“When Grubby Clark (of Clark Foam) broke all his molds, I thought our charity was done,” says Israel ‘Izzy’ Paskowitz, the founder of Surfers Healing. The organization has an inspired mission, to expose autistic kids to the sensory thrills of surfing. They’d accomplished their goals for a decade when they found themselves without a tandem board supplier.
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“We rode stand up paddleboards for a while. Which was okay, but everyone developed extremely bad hips. There were a lot of wipeouts. There was no rocker in those things,” Izzy, a former tandem surfing champion, says.
Bucky Barry, one of the organization’s lifer surf instructors and an ambassador for Hobie, approached Izzy with an idea. Surfers Healing would apply for a Ford Go Further grant, and use the automaker’s money for a set of custom Hobie surfboards.
Head Hobie Surfboard shaper and designer, Mark Johnson, embraced the opportunity to shape a set of high performance boards that also reflected Ford’s racing heritage. The 11-6 and 12-foot boards were tandem inspired designs shaped out of EPS foam to make them lightweight. The boards were made wider and thicker than usual, and with additional rocker to improve the boards’ overall performance.
The boards were laminated using Hobie’s CLK epoxy construction, ensuring they were as strong as possible. Finally, the boards were dressed to impress with a classic Ford GT inspired orange and powder blue paint job accented with classic coiled cobra Ford laminates on the nose. These boards mean business.
“This was a great project, and it really demonstrates what Hobie is all about. Board building is something that we have done for over 60 years and being able to create and innovate is something that we take pride in. Add to it working with such a great organization and friends makes it even better” says Mark.
“The first batch was insane. The second batch was amazing,” says Izzy. The Hobie quads knife through the water and paddle with ease.
“It’s better for the kids. Dropping into a wave is incredible. The boards don’t stall. They gain speed. I can cut back, roundhouse, and hit the lip all with a child on the front,” Izzy adds.
The Hobie boards give the Surfers Healing instructors the confidence that they’ll be safe, which lets them tear it up. “It bumped our autism surf therapy to extreme special ed. as I like to put it,” Izzy says.
