Imagine a quiver of surfboards made for varying wave heights/quality/conditions, but each model felt familiar and reliable. That’s the goal that Britt Merrick and Channel Islands set out to achieve in their line of Happy boards.
“What we’re trying to do with this is have a continuity in the rockers and general feel of the board, so that as you move from your small wave board to your good-wave board to your step up, you want to have a continuity of feel between those boards,” Britt explainedin a separate video. In the video below, a couple of Happy Family members were put through their paces in playful Indonesian pointbreaks. No technical breakdown, just good old-fashioned ripping.
The quartet of boards includes the Better Everyday (step-down daily driver), Two Happy (high-performance shortboard), Big Happy (performance board for bigger bodies) and Happy Traveler (step-up/travel surfboard). Each gets pushed around by a squad of CI riders that includes Cam Richards, Peter Mel, Shun Murakami, Kyuss King and Kian Martin.
“Hopefully, you find yourself at some point in a situation where you’re surfing enough waves where you’ve got to go between your step up Happy Traveler and back to your Everyday because the conditions are changing,” Britt said. “What’s hard about those circumstances sometimes is that the boards feel so different and now you have to adjust. What we’re trying to do is eliminate that by, again, having a continuity of rockers and foils and feels so those traditions are seamless.”
Does the Happy model serve that purpose? Even if they don’t feel exactly the same, the surfing from Cam, Peter, Shun, Kyuss and Kian indicates these are boards that work just fine at the famed archipelago.
Related: Keep Your Surfing Consistent With Channel Islands’ Happy Family