NEW WAVE

The assignment: Test ride Boogie Board inventor Tom Morey’s revolutionary new surfboard, the Swizzle.

Beats work, right?

Well, most of the time, but consider these contributing factors:

* There’s a stormy, very bumpy four- to six-foot west swell slamming into the rocky beach at the end of Thalia Street in Laguna Beach. “Biggest day I’ve seen this winter,” says Morey, who now goes by “Y.”

* The water temperature is 56 degrees and you’re wearing a light, sleeveless wetsuit because 65-year-old Y said he was wearing his spring suit.

* Oh, and as we embark on this little surf safari, Y mentions that he didn’t bother to bring leashes, because, after all, “it’s only a beach break, just right there and back out.”

He grinds the manual transmission of his well-worn Toyota 4Runner into reverse and slips into his “secret parking spot,” a space in an alley in front of a garage with a huge No Parking, Tow Away Zone sign plastered on the door.

“The caretaker lets me park here,” says Y, who changed his name to disassociate himself from the old days and start anew. (Why Y? “Why not?” he answers.)

There is a pause at the top of the stairs to check out the waves. Thirty years ago, this would have been a fun way to spend a morning.

“Sure you want to do this?” Y asks.

At least there’s only the ocean to battle. No one else is out.

The 9-foot 4-inch Swizzle paddles like a board a foot longer, which is a pleasant surprise when you’re stroking toward an outside set. The board is squeezable, which is a really nice feeling when you’re leashless and you just flipped upside down under a collapsing 10-foot face and are hanging onto the rails with all your less-than-considerable might. This aspect of the board’s performance was tested time and again on this morning. The soft deck also makes knee paddling a delight for 51-year-old knees and feet.

Misshapen waves come from all angles in overlapping chunks, and numb limbs further limit already limited talent. Y manages to get a few nose rides and the other Swizzle performs admirably through a bottom turn or two.

Skilled wave riders, who have tested the board in far better conditions, give the board rave reviews. “It’s fast, it cuts back good, tracks high and nose rides like a dream,” said Donald Gardner, who’s been surfing since 1959. “It’s really impressive.”

The Swizzle, which sells for $650 and can only be purchased online at https://www.starwaves.com, is the result of an ingeniously simple spin on surfboard design and production techniques that have remained basically the same for half a century. A few key differences make this relatively normal-looking board a more durable, safer, high-performance vehicle.

Its construction is similar to traditional surfboards: foam covered with fiberglass. The Swizzle’s core, however, is made of polypropylene foam, the kind of stuff that’s inside your car’s bumper. And you can run over it with your car and it won’t lose its shape. (Y’s son, Matt, says he proved it, but don’t tell Dad).

The Swizzle is coated with a thin, four-ounce layer of specially treated fiberglass designed to bond with a resin that dries in a flexible state, able to give with the foam. Bands of layered wood and plastic are inlaid down the center of the top and bottom--they look like a traditional stringer--to add strength and stiffness. The tail and nose blocks are rubber.

There are also two significant design innovations. The rails on the tail are shaped just like those on a Boogie Board, allowing the board to hold onto the face of the wave with one small fin, reducing drag. “I’m embarrassed it took me 20 years to think of it,” said Y, who sold his first Boogie Board in 1971. “It was like, duh.”

The board curves in two inches at the waist; the hourglass shape is designed to free the board for quicker turns (giving it “swivel”) and increased speed (the “sizzle”). Hence the name Swizzle.

Y first saw the design more than a decade ago in a surfboard shaped by Dick Velzy. “We are all still within the design shadow of that great man,” Y says. “He is the pioneer of this business.

“I don’t have ideas, I copy ideas, like I copied English from my parents.”

None of these design innovations would have made much of an impact if the Swizzle had not been competitive in one key area: weight. Modern surfboard shoppers do not buy heavy boards. Swizzles weigh between 14 and 16 pounds, slightly lighter than most conventional longboards. Still, Y scoffs at most recreational surfers’ obsession with light boards.

“The average person can easily turn a 25-pound board,” he says. “In an era of 25-pound boards, Phil Edwards [considered by many the best surfer of his time in the late 1950s] rode a 43-pound board. Joel Tudor [1998 world champion longboarder] recently told me his favorite board weighs 34 1/2 pounds. You can run up to the nose, spin around and get back before the board knows what’s happened.

“The intermediate surfer lives in a fantasy world. This fetish with light boards has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with having to carry it from the car to the surf.”

At least if you drop this board in the parking lot, it won’t ding.

And that’s really what Surfboards by Y is all about--design, materials and applying today’s technology to the surfboard industry. Y says he’s issuing a wake-up call to the industry.

He was raised in Laguna Beach, using these same rocky beaches as a proving ground, and graduated from USC with degrees in mathematics and music. He worked for Douglas Aircraft as an engineer and played drums in a jazz band.

More than 20 million Boogie Boards have been sold in the past 30 years, but he’s not a millionaire and doesn’t want to be. He left his consultant job with Wham-O Corp.--which owns the Morey name and bodyboard products--to return to the garage below his modest home in Capistrano Beach where he his wife, Marchia, live with three of his six children.

The Surfboards by Y factory is an extended one-car garage. And the CEO/guru has no grand plans for expansion.

“I’m a surfer, a designer and an engineer,” he says, “but I abhor business. We’re in spiritual trouble on this planet. It’s all backward. It’s not about the money.

“I’ve ridden a thousand surfboards, everything I could borrow, and this board is just an extension of all of that. There’s no magic here. In the end, this is just another high-performance longboard that’s user friendly, won’t ding nearly as easily, will last virtually forever and is hopefully safer.”

And you don’t have to be hit over the head to figure out it’s more than just another longboard.

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A New Twist on Surfboards

Combining elements of surfboards and bodyboards, the new Swizzle features an hourglass shape that allows for tighter turns and faster speeds while incorporating a tail design that grips waves better.

Swizzle: Single, smaller fin

*

Surfboard: Trio of longer fins

* Bodyboard: No fins