January 2006:Shaper Of The YearBill 'Stretch' Riedel

Gifted surfboard shapers can’t bank on much more than their own creativity. Think about it: there are hundreds — maybe thousands — of ’em out there, plowing away to the buzz of their own planer. Team riders come and go. Their shapes fall in and out of fashion like so many designer jean labels. Profit margins shrink to 1/16th of an inch. And yet, they must mow on. To surf. To eat. To live.

It can be a disheartening prospect, which is why fewer and fewer shapers out there are doing it their way. Some assume the role of the boardbuilding undead and become ghost shapers. Others disappear altogether, buried in an unmarked grave of foam shavings and unpaid debt. And then there’s the few who survive on hope and ideas alone, who continue to squeak by knowing that someday, somehow, their time will come.

William “Stretch” Riedel is one of those shapers. At a towering 6’6” and as skinny as a rocker stick, Stretch looks more like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz than one of the world’s most forward-thinking shapers. But make no mistake: the 47-year-old Santa Cruz resident has a brain — a brain that’s obsessed with pushing waveriding equipment to unseen levels.

This has always been his driving force. For the better part of 25 years, he’s been making boards lighter, stronger and faster using different foams, different resins and different constructions. And for more than half of this time, after a tragic windsurfing accident, he’s done it with a locked-up hand and partial paralysis on his right side.

His efforts didn’t get him much more than an underground following in Santa Cruz until sometime last year, when the world started to notice.

First: the technology. With more and more surfers veering away from disposable, polyurethane surfboards, Stretch was right there to offer them the state-of-the-art epoxy equipment, feather-light and ready to take a licking. His mastery of the medium became even more apparent when he unveiled his “new generation” tow board, a $1600 sandwich-epoxy rocket that can only be described as space age.

Second: the team. Stretch always relied on his core of world-class Santa Cruz talents for feedback. Guys like Josh Loya, Josh Mulcoy and Ratboy Collins. But when air king Nathan Fletcher jumped on board and pushed his bat-tail quads on Stretch, the ideas started flying. Suddenly, bat-tail quads became the shape of choice for everything from 2-foot Murph Bar to 20-foot Maverick’s.

Finally: the results. No new concept holds water until someone actually backs it up. So, when Westside charger Anthony Tashnick went out and won this year’s Maverick’s Surf Contest on a 9’4” bat-tail four-fin, he and Stretch essentially erased 40 years of big-wave board theory in a single event — arguably the biggest design statement since Simon won the ’81 Bells on a Thruster.

A four-fin in big, hollow surf? According to Fletch and Stretch, they wouldn't pull in any other way. Nathan foils through Puerto

Either way, it’s certainly big enough to earn SURFING Magazine’s Shaper of the Year honors. But we know long overdue credit isn’t what drives Riedel. Hometown hero or unknown soldier, Stretch will continue tinkering away in his Midtown factory, leaving no blank unturned.

SURFING MAGAZINE: Do you still consider yourself an underground shaper?

STRETCH: I went to the trade show only a year ago, and a big-name shaper took a look at one of my quads, complimented it and then asked if I shaped for a hobby. [laughs] That was a wake-up call. Like, “OK, nobody knows who you are, dude. Get it together.”

Did your dad [Malibu surfer Mike “The Noodle” Riedel] inspire you to start shaping?

My dad was a balsa guy, and he never really made that transition into foam. But after we moved from LA up to Gilroy — I think I was 18 at the time — I basically went up to him and said, “Dad, how do you shape a board?” He gave me a few starting tips, a friend and I gutted out an old trailer and I shaped my first two boards with a jack plane.

Continued...

With Stretch's bat-tail quads, sometimes you have speed to burn.
Nathan Fletcher pulls the e-brake in Puerto

You tried some other career paths in the meantime, didn’t you?

I went to LA to become an electrician. Got fired from that. Then I worked at a cabinet shop in Hermosa, which was where I first learned to work with epoxy resin. We’d use it as a coating on the bar tops. Funny enough, Shoreline Glassing was right next door, and when I got fired from cabinet-making, I walked right into Shoreline and started glassing fins.

Did the epoxy work in the cabinet shop spark any ideas?

Oh yeah. At the time the resin wasn’t clear enough. But six months into my job at Shoreline, the epoxy sales guy came over and showed me stuff that’s clearer and we started glassing epoxy boards right then. That was in 1979.

So, you were shaping a lot at this point?

I was starting to. And I got exposed to a lot of cool things at the time, thanks to guys like Brian Bulkley and Dave Higly. Dave even got in on a little conversation with Simon Anderson and Gary McNabb before Simon won Bells in ’81. When I eventually got fired from Shoreline, I packed everything up and brought some of my first Thrusters to Santa Cruz — right when they were all the buzz.

Sounds like you had a bit of a pink-slip problem.

I had a bit of a white-stuff problem. [laughs] That was back in the cocaine days, and I let it get out of control. I didn’t really clean up for good until a few years later, when my lovely wife, Sandy, and windsurfing came along.

And that was your deal for a number of years, right?

It pretty much straightened me out. I stopped all the funny stuff, opened my own factory, started racing and working toward being a professional windsurfer. And then, in 1989, I was up at Waddell, practicing for some event in Maui. I saw a ramp on the way out and thought, “God, this is the perfect ramp to do a forward loop.” So, I’m going Mach 10, launch upside down, and a puff of wind just fires me straight down, head-first. I didn’t tighten up my neck and because of the increased surface area of the helmet I was wearing, slammed my head into my chest. I hit the water, thinking, “Man, that hurt bad.” I’m kind of just lying there. And I said, “You better put your head up and get a breath.” Nothing moves. Look over to my fingers, try to move my hand. Nothing. Kind of panicked for 10 to 15 seconds. Realized, “You’re done. It’s over.” I remember my life flashing, thinking, “OK, I lived the way I wanted to. I don’t have any regrets.” And then the next thing I remember, I’m on the beach and guys are asking me the day, year, that kind of thing. They’re trying to see how messed up I really was.

Did they tell you this was permanent?

Oh, yeah. They told me I’d be a quadriplegic for the rest of my life. But a couple of weeks later, laid up, an arm started to come back. Then a leg started to come back. It was pretty emotional — you can imagine — being paralyzed and trying to will a toe to move. And then suddenly having the toe actually move. Six months later — after a 16-hour respiratory surgery and nearly dying from pneumonia — I told the hospital to screw the walker and wheelchair and hobbled out of there on my own.

And right back to work?

I came home, went fishing for a little while. Then I got back in the shed, found my tools and started figuring out how to work ’em again. To this day I have limited use of my right hand, so I had to retrofit every single tool. I completely relearned how to shape with the other hand. The first board took me an entire day. But I got the hang of it.

How much did the accident set you back?

Before that, I was heavily into epoxies. But when I was in the hospital, sandwich epoxy came out. And so, sailboard-wise, I was behind six to eight months and it was a big six to eight months. I lost my factory and had to start all over again.

Since then, what boards are you proudest of?

Some of the windsurfing stuff I did was pretty bitchin’. Guys are still riding my 8’6” wave boards today and I haven’t made one in four years. The sandwich epoxy stuff I did back then had its merits, but that technology is ultimately flawed. Because you’re boxing the construction, the thing flexes too fast and it rides strange -- that ping-pong ball feeling everyone gets. But there is a way to solve that. [laughs]

For the complete interview with SURFING Magazine's 2005 shaper of the year, pick up the January 2006 issue of SURFING on sale November 22nd.

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