New Surfboards from Jim Banks

Jim Banks is a legend of the surfing world. Although one of the world’s top surfers through the late 70’s and early 80s, especially in serious surf, Banks never fully embraced professional surfing and by the mid 80’s had abandoned competition in favour of exploration; mainly Indo, where he discovered many now famous waves.Banks has also thoroughly explored the possibilities of surfboard shaping throughout the course of his life. As an early teen he stripped down his Dad’s badly delaminated board and attempted to shape it into something more usable (with limited success!). He went on to become one of the youngest recognised shapers of his time and in the mid 80’s shaped the boards on which a young Mark ‘Occy’ Occhilupo burst onto the scene. Fast forward 30 years and Banks’ wealth of knowledge underpins a flawlessly produced, eclectically inspired range of beautiful, yet highly functional surfboards.

Jim Banks, from his website:

Surfboard designs continue to evolve and stay interesting, while living at Uluwatu has been a real blessing for developing and testing my designs. But as life goes on, I feel more and more, what is truly important, is how special it is just to be able to go for a surf.  And it’s becoming obvious that at the end of the day, the only thing I’m going to be taking with me when I go are the feelings and memories in my heart.

Three of Jim Banks’ boards we currently have in stock … With low rocker, plenty of width and generous concave, the Carpet Burner is a somewhat fishy summer flyer. The Zen Glide is for the bigger guy who wants to take things easy in average to good waves, while still busting out the odd man-turn. The Indo Rocket, meanwhile, as the name suggests, is built for more powerful waves…although it’s single to double concave renders it quite versatile for a gun. More info here.