TESTING
JC: There never seems any let up for Scotty throughout the year. Every time I chat to him on the phone, he’s either in Bangkok, heading on a road trip or flying overseas with a shed load of board bags. Far from retirement, McKercher’s workload has increased where that new hip is working overtime to support the old one!
SM: “Waveboards are done by Mid-November, so at the end of October was when we put the final touches to what we’ve been working on of late. And I’m really stoked with the result! But when they go to Mould I’ve still got a lot of SUP boards that need to be tested by December. WA is such a perfect place for testing with such a large variety of conditions available. Usually we get the first approval boards for a shoot in Jan/Feb, which has kinda revolved around western Oz due to simplicity of me having a house and cars and conditions all there. There’s still some new concept testing over the west Australian summer as well. Come the end of West Oz summer there’s the Maui shoot for windsurf and SUP that I tend to help out in a lot of ways, along with sailing in the shoots.
April and May have predominantly been SUP-biased, with a lot of trips between Bangkok and Phuket, which has been handy as the flight isn’t very long. But three trips a week has been known to happen. June into July I’ve been going to the Canaries with a lot of prototypes to get some Euro high wind conditions in, as well as feedback from the rest of the team who are all there for the Gran Canaria and Tenerife comps. Aug is pretty SUP-oriented with some dealer meetings, but come Sept and Oct, it’s full-bore for the home stretch to get boards ready for mid-November. So there are a few more trips between Bangkok and WA. All in all it’s pretty hectic year-round! The best and worst thing is all the travel I get to do. As we speak it’s the end of October and I’ve already racked up more than 70 boarding passes this year. I love and hate it all at the same time. I love the fact that I get so much time on the water, in two sports that I’m passionately engaged with. But then I don’t see my family and friends at home very much. It means a lot to me when someone comes up and tells me how much they love their board, but it shits me when a board gets a really good test in one mag and then another mag will then go and write it off. And I think one mag even bagged a board for being one thing and then later praised it for being the opposite. But I take it all to heart too
much probably!”