The Arakawa Silmaril marks the beginning of an exciting time in the Arakawa surfboard design journey. And like many worthwhile things, it was birthed out of adversity. They knew they needed to improve their lineup, so they spent 11 months in a heads-down, stroke till you croak focused effort with the whole factory team. The first step was finding a key team rider/point man to work closely with the Arakawa two-man design team (Nat Woolley and myself) as they developed this new batch of shortboards. The folks at Arakawa called up Shayden Pacarro and went to work.

As they built prototype after prototype, his skill, sensitivity, understanding, and clearly defined performance goals gave Arakawa the accurate and systematic feedback they needed. Shaydo was looking for a power surfer’s blade—a fast and drivey shortboard that gripped and accelerated when he pushed on its rail, and with a subtle shift in weight, would corner off the bottom for a vertical attack. Now 12 months later, Shaydo has proven himself to be the most astute test pilot Arakawa has worked with in 30 years (since Derek and Michael Ho).