Long Beach surfboard display breaks Guinness world record

Participants of Long Beach’s Fin2Tip event on May 21 at Riverside Boulevard beach broke the world record for the longest line of surfboards — pending evidence — as 685 surfboards extended more than 5,000 feet.

The previous record stood at 608 boards, which measured 3,685 feet, and the new mark will be made official after the evidence is submitted to Guinness World Records, said event organizer Laura O’Shaughnessy Swan, including a log book with measurements and a bevy of photographs, along with proof from two architects and two witnesses.

O’Shaughnessy Swan said organizing the event was a long but rewarding effort, as she sent in an application to Guinness World Records a year ago after her son, Ben, saw residents of Newcastle, Australia break the previous-best mark last February. Though unable to secure the funding for an official judge, the community came together, including the lifeguards, Skudin Surf and her students at Long Beach Middle School, to raise money, record the evidence and break the record.

“I said it feels epic, and a friend said epic barely even begins to describe it,” O’Shaughnessy Swan said. “It felt like one sea-loving family working toward a common goal as stewards of the sea…so I feel really satisfied that we were able to achieve that and that people showed up for it.”