A new surfing prototype has hit South Mission Beach and other local sand sanctuaries, delighting lifeguards and beachgoers alike with her performance of agile tricks on even the smallest of waves. Melika is not the typical surfer girl. At less than two feet tall, this next-generation surfer can ride the tiniest of waves and still launch five to seven feet in the air, showing off aerial surf tricks with ease. No matter how hard she falls, she always gets right back up again. Melika is an RC Surfer — a remote-controlled surfer, that is — with a range of 300 yards, equipped with a propeller that turns at 20,000 rpm. She is mounted on a weighted board to ensure the surfer self-rights after each crash. Australian Jason Hall invented the original radio-controlled surfing model 30 years ago after the swells on the southeastern coast of Australia went flat for a time and the natives began to get restless. In 1995, Hall’s design was refined, and he launched his own radio-controlled surfer company called RC Surfer. Longtime Midway-area resident Tom Dart first got involved in the hobby when Kyosho, a Japanese RC company, launched its own model in 2000. By 2005, however, the company no longer produced the model, which left Dart with three broken surfers and no new parts to be had. With a DVD from Maui RC Surfers, the modern-day innovators of the brand, Dart began building his own model — Melika — named after an old girlfriend. He started his project with a $20 surfboard he found on Craigslist, stripped the glass to get to the foam and got to work on his new creation. “I had never shaped surfboards before,” Dart said. “I had to learn so much. I got a how-to DVD called ‘Shaping 101’ and ‘Glassing 101,’ used YouTube a lot, and thank goodness for surfersteve.com,” he said. “I also made scaled-down versions of common tools used in shaping. All this on top of the hardware installations.” Although Dart launched into a hobby that was entirely new to him, he found peace in shaping surfboard foam and a sense of accomplishment in making a “hot-rod little surfboard” out of someone else’s scraps. Throughout the project, Dart pieced together hardware from all realms of the RC world — from monster trucks to jet boats — until Melika was finally perfected. “She is also made of surfboard foam, the scraps leftover from the board glued together, glassed and painted,” he said. “I think she was 16 little pieces glued together.” Dart said the six hours of sculpting Melika was “the ultimate rush,” which took time, numerous scraps of foam, glue, sandpaper and a photo of professional surfer Carissa Moore. “I guess there’s a sculptor inside me,” he said. The entire project took Dart four months of hard work to complete, including time spent learning how to shape foam and glass on boards, how to make the wood fins, and vetting various prototypes to come up with the perfect model for his purposes. Whether high tide or low tide, Dart and Melika can be seen regularly on weekdays at her favorite surf spots near Dog Beach and at South Mission Beach at the jetty. Dart doesn’t intend to stop there. “It’s way too cool not to continue,” he said. “Melika will not be alone. Nikki is on the way and Olivia will not be far behind — the RC Surf Divas.”