The Peahi is our largest volume blade, designed for stronger paddlers who really want to get into bigger waves. It has a longer blade and a scooped out throat area to get deep and really hold onto the water.

$340

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The Kanaha all carbon is designed to improve efficiency and durability of the blade, with a slight dihedral on both sides of the blade to improve it’s stability during the power phase. This blade has an ABS plastic edge for improved impact strength.

Price $340

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Laird Hamilton (March 2, 1964-)

Article from Surfline.com
By — Jason Borte, November 2000

There is no bigger set of balls in the universe than the pair in Laird Hamilton’s shorts. He continues to amaze humanity by putting himself in the most harrowing situations imaginable and emerging unscathed. In contrast to the offspring of most famous parents who routinely fall short of expectations, he usurped his stepfather’s lofty position in surfing history to become the big-wave charger by which all future entrants will be measured.

It’s easy to see how Hamilton came to be the smug, aggressive, death-taunting waterman he is today. Born is San Francisco but raised on the North Shore, with the Pipeline beach as his playground, he experienced the last of the original big-wave pioneers — Greg Noll, Butch Van Artsdalen and Jose Angel — and inherited their bravado and all-around skills. Having the legendary Billy Hamilton as his stepfather afforded him a hall pass into surfing’s elite. As one of the only blonds in his school on Kauai, Hamilton experienced racism at its worst. He had to be on constant guard as he was a daily target for abuse. The ocean became even more important, providing equality with its disregard for race.

Finally, the struggle for acceptance was abandoned, and Hamilton left school for California. Not only were his looks accepted, he used them to forge a living from modeling. He returned to his old playground for a stretch in the late ’80s and made a statement with his aggression and tuberiding prowess. Formal competition has never interested him, but in daily duels at Backdoor and Pipe, he took on all comers. Like most things in Hamilton’s life, this pursuit was discarded upon mastery, and he turned his sights to a bigger quest.

Along the North Shore’s outer reefs, he began using a Jet Ski to tow in to waves that were too big to catch by paddling. Soon he took his mission to a place on Maui called Peahi. Now known as Jaws, the once unsurfable reef has been the setting for the most progressive big-wave experimentation in history. Hamilton and his “Strapped” crew, including Darrick Doerner, Dave Kalama, Pete Cabrinha and Rush Randle, have caused the biggest buzz surfing can remember. They redefined big-wave boards, trounced all over the Unridden Realm and ignited a debate between surfing’s purists — those who think Jet Skis should be banned and those who think PWCs are the link to a whole new level of big-wave surfing. One thing that cannot be debated, however, is Hamilton’s place among surfing’s elite. He is our most accomplished living waterman, equally adept at windsurfing, paddling the English Channel, longboarding or carving laybacks on the world’s biggest waves. His relentless pursuit to design and alternative methods of waveriding is unmatched.

On August 17, 2000, he again raised the bar by towing in to what was indisputably the heaviest wave ridden to date — a Teahupoo ledge that defies description. Living on Kauai with his wife, volleyball superstar Gabrielle Reece, Hamilton continues to redefine what is possible in the water. Considering the sort of waves it takes to rouse his interest, he remains active between sessions by riding motocross, mountain biking, hitting the occasional golf ball and performing any necessary tasks around his house. He has no doubts that he will ride even bigger waves in the future. “We haven’t seen what we’re capable of yet,” he insists. “It’s only a question God and Mother Nature can answer. As our equipment evolves, we’re just waiting to meet the winter of ‘69. We’re ready.”

Laird is incredibly strong. He works out pretty much all day 6-7 days a week. He rarely sits and you’ll never catch him watching tv on the couch unless it’s after 8:00 for a family movie. His amount of activities may shock you.

