Where Water Touches Foam: Rebecca Benjamin and the Science of Surfboards
There is a particular quiet to a shaping bay when the door is half open and the light comes in sideways. It is the same light that has always mattered in surfing. Not the glare of a contest beach or the polish of a showroom, but the patient, forgiving kind that lets you see curves for what they are. That is where Rebecca Benjamin has chosen to work, standing at the intersection of foam dust and equations, bringing a calm intelligence to a craft that has long trusted feel over proof.
Rebecca is a graduate researcher at UC Santa Cruz, working on a Master’s thesis that does something quietly radical. She treats the surfboard not just as an object of intuition, but as a system. Her project uses computational fluid dynamics alongside hands-on board building to study how water actually moves beneath a board. Not in theory, not in marketing language, but under real conditions, with real surfers, in real water.
The work itself is tactile and grounded. Custom-shaped boards. Carefully mapped bottom contours. Tuft testing, where tiny threads trace the invisible paths of flow. Underwater imaging that turns the chaos beneath a board into something you can study frame by frame. It is slow work, deliberate work, the kind that respects the long history of experimentation that defines surfboard design while still asking what else might be learned.
What makes this effort resonate is not just the science, but the way it is being carried forward. This research is not meant to live quietly on a shelf after a defense. Rebecca is building it to be shared. Visual, practical, and accessible to the broader surf and watercraft community. Early support from Surfline, US Blanks, andvNablaflow reflects a recognition that this kind of work matters beyond academia. It suggests a hunger, still very much alive, for understanding that deepens performance without stripping away soul.
Out of this research comes Benjmark Surf Co., a name that signals intent more than branding. Benjmark is not about disruption or reinvention. It is about paying closer attention. About letting craftsmanship meet measurement, and seeing what happens when neither is asked to give way. The boards are built by hand. The data is gathered carefully. The conclusions are earned, not assumed.
There is something reassuring in watching surfing move forward this way. Not through shortcuts, but through curiosity. Not through noise, but through careful observation. Rebecca’s work reminds us that progress in surfing has always come from people willing to slow down and look harder, whether they were sanding rails in a garage or watching lines of water slide across foam.
We are proud to welcome Rebecca Benjamin and Benjmark Surf Co. into this community of builders, thinkers, and surfers who understand that the best ideas often emerge where patience and obsession overlap. This is not a departure from surfing’s past. It is a continuation of it, sharpened by new tools and guided by an old instinct. Fluid dynamics and surfboards do, in fact, belong together. And this is only the beginning.
Meet Rebecca and the screening of her company on February 6 at Sequoias of the Sea.