San Clemente Times:
It’s said that some of the best ideas are born of despair. For Thorpe “Sharky” Reeder, that expression is all too true, and the Capistrano Beach inventor-artist-fisherman hopes one day that the resulting idea will one day pay off in financial success.
Reeder is the inventor of the GripBoard, a wave riding device that fills the void between bodysurfing and bodyboarding. Two years after moving to California from Florida, he suffered a vicious skateboarding accident that made standing up on a surfboard too difficult.
A lifelong waterman, he started looking around for other wave riding products after trying bodyboarding and disliking it. He couldn’t find anything, so he made his own device. His first crude model was fashioned from a serving tray from McDonald’s onto which he shaped and screwed two teak fins (he was building a boat at the time and had extra teak lying around) and glued a handle made of rubber hose. That model morphed in 1982 into a form made of foam and glass, like a surfboard, that looks much like the GripBoards of today.
To date Reeder has sold around 200 boards, but he hopes to grow the business to where he’s selling upwards of 3,000 a year. He’s marketing the boards at key industry trade events, and big name surfers such as Greg Noll, Tom Curren, Corky Carroll and Jeff Clark have recently bought them. A handful of surf shops nationwide carry the boards, and that number is growing.
Photo by GripBoard Company, LLC..