Options forming.....
1) When a board is 6 lbs lighter, it accelerates so fast with each stroke, it takes half the effort to catch a wave. The old Naish feels like I'm pulling a tanker with my paddle blade.
2) Lighter boards float better. The new board is 3 liters less, but still floats me better.
3) The balanced template (wide point in the middle) paddles straighter.
4) The new board is so easy and stable (30% more stable than the Naish) that it just made the old 7'10 Dumpster Diver obsolete.
5) SUP may never be the same again! Woohoo.
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| Floats just right........ |
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| Only with a 14.5 lb board can you get excited over 6" surf |
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| Comparing the Naish stability. It feels like the bottom is round. |
6 comments:
The float looks spot on for you! If it feels more stable than the Naish, it should be better in a little choppier conditions.
Lots of good r&d. You've got to get that puppy out here and into some juice! I'm thinkin' it would go insane! Besides, I wanna ride it.
Got to say Dwight the overall 'look' of the board appears right as well - in the pic with you holding it, it looks well proportioned visually. Some of the shorter production stuff looks a bit too 'Porky' and ungainly, yours almost appears sleek. You don't mess around - respect.
Gary, we dream of surfing in CA someday. For sure when we retire.
Steve, I keep wondering why the big brands are not just blowing up their best short board shapes. That's all I did. Maybe my shape won't work in a real wave. We haven't had good surf in weeks.
Other than standing and paddling around we want the boards to perform like shortboards. I think it will work, shaping boards that are modeled after shortboards.
What the thickness and total weight?
IMHO the primary factor that inhibits (and always will) our SUPs from surfing like regular shortboards is volume. And there's no way around that. Dwight is definitely on the right track by reducing volume and going light in his high performance SUPs. I think he's down to 105L and 13.5 pounds without fins or pad. That's fantastic! When you get boards into those low volumes the need for an extraordinary athlete to ride them becomes apparent. Even still, there's too much heft there for a SUP to perform like a shortboard. Don't get me wrong. I'm a dedicated SUP guy, riding an 8' SUP based on a mini-Simmons template, and improving performance is a never ending goal. But I think there are limits.
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