William “Stretch” Riedel
Over the last few years William Riedel, better know as Stretch, has transformed himself from a respected Santa Cruz shaper with a loyal local following into arguably the world’s most progressive shaper, with an international surf team on par with that of any other shaper around.
Stretch learned to shape from his father, a balsa wood shaper in the 1960’s. Before finding his life’s purpose as a shaper, Stretch tried his hand at being an electrician and a cabinet-maker. Neither career path could hold Stretch’s attention for long, and he moved on to find greener pastures, but not before learning some useful lessons along the way. One, stay away from powdery white stuff. And two, he learned to work with epoxy resin while laminating cabinets, a skill that would ultimately shape his subsequent career.
In 1979 Stretch started working as a ghost shaper in Los Angeles, where he discovered and refined his craft. It wasn’t until the early 1980’s when Stretch moved to Santa Cruz that he started his own label, Stretch Boards. It was at his junkyard factory near the redwoods and the bending coastline of Santa Cruz that Stretch found his nook and began to make a name for himself.
One of the things that made Stretch unique was the fact that he didn’t just shape surfboards, as most shapers at the time and to this day still do. Stretch, then a devoted windsurfer, was shaping not only surfboards, but windsurf boards. These days Stretch makes surfboards, windsurf boards, tow boards and kite boards. “The more things I try hydro-dynamically, the more knowledge I come up with,” Stretch said. “The ideas and the knowledge I come up with from each of them helps all the other things.”
In 1989 Stretch was windsurfing at Waddell Creek when he was nearly paralyzed in an accident. Stretch was relegated to a hospital bed following the accident, and doctors thought he might be paralyzed for life. But eventually through persistent effort Stretch began to gain control of his body once again, and eventually hobbled out of the hospital on his own two feet. To this day Stretch is paralyzed on his right side, and is no longer able to surf or windsurf.
Stretch had to re-learn how to shape following the accident, and he taught himself to shape with his left hand. The accident was a turning point for Stretch, and since then he has been a shaping whirlwind.
“I remember when I surfed and I windsurfed I would always be distracted,” Stretch said. “Now I’m far more focused. I know that I’m shaping from five in the morning to four or five in the afternoon.”
Since the early 2000’s Stretch has been a pioneer of the modern performance quad, and an early proponent of epoxy boards. He adapted the quad design for use in big waves and small, and in 2005 Stretch team rider Anthony Tashnick won the Mavericks contest on a Stretch quad gun, a monumentous event that shook big wave gun design to its core. The implications of this design breakthrough are clear. “Last night was the opening ceremony for the Eddie, and there were 9 Stretch quads in the lineup,” he said. “And there were four or five others that were quads that are similar to what it is we do. So like over half the guys in the lineup had quads underarm.”
Stretch also uses quad designs for his tow boards, which are ridden by some of the most renowned tow surfers in the world like Garret McNamarra, Nathan Fletcher and Jamie Sterling. But quads aren’t just for big waves. Nathan Fletcher can be seen flying his quads around in everything from crappy T-street to huge Pipe.
Shapers have been weighting tow boards for a while now, and Stretch puts a lead weight in a central location on his tow boards too, but soon Stretch is going to start weighting his guns and semi guns too. He’s made some prototypes, and figured out exactly where the weight needs to be to get the maximum performance. If the weight is placed in the correct position, it will actually loosen the board and cut through chop better because the weight will allows the board to pivot around a central position. Stretch says the weight will add inertia to a board, which means that once you get it up to speed it’s not going to slow down as easily.
“You won’t get hung up in the lip as much,” Stretch said. “You’ll be able to penetrate steeper waves, bigger waves, more offshore wind, and also faster moving waves than you would with a lighter board.”
Rest assured that Stretch and his team of fearless test pilots are far from done pushing the boundaries, and will continue to enhance surfboard design in the years to come.
Comments
Sun, Jun 29 | 09:02pm
You guys should know that stretch copied his quads with the love handles and all that stuff exactly from Cole Simler. Cole was a long time shaper for Nathan in san clemente and nathan must have taken his boards to stretch, because cole had those boards ten years ago. Stretch did put them on guns, which is where he got lucky, but the design is not his. Cole deserves some credit
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