![]() It looks fast with a ton of control built into the engine room. And I know it works because I just spent an hour watching Daniel put it all over the six-foot walls roping down the Point. His brain was strong and he knew what he wanted but the hands couldn’t translate what was in his head. ![]() Stretched out across a rock beside a cave-like clump of pandanus palms the father of Daniel Thomson, Mark, is baking like a lizard in the winter sun, a look of deep contentment etched across his face. Hit the big-time with Firewire and his collaborations with Slater. And Mark’s enjoying every second of his son’s success.ĭan’s position at the vanguard of surfer-shapers and shaper-designers, somehow who is as comfortable flaring fins along the coping as they are experimenting with the possibilities of shape and the limits of space age materials, isn’t an accident. He’s not some dude who, with a flare for marketing and a partner who could build a website, learnt the intricacies of AKU shaper before he could swing a planer. No, you could say he’s been groomed for this for a long time, maybe since birth. The upbringing was, how to put it, unorthodox. Mark is an unconventional man and the family compound, a sprawling hippy-type affair nestled in rainforest at the base of Broken Head was about as far from the typical nine-to-five urban upbringing as you could get. ![]() The Byron-Ballina area was then, and still is, at the forefront of design experimentation. Mark says he and Dan “cycled through every design you could think of: singles, twins, concaves, no-nose thrusters. It was nothing to ride something at Broken Head and snap it in the tube, go home, shape another one and come back to the Point the next day to test it. “The area was just fizzing with everything,” says Mark. “From Al Byrne’s channels to McCoy’s Lazer Zaps to twinnies – we just grew up through that whole change and we were just doing everything we could. There was nothing out of bounds and there were no rules. The glassing is done in the North Shore’s best factories where premium high performance resins and materials are used to make both epoxy and P/U boards.Daniel was wandering around watching me shape surfboards since he was in nappies,” says Mark while we stretch out on rocks post surf at the Point. Board design, color work, glassing and fin systems are all custom to your needs. I use the state of the art AKU SHAPER software and machine to design and cut my boards. My mentors were Wade Tokoro, Jon Pyzel and Jeff Bushman. I design and shape Shortboards, Longboards, Guns, Fishes, and SUP’s. I attribute this experience to my knowledge of surfing and board design. My surfing and standup surfing have taken me around the globe competing and free surfing in over seventeen countries. I was ranked in the top 5 on the Stand UP World Tour in 2010, 2011, and 2012. I was the Hawaii Men’s amateur champion for several years and competed on the WQS Tour for a few years as well. At age 13 I became competitive in surfing. ![]() My mother taught me to surf and she is still surfing on a regular basis today. "My name is Robin Johnston and I have been surfing since age 5. Deep single concave and a slight downrail make for a responsive rail-surfing feel. This model can work in a variety of small to mid-size conditions. ![]() The Sonic is a lively fuller fish type model to be ridden a couple inches shorter than your regular shorty. ![]()
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