Monday:
Weight Room Circuit
Short bike ride -1 ½ hrs (short?)
Tuesday:
Bike – mountain or road
Sand training -lunges, push-ups, head stands, hindu squats, log pull, sand dunes
Water activity -stand-up, kite surf, windsurf

Wednesday:
Weight Room Circuit
Short bike ride -  1 1/2hrs

Thursday:
Bike mountain or road
Sand training – lunges, push-ups, head stands, hindu squats, log pull, sand dunes
Water activity – stand-up, kite surf, windsurf

Friday:
Weight Room Circuit
Short bike ride

Saturday:
“rest” – one brief paddle session
brief to him but for most of us a brutal 2 hour workout

Sunday:
Bike -mountain or road
Sand training – lunges, push-ups, head stands, hindu squats, log pull, sand dunes
Water activity – stand-up, kite surf, windsurf

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
A Typical Weight Room Circuit Workout:
2 ½ hrs.
Reps: 2,500
105 reps per exercise
20 exercises total
All body parts
Weight Varies
1,400 ab reps total during course of session
What it’s Good For:
*Connects all muscle groups
*Circuit training translates directly to performance connectivity – balance, stability, strength building

Stand Up Paddle workout:
2 1/2 hrs
What it’s Good For:
Stabilizing muscles and Core training: head to toe workout, abs, toes, feet

Typical Mountain Bike Workout
2 ½ hrs
What’s it good for:
Scenic, cardio, focus, legs, stabilizers, thrill of ride downhill!

Laird Hamilton is known as the guiding genius of crossover board sports, and he is truly amazing in the water. His size – 6’3”, 215 pounds – makes him seem indestructible. ‘Laird is the elder son of 60’s surfing legend, Bill Hamilton, and is a throw back to that time when surfers prided themselves on being an all-around waterman.’ His mother, Joann, gave birth to him in a “bathysphere” with reduced gravity as part of an experiment at the UC Medical Center in San Francisco. Joann was also a surfer and decided to move the family from California to Hawaii when Laird was just a few months old. They lived on Oahu’s North Shore and later in a remote valley on Kauai, not far from one of the world’s best surf breaks. He learned to surf between the ages of two and three on the front half of a surfboard, and at age eight, his father took him to the 60-foot cliff at Waimea Falls where Laird looked down, looked back at his dad, and jumped. ‘He’s been bold since day one,’ says Bill, ‘and hell-bent on living life to the extreme.’

Laird teamed up with Steve & Barry’s in spring 2008 to debut his Wonderwall (thisiswonderwall.com) clothing line, a men’s surf and skate line offering high-quality, comfortable merchandise at low cost. Having grown up in a single parent home, Laird knows what it’s like not to have money. “My family was on welfare. If I lost my shoes, I wouldn’t have another pair for a couple of weeks. So I can appreciate that people can’t afford to buy stuff that everyone else is wearing,” says Laird. “Guys that live the surf and skate lifestyle want to spend their time tracking the next big swell or finding a new skatepark, not worrying about having enough money for t-shirts and shorts.”

Laird heads up a technical pro-model line with longtime sponsor, Oxbow. The Oxbow brand launched in the United States in summer 2008. Oxbow, an authentic rider/action sports brand, boasts a rich 25-year history with internationally recognized athletes.

Laird also joined H2O Audio’s Board of Directors in 2008. Laird will be strategically guiding the company with marketing its brand and developing its next generation of surf/music products. “I have been an H2O Audio proponent for several years, and I am really looking forward to infusing my passion for watersports and music into future developments with H20,” says Laird.

Laird is working on two books with best selling author Susan Casey. “100: Stalking the Giants of the Ocean” is due out in 2009 by Broadway Publishing Group. It’s about the science of giant waves, 100 ft. or higher, and the surfers who try to ride them, an undertaking that often requires helicopters, wave runners and precise timing. “Force of Nature: Mind, Body, Soul, and, Of Course, Surfing” is a fitness guide by Rodale Books and hit retailers on October 28, 2008.

‘Path of Purpose’, a short documentary about Laird’s endeavor with his tow partner, Dave Kalama, to help fund and raise awareness for Autism, premiered on the Sundance Channel in July 2008. A new film release entitled, ‘Water Man’, and distributed by Video Action Sports, premiered in film festivals in Spring 2008 and hit streets on September 23, 2008. The film has already garnered attention by winning awards at the film festivals and taking home Best Cinematography at the 2008 Surfer Poll Awards.

