THE DERRINGER ft. Miguel Sinclair with his new signature surfboard | A film by Alex Patrick

How did I get my own big model? That's a good question. I was born in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on August 24th, 1991 and I grew up in Bucerias, a small town about 30 minutes north. Born in the 60s in a small town called Compostela, about two hours inland. She moved to Bucerias when she was really young and grew up here with her nine siblings. My dad was born in California in the late 40s. He was a surfer so he traveled a lot looking for waves. On one of his many trips to Mexico he met my mom. They fell in love, got married and he ended up here for good. In 1996 my parents opened up the first surf shop in the area. It's called the Coral Reef Surf Shop and it's been in business for 27 years. My dad taught me how to surf when I was five years old. I can still remember him taking me surfing every weekend to a local spot called Angloten. None of my friends surfed and I remember being torn between playing on the beach with my cousins and going surfing with my dad. Luckily he kept pushing me and I got hooked. A few years later he gave me my first surfboard. I was eight years old. The board was shaped by Joe Blair. It was half turquoise and half blue. Once I got old enough my parents put me to work at the surf shop. At 15 I started doing ding repair. One of our best clients, Roy McLean, would always get his boards repaired by me. He saw some potential in my work and decided to give me two blanks to see what I could do. At 21 I shaped my first surfboard out of one of those blanks Roy gave me. I still have it today. It wasn't pretty but it floated and it made me want to shape more. I had nobody to teach me so I learned the hard way by watching YouTube videos. As I worked on my shaping skills I was also making sure to surf a lot. In 2015 Israel Preciado hosted the first Mexi Lockfest in Sayulita. Getting to compete with some of the world's best longboarders was incredible. It introduced me to traditional longboarding with no leash, single fins, and old school shapes. Something that wasn't very common around here but I knew I found my thing. In the summer of 2020 I was feeling stuck. I really wanted to learn more about board building other than just YouTube and I wanted to get better at surfing too. So I decided to head up to California to where my dad grew up, rent a van and live in it full surf bum style. A lot of my dad's good friends were board builders from back in the day and they took me right in. I got to learn so much from their decades of experience spending six months observing everything they were willing to teach me. When I came back to Mexico I was feeling motivated. California helped me improve both in board building and surfing. A year after I returned from California the owners of Bing surfboards started looking for a new team rider to represent the brand in Mexico. We got introduced during the 2021 Mexi Lockfest and I was offered a chance to ride for Bing. After I started riding for them the team took me right in and now it feels like a family. I especially got close to Matt Calvani who's a head shaper and owner of Bing surfboards. We'd often nerd out on board designs and eventually started talking about my own model. Matt and I went hours going back and forth between outlines, tail rockers, nose shapes, rails all just to figure out what I wanted. And finally Matt brought that board into life. It was amazing watching his years of experience in real life. The board we designed was a modern pig style log. I knew I wanted something different than what they had in their lineup. It has plenty of lift on the nose so it nose rides amazing but it also trims and turns like butter just the way I like to surf. I feel very grateful to have my own model with such an iconic brand like Bing surfboards. So now we have the board and it was time to name it. My dad had passed the previous year and I knew I wanted to honor him. In his teens he was president of the Swami Surfing Association. He was part of the surf industry working as head salesman at Hanson Surfboards and at one point he had his own model with them. The slogan said the Derringer fits in any pocket. As a kid I remember finding this out of my dad with the Derringer and just thinking it was genius. I reached out to Hanson and they loved the idea of carrying on his legacy by reusing the name of this model. And to honor my dad I wanted to name my own model the same.