Blank No. 220
on the racks · 6'2" outline
Aubade · 15°51′ N — 97°04′ W · Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca
One line down the blank decides the whole board.
The bench
Veta is a single shaping bay a five-minute walk from Playa Zicatela, where the sand-bottom point throws the heavy, line-driven waves the boards are read for. Tomás Rivera has planed foam here since 2011. Every blank is skinned, drawn, and foiled by hand, then glassed by eye — no two rockers off the same template, because no two riders stand the same on a wave.
A board that carries a rider well is a matter of a few thousandths of an inch of foam moved from one place to another. That is the whole craft, and it is why each board leaves the bay with a number, not a model name.
The line
Tell the bench who is riding and where. The outline, the rocker, and the fins redraw together in one motion — the way a shaper pencils a template over the blank. What you draw here is the board Tomás starts from.
Made
Five materials, and the whole board is one or another of them. A 6+4 schedule means six ounces over four on the deck where your chest lands, four alone under the tail where it needs to flex. The weight goes where the wear is.
The maker
Tomás shaped his first blank in 2004 and opened the bay above Zicatela in 2011. He surfs the point most mornings before the bay opens, which is where the boards are actually designed — a rocker gets changed because a wave the week before asked for it, not because a catalogue turned over.
He works to the rider, not to a range. Send him the board you ride now and what it does wrong, and the next one corrects it. That is the only brief he needs.
— Tomás
The stock
When a build leaves foam over, or Tomás wants to try a shape, it goes on the wall ready to ride. These are the ones standing there this week.
A round-tail thruster foiled for Zicatela on a clean morning. Enough foam under the chest to make the drop, thin enough in the tail to hold the wall.
Pulled-in pin, extra nose lift, glassed heavier for the bigger days at the point. Drawn narrow so it sits in a steep face without chattering.
A wide swallow-tail twin for smaller, softer days — fast off the bottom, loose off the top. Laminated with a single seam of sea-green resin tint down the deck.
Order a board
This is the order, not a checkout. Fill in what you know — the fields carried from the line are already here — and Tomás replies within two days with the rocker he'd draw, the price, and the lead time. No card is taken here; the board is confirmed by correspondence and paid when it's booked in.
A custom board runs $850–$1,400, glassing and fins in.