Earlier this year it was alleged Kelly Slater had purchased a large stake in Firewire surfboards. Beachgrit have just broken news that Kelly is days away from inking a deal that will see him take full control of Firewire. Read here. Neither Kelly nor current Firewire management have made any formal announcement.

During the lay days of the Quiksilver Pro there were sightings of Kelly at Lennox Head, testing out a Tomo (Daniel Thompson) design. Tomo is also one of the guest shapers at Firewire. Then in round three at the Quiksilver Pro he did a board change mid heat, for a Tomo, but didn’t catch another wave. It was definitely not your conventional 5’9” and with its round nose, and wide tail it almost looked like some kind of alien craft.

After his loss to WCT Rookie, Italo Ferreria, Tracks asked Kelly if we could expect to see him riding more of the same this season.

“Yeah um … he and I are working together a little bit. I’ve always liked his ideas,” he said coyly, before continuing.

“I know visually they’re hard for people to get around sometimes. Some people love it just for the ride other people just hate how it looks. But there’s always ways to fix that … at least visually for people.”

Does that “fix” involve developing an aesthetically pleasing design at Firewire with Tomo? Time will tell and we can expect prototypes to be revealed at Bells, especially considering Kelly’s history of experimenting with his equipment in the early rounds.

Meanwhile Daniel Thompson told Tracks he’s made Kelly a batch of boards but couldn’t elaborate further.

“Mate, it’s very early days with KS. I've been asked to build him a couple boards to play with but there’s no certainties to if or when he may choose to ride one in an event as he is also experimenting with boards from other shapers.”

If news of Kelly’s full takeover at Firewire is true then there will be a stable of “guest shapers” for KS to work with. Currently Matt Biolos, John Pyzel, Luke Short and Dan Thompson have shapes under the Firewire umbrella.

But back to the Tomo’s and the innovation behind them that Kelly seems to be so drawn to.

“It’s more about the function of the board. I like that he thinks out of the box. He’s not necessarily influenced by anyone else. He comes from a linage of people that think outside the box. His Dad, Mark, is a pretty innovative guy who spent a lot of time with George Greenough a lot of time thinking about boards and equipment in a different way and I kind of like that. It inspires you to think about something different.”

Expect further speculation on the KS/Firewire deal to reverberate out of all surf media sites this week.