Stewart Surfboards

There aren’t many bigger legends in the surf world than Bill Stewart, his incredible surfboard range and latterly his collaboration with Surftech have cemented his position as one of the true benchmarks of the industry. Bill paid his dues polishing and sanding surfboard whilst learning everything he could about shaping.

While painting, shaping and riding for Rick James, Bill’s artistic skills caught the attention of Ocean Pacific (OP) and he was hired to airbrush for them. After painting hundreds of surfboards for OP, he was hired by South Shore, and then Hobie surf for his unique skills and shaping abilities. During this time shaping surfboards he still surfed competitively and had great success at the highest level surfing for Hobie.

In 1978, Bill started “Stewart Surfboards” and opened the first shop in Laguna Beach, California. It was in the mid 80s when Bill’s inventive mind, came up with the idea that would be the one of the greatest achievements of his distinct surfboard designs. He wanted a longboard that would go faster, and yet turn harder than current long board designs. The design that came about as a result of that passion was the bevelled rail Hydro Hull. It had a distinctive single to double concave and a 2 + 1 fin arrangement. The Hydro hull has become a design classic and is still a proven design standard for the modern longboard. The success of the Hydro Hull led to huge growth for Stewart Surfboards. A larger shop in his favourite surf town of San Clemente soon followed, and this shop has been at that same spot for over 25 years.

Bill has himself shaped over 40,000 boards in his career, and Stewart Surfboards has produced over 100,000 boards since the start of the company, many other shapers have come and gone in this time and along with the late great Donald Takayama his shapes continue to set the standard. The colab with Surftech gave new appeal to their ranges for both shapers with the added durability but also performance characteristics of the tech the colab is going from strength to strength. The Stewart Hydro Hull longboard and fun board shapes are a brilliant alternative to PU constructions and continue to grow in appeal year after year.