when at each session I could spot a new addict of this bizarre shape and after a few weeks, a dozen of them, I started to believe that this type of board must bring something else!
So Pascal was called upon once more to develop a SUP version of this new concept. Since it was a large “Mini-Simmons” we nicknamed it: “Maxi-Georges” 🙂 .
It was an immediate revelation in smaller and medium waves.
The Maxi-G shape is ultra fast in the surf, feels super light under my feet and thrashes easily the lip of the wave with each roller.
It is, I believe, a very important progress for stand up paddling as we move from a heavier and cumbersome board in medium waves to a nervous, fast and hyper reactive one.
It’s a great reward in our never ending quest for stronger and wilder sensations.Bruno André