OATH! DEANEY AND LSD ANNOUCE OFFICIAL NOA SURFBOARD MODEL AT LAST
Words by Vaughan Blakey
Bout time we all got to share the fruits of the sickest surfer/shaper partnership out there.
Noa Deane knows what he likes. More importantly he knows what he doesn’t like.
Horses? “Pretty sick.”
Skate ramp airs into giant foam pits? “Nup. I absolutely fucken hate those things.”
Jesus & Mary Chain? “Pretty frothing on that.”
Crutches: “They suck.”
Commodores? “Yep. Sick. Good air con. Comfortable.”
Foils? “Not rating them at all to be honest.”
Likewise, Luke Short is straight up when it comes to shaping high performance surfboards that work. Need proof? Look no further than Noa’s recent face melting edit Head Noise, the one with the fucked up North Point barrel-to-oop closer. The best example of two supreme talents taking shit to other realms we’ve seen this year.
For mere mortals like us though there’s a simple question at play when we watch Noa surf. “Will those surfboards he’s on work just as good for me?”
“That’s the reason why we decided to get them out there,” says Noz. “Almost the whole Head Noise clip is shot on them and they’re the best boards I’ve ever ridden. Easily. By a mile. They just go so good that we want other people to enjoy themselves on them too. You don’t even have to try and surf them. They just work.”
LSD, who’s been shaping boards for high level shred for over three decades, agrees.
“Shaping for Noa is always fun, just about anything goes so long as it’s fast. But when we discussed the idea of getting a Noa model out there we honed in on the specifics of what he likes to ride most in the two-to-six foot wave range. Because he’s such a versatile surfer we worked on getting a design that can harness plenty of power, respond in the tube, have plenty of pop, cop heavy landings and still hold when you wanna get it on rail. This board ticks all those boxes and not just for a guy of Noa’s calibre, it’s a board that brings out the best for us punters too. I ride one myself.”
A standard 6’0” version of Noa’s board comes in at 19 1⁄4 wide x 2 7⁄16 thick @ around 29.5L. There’s more area across the nose and a reliable concave through the bottom. You can get variations with tails but Noz goes for a swallow. As far as a name goes Noa says, “We tossed a few around but just settled on Noa’s board. Can’t get confused that way.”
Noa’s love for Luke Short Designs came from a hand-me-down way back when he was 15. A board originally shaped for Julian Wilson, was then passed on to Matt Banting who eventually gave it to Noa.
“I was riding 5’9”s at the time and this thing was 5’11”. It’d already been flogged by Julian and Banting and it should have been dead, but I couldn’t believe how well it went. So I hit him up to make me some boards and it went on from there. Even when I was riding for Rusty I was getting LSDs, which I had to kinda keep low key but, you know, you gotta have the best equipment under your feet. These days I don’t even have to tell him what’s up. He just makes em and I ride em and they go sick. Too easy.”