Marketplace to movie prop? General Hospital star Ryan Paevey restores a surfboard before a tropical shoot

Nothing on General Hospital has explained where Nathan has been for the past seven years after being declared dead. But Ryan Paevey tossed something unexpected our way — just not the kind of answer fans were hoping for. Instead of spoilers, he dropped a sun-soaked breadcrumb trail on social media, and it starts with a beat-up surfboard and a plane ticket with “tropical” written all over it.

A General Hospital star preps for an island shoot

On Instagram, Paevey wrote, “In anticipation of our island adventure, me and my buddies picked up a fun little beat-up board on FB marketplace and made an art project out of it...and a functional one at that. Little TLC and she should serve us well in the water.” You can practically feel the grin behind it — the kind you get when you know you’ve just turned a junk find into something with a second life.

The attached video opens with the board in rough shape, the kind of “good bones” project you only take on if you already love the ocean. Paevey walks through the whole thing with that breezy, self-aware charm he slips into without trying. “So on a whim I bought a cheap beat-up surfboard on Facebook Marketplace,” he said, sanding down the battered surface, “and I thought it might be a fun little artsy fartsy project…” It’s the tone of a guy who’s done this many times before.

As he keeps talking, he finally lets the destination slip: Barbados. He laughs mid-sentence, admitting he’d never said it out loud before, then leans into the excitement of it: warm air, warm water, a shoot he’s been “sneaking away on the weekends” to film. It’s half confession, half victory lap. Then the camera cuts — just briefly — to surfing legend Jerry Lopez gliding across a wave, the same lightning-bolt motif now painted on Paevey’s board.

Turning a battered board into a travel companion

Once the sanding is done, Paevey explained how they spray-painted the whole thing black and added that classic Lopez bolt, “a far better surfer than me,” he said with a shrug that somehow lands as both humility and challenge. Then comes a quick clip of Paevey himself catching water — first in San Diego, just a test run, and then the promise of more once the shoot moves fully into the tropics.

The charm of the video isn’t the finished product; it’s the process. The casual tinkering. The laughter between cuts. The way he keeps circling back to the same idea: this board might ride beautifully, or it might “sink like a stone,” and he’s equally thrilled either way. That last line lands with a huge grin, like he’s already hearing the splash.

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Whatever Nathan’s been up to on-screen on General Hospital, Paevey’s been busy off-screen — sanding, painting, surfing, and turning a Marketplace rescue into a companion for a film shoot that suddenly looks a lot more fun than anything happening in Port Charles.

General Hospital can be seen weekdays on ABC and Hulu.

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