Mike LaVecchia

Mike LaVec­chia is a Maine surfer/shaper who is the co-founder of Grain Surf­boards. Uti­liz­ing the lat­est tech­nol­ogy, LaVec­chia cre­ates hol­low wooden boards that pos­sess both beauty and func­tion, attract­ing surfers like Kas­sia Meador and Dave Ras­tovich. We caught up with Mike to learn more.

What was life like grow­ing up in Maine?
I actu­ally grew up in New Jer­sey, and only came to Maine about five years ago by way of Ver­mont. We lived in a sub­ur­ban town not far out­side of NYC. It was a good place to grow up, lots of friends around, plenty to do. We spent most of our time either rid­ing around on BMX bikes or skat­ing lit­tle rick­ety quar­ter pipes that we built. As we got older, we spent more time in the sum­mer down at the shore, and lots of time in the win­ter in Ver­mont. So, we really learned to enjoy every sea­son for what it had to offer.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were younger?
I guess that would depend on which time of my life we’re talk­ing about. I’m sure the list would include Hulk Hogan, Craig Kelly, Tony Hawk, Bjorn Borg, Uncle Jimmy, my dad, Jake Bur­ton and John Candy.

When did you get your first surf­board?
About nine years ago. It was a used Yater Spoon.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
Pretty inde­scrib­able really—not so much when I first stood on a surf­board, but the first time I actu­ally felt myself pick­ing up speed and going down the line. I always had a feel­ing that once I started surf­ing, it would change the course of my life. That first wave con­firmed it.

Where did your inter­est in wood-based surf­boards come from?
I’ve been sail­ing for most of my life and, in recent years, work­ing on and around boats as a cap­tain, boat builder and sail maker. I fell in love with wooden boats early on… maybe because they were the only things I could afford. To own a wooden boat, you either have to be handy or wealthy; I knew I could learn to be handy. One of my favorite things to do was to check out boats and how they were constructed.

One day, while I was replac­ing the deck of a boat, I began think­ing about how I could take some of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used in build­ing boats and trans­fer them to surf­boards. Boat styles, designs and con­struc­tions vary from region to region around the world. I thought, “How cool would it be to build surf­boards in dif­fer­ent regions of the world (or even just the US) using local woods and local tech­niques?” In the North­east, we had North­ern White Cedar, and what made it such a great wood for boats made it a great wood for surfboards.

What is your process when cre­at­ing your boards?
Like most boards, they start as an idea. That’s pretty much where the sim­i­lar­i­ties in the process end. We trans­late our ideas care­fully into a 3D model. In the com­puter, we’re able to tweak the shapes, send images to our cus­tomer for their input or gather other surfers and board builders around to com­ment on all the design elements.

Our boards are hol­low, and build­ing them is very much like build­ing a small (or at least thin) boat. Cedar is light­weight and strong, but is heav­ier then other com­mon woods used in surf­boards, such as balsa. We build our boards around an inter­nal frame that comes from the 3D model and which defines just about the entire shape of the board, the out­line, rocker, deck, bot­tom con­tours and most of the rail shape. Start­ing from the bot­tom up, we use a com­bi­na­tion of tech­niques, many of which are derived from dif­fer­ent boat­build­ing meth­ods. A com­bi­na­tion of wide, book-matched planks go on the top and bot­tom of the board with spe­cial strips used around the rails to fill in the area where the top and bot­tom can’t meet.

We buy rough sawn lum­ber from mills here in Maine and mill out the planks, rail strips and block­ing our­selves. Each step leaves an off­cut, and that off­cut is used to cre­ate the next part down the line. The whole method cre­ates as lit­tle waste as possible—most of which goes to mulch or com­post. Com­pared to a cham­bered balsa board, where the insides are com­pletely turned to dust, our boards use about one-third of the material.

Aside from the design phase, each builder here at the shop (either John, Brad or myself) takes each board through the entire process of build­ing, shap­ing, glass­ing and pol­ish­ing. This helps to keep things inter­est­ing for all of us, plus allows us to get to know every lit­tle knot or grain change and how it might effect later steps.

Who are some of the peo­ple rid­ing your boards?
For starters, all of us at Grain ride wood boards pretty much every ses­sion, but that might be obvi­ous. Last autumn, we had Kas­sia Meador, Mikey DeTem­ple and Scotty Stop­nik try­ing out our boards at our home break here in Maine. When they weren’t surf­ing, they hung around the shop for a week build­ing their own boards— Kas­sia a 5’4” fish, Mikey a 5’0” Simmons-inspired twin fin and Scotty a 4’5” Paipo. We designed a slim lit­tle fun­shape with Layne Beach­ley spe­cially for her home break in Aus­tralia and Dave Ras­tovich has a 6’9” mini-gun that he also helped us design. He and my busi­ness part­ner, Brad, built it together on the front lawn of the Bill­abong house on the beach at Pipeline dur­ing the Triple Crown. We recently heard that Don­a­van Franken­re­iter surfed it not long ago at Sunset.

