Could you tell your favourite board just by feeling it under your arm? By surfing one wave on it? Imagine the questions you’d have in your mind if there were no markings, no pencil on the stringer, not even a number.

That’s the question Stab magazine put to Julian Wilson earlier this year, when they shipped him off to Western Australian with two coffin bags full of boards and a film crew. Inside the bags were 11 surfboards, shaped by 11 different shapers for a ‘mystery surfer’. All the shapers knew when asked to shape the surfboards was to make it for a 6’0” surfer who weighed 80kg.

Not a marking on each one, all white, not even a tail pad applied. Julian holds each under his arm and proclaims “This one’s a ‘good wave’ board. A Simon Anderson or something.” It wasn’t, in fact it was shaped by Rod Dhalberg, but it sure illustrated the point that Julian Wilson can pick a board just by the ‘under arm test’.

Throughout the next few weeks, he put them all though their paces in a variety of conditions. From howling offshore chop, to beautiful glassy beachies and everything in between, Julian surfed his butt off in his quest to rate the boards, but most importantly guess who made them.

“I knew this board was going to work, it feels the best under the arm out of the batch and I kinda felt that straight away. It was fast, super responsive, exciting. Like right from my first wave you just stand up on it and it feels like you have all the time in the world to go where you want on a wave. Put the board in the spot you want, you have time to make that decision. “

He was talking about the #99, the DHD, the one he picked up in the first place, held under his arm, and ‘just knew’…

Watch the intriguing video below, full of huge (and we mean HUGE) aerials, quirky comments and one of the most varied display of conditions you’ll see in a surf movie.

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