We’re absolutely over the moon after getting a text from Britt Merrick that we won Stab magazine’s “Stab in the Dark” project with three-time world champ Mick Fanning! Britt was at the SITD World Premiere last night in Sydney, and was beyond pumped to see Mick ripping up the big screen atop a CI design he’d custom shaped for him, only to be topped moments later by learning we’d won!

The concept for Stab’s 4th Edition of the SITD film project was to have Mick begin with a quiver of eleven murdered out boards made by eleven different shapers, and then was tasked to narrow them all down to his favorite of the bunch.

All were built with various Sustainable Surf Eco-Certified constructions (epoxy), and each was unmarked and blackened out so he wasn’t influenced by any logos, signatures or other visual cues—allowing him to suss them all without a biased read.

His pick? Our Channel Islands Eco-Certified Fever built with Spine-Tek: 5’10” x 18 5/8″ x 2 5/16″ 26.4L

Worth nothing: Prior to the filming of this SITD project, Mick’s experience with “epoxy” was, as he put it, “slim to none.” With that in mind, Stab made it mandatory that all shapers send in boards featuring some combination of stringerless EPS blanks, carbon fiber, and epoxy resin.

The results of Mick’s first dance with all 11 shapers’ proprietary tech wasn’t a surprise to us because we’ve been committed for some time now to addressing some of the perceived performance shortcomings of traditional EPS constructions but believe we now have the best answer.

With the advent of “Spine-Tek” Reflex Technology, we’ve seen giant leaps in EPS construction performance. From positive customer feedback to results on the world stage with surfers like Eithan Osborne winning events atop Spine-Tek, and now with Mick’s unbiased enthusiasm for our Spine-Tek built Fever, we feel this is just the tip of the iceberg for this type of board construction’s potential. But we’ll have a lot more to share on all this real soon… For now, let’s celebrate!

Photography by Cory Wilson