With the help of a high-tech machine that may be the only one of its kind on the East Coast, a company that launched in Wrightsville Beach is aiming to revolutionize standup paddleboard design, including building a board designed for a daring ocean adventure.
Clifford Ray, the founder of Prone 2 Paddle, officially launched the line of specialty paddleboards in January, which all feature a “paddle hold” that lets board riders transition from the stand up position, with more power and sight, to lying prone on the board, providing more balance and control. The cove in the middle of the board holds the paddle for the rider, a design that Ray said was unique from his research.
Ray worked out the idea with his friend Kristen Jeno, who reasoned that certainly someone had thought to create a board with a paddle holder built in, but they could not find it. So they, along with the help of local board shaper Jimmy Keith, decided to build one themselves.
“It’s old school meets new school,” Ray said of the design. “We know we’re the original inventors.”
Prone 2 Paddle has launched a full line of SUP paddle boards, but one they are building will be unique for its kind. At the workshop on Shipyard Boulevard in Wilmington, Ray and Keith are working on a 17-foot board that Swiss triathlete Fabian Kremser will use in an attempt to cross the Irish Sea. To ready the board for the crossing attempt, set for some time in 2017, there will have to be extensive testing, along with transporting it overseas.
Ray said the ocean paddle board is a big project for the company that first opened in 2014 in Wrightsville Beach in an office as part of Wrightsville SUP on Salisbury Street. At first, all of the boards were produced through traditional hand-shaping. But carving out the details of the paddle hold in foam took several days and the specialty boards were too time consuming to be cost effective, he said.
Then at a trade show in 2014, Ray discovered an automatic surfboard making machine that utilized “computer numerical cutting” technology to guide a specialty bit through the foam to make the paddle hold.
The machine, made by the 3DM company, can automatically cut the center paddle hold and the contours of the board, reducing what originally took up to four days down to a few hours. Board shapers like Keith still must come in after the machine to do the final hand shaping, but Ray said that the machine is why he believes Prone 2 Paddle can carve out a niche in the standup paddleboard market.
By bringing the machine to Wilmington, Ray said Prone 2 Paddle can help create more local jobs, instead of relying on foreign outsourcing, as machine-made board production is already gaining hold overseas.
“It could be an easy out to go to China, but we don’t want to do that,” Ray said.
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