Kelly Slater Surfs and Shares Thoughts on Helium & LFT Gamma

April 30, 2018

KELLY SURFS AND SHARES THOUGHTS ON THE HELIUM AND LFT GAMMA

Press play to watch.

The Gamma is the mind of an eleven time World Champion distilled into one surfboard shape, built in two different ways, each brand new.

Helium is light. It’s flexy. It’s springy but ridged. It weighs so little it shocks you and it’s so responsive it talks to you. It makes generating speed easy in waves that are not easy, the weak kind that we wish had more push.

Smiling is easy when you’ve got two new boards and you’re waxing them up to ride eight perfect waves. (Photo: Glasser.)

But LFT is different.

It’s firm. It’s reassuring under foot. It controls the speed that powerful waves give you with uncommon precision and it’s impervious to wind on the face or chop on the water.

But who cares, mate.

We’re not Kelly so toss our opinion out, and take his.

Around the corner on the Helium Gamma. Kelly rode the Gamma in both Helium and LFT in the video above. (Photo: Glasser.)

Because this is a board review. And board reviews are great for grasping how a surfboard might feel under your feet based on how the board feels under someone else’s feet.

Especially when those feet belong to an eleven time World Champion, even if they look like the feet of Frankenstein.

Frankenfoot looks fine when wrapped in a Yulex cuff and 100% post-consumer PET. (Photo: Glasser.)

The format was simple – we showed up at the Surf Ranch on April 10th with two brand new Gammas – one in Helium and one in LFT – and we told Kelly to surf them.

The ‘Brand New’ part of the review was important because we wanted to eliminate variables and biases – no previous memories about how good one felt at Tavarua, and no familiar dents or heel marks that could make one board feel better than the other.

Just two fresh ones. Clean slates. Totally stock. Exactly the same as the ones that sit on surf shop racks, pulled straight from our headquarters in San Diego the previous night.