A find: Featured in a *surf* magazine test in 1990, now used as a decorative item on Sylt

Old surfboards make cool decorations. Genuine one-offs often have a story of their own to tell; at the World Cup on Sylt, we discovered a very special board – or at least fragments of it. Because what’s now on display as decoration in a café-bar with a creative workshop was the star of a surf test back in September 1990. Back then, custom waveboards were compared with mass-produced boards. One of the rivals to the F2 Revolution (featuring the Statue of Liberty on the deck) in the Radical Wave category was a pink-and-black waveboard from Paradise Customs on Sylt.

On the cover of the feature entitled “Jäger 90”, Andreas Erbe – then a tester and later the long-serving editor-in-chief of *surf* – performs a cheese roll alarmingly close to the lens of photographer Olaf Fippinger. 36 years later, he rediscovered the front section of the board whilst fetching a coffee; the black-and-pink glittering underside is still unmistakable.

Sturdy, but heavy

At the time, the testers said of the shape: “This board from Sylt is particularly well suited to extreme North Sea conditions.” That was exactly what the board was designed for, which is why shaper Hartmut Vollert had fitted two additional wooden stringers in the areas most prone to breakage and offered an unusually long three-year guarantee. However, this did not come without its consequences: a hefty 10.4 kilos for 77 litres, spread over 255 cm – that’s quite a weight to hoist into the air. Or, as the testers put it at the time: “On land, the board feels like a beached dolphin anyway: rather immobile.”

Breakage resistance also played a key role in the inglorious end of the Paradise Customs: like all the boards in the test, the ‘Sylter Schnittchen’ was subsequently strapped into a testing rig by the TÜV to assess its load-bearing capacity. As Andreas Erbe recalls, the engineer in charge accidentally set the testing equipment to double the force. Even the stringers couldn’t withstand that, and the board was history. What made the whole affair doubly tragic was that, as Paradise’s shaper’s workshop had burnt down shortly before, this was the only one of its kind.

Thanks to a collector from Sylt, the front section eventually found its way onto the World Cup stand as a decorative feature. How it has spent the last 36 years, and what has become of the rear section, remains a mystery for the time being. Various holes in the surviving fragment bear witness to a long period spent on some wall or other. Whilst the hull is scratched but still gleams, the deck has faded significantly.