Laird is famous for doing all kinds of extreme things in the ocean from making epic long distance journeys on his ocean-going paddleboard to creating the fast forward speed sailing loop. When he was twenty-two years old, Laird entered a speed-sailing competition in Port Saint-Louis, France, defeated the heavily favored French champion, and broke the European speed record of 36 knots. Today, Laird surfs the outer-reefs in Hawaii with his friends and uses his years of knowledge of working with different board designs to catch the giant waves he’s famous for mastering. He and his friends use a method that involves getting into a Wave Runner, taking a water ski rope, and towing each other into waves that are too big to paddle into on their own. The water craft flings them into the wave at full speed. Laird uses footstraps on his board to keep from getting bounced off and to enable him to do mind-boggling things like aerial liftoffs and 360’s. “Jaws Maui,” a book published in 1997, features Laird in action and is filled with spectacular photography of the men who pioneered tow-in surfing. “Bigger. Higher. Faster. I want to go after the world speed sailing record. I want to ride bigger waves. I want to try and invent some new sports, combine some existing ones. I want to be creative,’ says Laird.

Photo shoots with sponsors such as Oxbow have taken Laird around the world from the Caucasus mountain range to snowboard, a jungle preserve in Java, Indonesia with a world-class surf break just offshore to the Great Barrier Reef. He can be seen profiled on the CBS News show ‘60 Minutes’ and on the cover of magazines such as National Geographic, Outside, The Surfer’s Journal, Men’s Journal, Surfer, Surfing, and in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, People, Life, GQ, Interview, L’Uomo Vogue (Italy), Paris Match (France), Surf (Germany), High Wind (Japan) and Sailboarder. In 2004, the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association named him “Waterman of the Year”. He was named “Breakout Performance of the Year” at the Surfer Poll Awards in 2000 and was honored with overall “Rider of the Year” in France 2000 (M6). Laird was also awarded “Feat of the Year” at ESPN’s Action Sports & Music Awards in 2001, and People magazine named him “One of the 50 most Beautiful People” in 1996.

Laird was a featured surfer and an executive producer on the Summer ’04 theatrical film, ‘Riding Giants’, by Sony Picture Classics (www.ridinggiants.com). The film looks at the history of big wave surfing. Laird was also featured in the film, ‘Step Into Liquid’. He doubled as James Bond for big surf in the MGM film ‘Die Another Day’ and served as the stunt coordinator for the film’s big wave sequence. Laird has also been featured on TV as a host on Fox Sports Net’s, ‘Planet Extreme Championships’(2000), on the Outdoor Life Network (1999), and in ‘The Extremists’ (1996-97), where he took incredible risks while air boarding, rock climbing, kite surfing and jet-ski surfing. He is featured in the documentary film ‘Endless Summer II’ (1994). Laird’s filmmography also includes ‘Waterworld,’ (stuntman), ‘North Shore,’ ‘Night Waves,’ ‘Totally Committed,’ and ‘Five Summer Stories.’

Laird started his production company, BamMan Films, with tow-partner, Dave Kalama, manager, Jane Kachmer, and cinematic directors, Don King and Sonny Miller. BamMan Films produces for film, television, commercial and media companies. BamMan released ‘Water Man’ (2008) and the critically acclaimed film ‘All Aboard The Crazy Train’ (2005), which looks at the state of big wave surfing. Other BamMan films include ‘The Ride, The Day’ (2004), ‘Strapped: the evolution of tow-in surfing’ (2002) and ‘Laird’ (2001). BamMan’s other credits: Associate Producer on Maui for ‘Riding Giants’, production work on ‘Step Into Liquid’, and Producer for the television documentaries, ‘The Ride’ (2004), ‘Ride the Wild Surf’ (2001 with RDF in the UK), and ‘Ride on the Wave of the Gods’ (2002 with NHK in Japan). Commercial productions include: American Express and Coty Prestige/Davidoff.

Surfer Magazine’s editor, Sam George, in the magazine’s ‘Most Powerful People inSsurfing’ issue said, “Laird is flat out surfing’s biggest, boldest, bravest. He is the best big wave surfer in the world today, bar none. He is the sport’s most complete surfer, displaying almost unnerving expertise in a multitude of disciplines: tow-surfing, bodysurfing, longboarding, paddling, sailboarding, kite-surfing.”

www.LairdHamilton.com

Contact: Jane Kachmer
Jane Kachmer Management
P.O. Box 2246
Malibu, CA 90265
(t) 310.317.4734
(f) 310.317.9650
Email: jkachmer@charter.net

se o Slater é extraterrestre, o que dizer desse cara???

Tirando o Surf convencional, acho que foi ele que inventou todos as outras modalidades de Surf.