It’s funny that most of the pros that are rid­ing our boards actu­ally built them them­selves. Help­ing peo­ple build their own boards is some­thing that we’re really pumped on. So aside from every­one who is surf­ing the boards that we built here in the shop, there really are hun­dreds of peo­ple that are surf­ing Grain boards that they built with their own hands.

Of all the places you have trav­eled to, what place in par­tic­u­lar stands out? And why?
Hav­ing only been surf­ing for a rel­a­tively short time, my surf travel is lim­ited to most of the East and West Coasts, and Costa Rica (where a good friend used to live). I was lucky to have great job with Bur­ton Snow­boards back in the 80’s and 90’s, and that allowed me to travel around most of the moun­tain­ous regions of the U.S., Canada and some of Europe. I also did a bunch of trav­el­ing while work­ing around boats, up and down the water­ways of the East Coast (from Down East Maine to the Keys, the Caribbean, Gulf of Mex­ico and Panama Canal). The places that stand out the most seem to be the more rugged land­scapes where the moun­tains come down to the sea, places like the British Colum­bia and Ire­land. Life seems sim­ple, but every­thing has a purpose.

What is it that makes you such a nice per­son? What code do you live by?
Hmm, some peo­ple say I’m overly sym­pa­thetic. I’m the devil’s advo­cate. I come from a large fam­ily, have been lucky to be sur­rounded by the best friends one could have. I’m community-based. I love com­pan­ion­ship; I do best when every­one around me is hap­pi­est. I don’t know really. I’m an idea guy. I thrive on enthusiasm.

Who/what inspires you?
I’m inspired by hope and opti­mism, I guess—the idea that things con­tin­u­ally improve and evolve. I’m inspired by peo­ple who don’t set lim­its on their knowl­edge, and by my friends and broth­ers who are all so talented.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
To accept how peo­ple look at sit­u­a­tions dif­fer­ently. To be tol­er­ant of peo­ple that might not agree with your point of view.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
I wish I stood up for myself more in high school. My revenge is know­ing that most of my class­mates are still liv­ing in New Jer­sey sell­ing insur­ance or ana­lyz­ing com­puter data.

What are you most proud of?
That I knew when to say “when” with each tran­si­tion in my life. That I never fol­lowed a path past the point of unhappiness.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
Right now, surf­ing has filled a big void in my life. I’ve always been hap­pi­est when I’m close to the water. I’ve learned that it doesn’t really mat­ter what type of vehi­cle I’m on. Surf­ing has helped to con­firm that life does not need to be filled with pos­ses­sions, that the sim­pler I can exist, the hap­pier I’ll be.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
An egg sand­wich, cof­fee, and a view of the water.

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
Any­one really who is think­ing out­side the box and try­ing new things: Tom and Jon Wegener, Tyler Hatzikian, Scotty Stop­nik, the Mal­loys, Richard Ken­vin and Cyrus Sut­ton are just a few that come to mind.

What is cur­rently your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
My 12 footer on a chest high day in front of the Nevada at Long Sands.

What’s your favorite meal?
Depends on who makes it. If I’m mak­ing it, spaghetti with meat sauce. If it’s my mom, meat­loaf with mashed pota­toes and peas. If I’m going out, maybe pad thai or a burger with fries.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
My iPod mostly sits on a shelf col­lect­ing dust. You might say that tech­nol­ogy frus­trates me. If I were to put some music on, it might be Crosby Stills and Nash, The Doo­bie Broth­ers, The Shins, Nick Drake or Frank Sinatra.

What causes, projects, orga­ni­za­tions do you sup­port?
Most of the sup­port I lend has always come in the form of action. That’s what led me to work with non-profits like the Lake Cham­plain Mar­itime Museum and the Gun­dalow Company—encouraging boat­build­ing and hands-on edu­ca­tion, and teach­ing mar­itime his­tory and ecol­ogy by way of tra­di­tional sail­ing ves­sels. Through Grain Surf­boards, we’re able to pro­mote and prac­tice envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, sus­tain­able forestry and full life­cy­cle think­ing. I look up to and admire orga­ni­za­tions as big as Sea Shep­erd Soci­ety and as small as Ver­mont Fam­ily Forests.

What are you most grate­ful for?
The expe­ri­ences we had as fam­ily grow­ing up and how those expe­ri­ences intro­duced me to the life and the friends that I now have.

What’s next for Mike LaVec­chia?
Eat­ing some lunch, answer­ing some emails and hope­fully going for a paddle.

Find out more about Mike LaVecchia’s com­pany Grain Surf­boards here. Pho­tog­ra­phy cour­tesy of Nick LaVec­chia.