Surf Icon, Donald Takayama: The Talk Story

[singlepic=4854,188,125]I got a chance to interview the legendary Donald Takayama over the phone. At 65, Donald Takayama is still going strong. He started his career of making boards at age 11, became a shaper, surfer and still proves to be the master of style and technique. Takayama discusses his board designs, quality, and craftsmanship which led him to the aloha spirit of manufacturing. He muses over his innovations and high performance surfboards, and the reasons why he continues to create boards which he personally engineers from choice of wood on to the entire production process.Donald discusses the quality, style and design of his boards which led him to the surfboard manufacturing industry with Surftech. Initially using redwood to build his own, Takayama now has engineered all the boards using his 56 years of surfboard building experience, with genuine shapes and designs. Takayama also touched his life, near death experience and how he re-surfaced to being the surf icon that he is.Transcript: (Scroll down to listen to the interview)Evan Leong: Did you initially come up with a design for [your stand up board] like a 10rsquo;3rdquo;? (00:05)Donald Takayama: No, no as a whole I designed one and I felt based on the different lengths, theyrsquo;re very comparable to one another. When I did design these boards, I made them on just regular Styrofoam with the thought in mind as far as how theyrsquo;re going to work. The displacement, the width, the thickness has to be compatible with someone you know like 170 pounds and I scaled it up. What I also did in the designhellip;I built these two boardshellip;one for Noah [Shimabukuro] and one for Kai [Salas].Irsquo;ve been building the boards for a long time and at one point in my life I used to stand up on my board and ride it down the Ala Wai Canal and let the trade winds blow me and then I see it to the 2x2 or 1x2 and itrsquo;s a paddle down in the yacht harbor thatrsquo;s in between the boats and then Irsquo;d go out to Ala Moana and go surf. And with the design and the thought of standing up you know itrsquo;s probably displacement and first itrsquo;s based on your profile of the board with applying hydro dynamics to it you know how the boards and the floatation factor to where itrsquo;s going to pivot and where to put the width and everything so itrsquo;ll perform like a long board and surfboard. No pun intended, but Irsquo;ve seen these guys build these boards really super wide and thatrsquo;s great for catching waves but not really getting parallel with the wave. I tried to design the boards to perform, for hanging ten, for doing cut backs and just doing power turns off the bottom. Just like high performance but not going overboard, and something that you can actually really ride the surf with. The width, I scaled it up from the 9rsquo;3rdquo; and with that thought in mind, the taller, heavier people and lanky people, really tall people, how to accommodate the design, one particular design but in different levels. One design can accommodate all the different heights to weight ratios of people, aside from that, using the 2+1 fin design concept for turning in and for really holding in and waves and stuff. (03:13)Evan Leong: So you like that 2+1? Actually what I did recently is I changed out the 2+1 and I put 4 frac12;rdquo; True Ames [fins] on the side as well as the middle. And I kind of liked that better. 03:24Donald Takayama: Well it kind of works okay but when you really want to hit off the bottom it turns good. But when you really want to get to that tip and really hang ten, you need a deeper center fin or if the tail just comes sliding out. And these guys, Noah and Kai, theyrsquo;re coming off the bottom, blasting to the top getting air. 03:52Evan Leong: You mean on the stand ups? 03:55Donald Takayama: Well I chose the Surftech technology; it shows the lightness of the board and the durability. Itrsquo;s a ...