This may be an impossible question to answer without personally riding and handling the board and maybe not even then but here goes…
Board specs: 6’10” X 18” X 22” X 15.5” X 3” (Liddle style hull)
Vee in front of fin about ¾ inch deep runs forward 12-18 inches. Has a bit of flat couple inches wide down stringer plus lot of roll under rails so not a hard panel vee by any stretch…
Body specs: 5’3” X 130 pounds (max) size 7 shoes
Question is why it feels like I have to overcommit myself for every direction change even small ones? As a result, even though I can roll it up on a rail and carve a turn and it takes off like a scalded dog when I do, it takes all I’ve got to change lines. Feel like I have to almost wait and let it slow down a bit before I can even try to get it back on the other rail. Small adjustments take a lot of effort so I can’t really do flat arch rail to rail speed pumps. If I get a bit off balance, on other boards I have been able to sort of ankle/knee adjust the line and bring board under me. On this one, I am pretty much doomed unless I can get myself back to the line the board is on. A bit off balance and I don’t have enough left to adjust the boards track.
Possible answers I’ve come up with are
lack of ability riding a hull
too much fin
just too much board overall ie too wide, too wide in tail for my size/weight, too thick though I haven’t felt like this on conventional longboards until waves get a lot bigger
I’d love any insight, speculation etc as I am currently playing w/ fin size alteration and planning to make a board based on all this soon. So far in waist to shoulder high waves it works pretty well but as soon as there is some juice/speed I still fell like I am driving a runaway truck. Feedback will be folded into the planning mixture.
Contact Rich Sanders and he’ll ask for more details.
My guess is that maybe he will fix you up with a narrower based, and/or more vertically oriented, and/or thicker foiled fin that will make things better.
I wonder if it’s just width, less rocker and straighter outline, smallish foot, light guy–the out of control thing sounds like you can’t get it on rail with the nose headed the right way, which is either big fin, or lack of rocker and/or straight outline–can’t imagine you put a really fat tipped fin or big base on a hull since youre light
any way you could put up an outline and rocker shot and pic of the fin?
also, if your tail is flat out, no roll, no vee, seems like that’s less effective tail rocker/release when you go to turn
EIDT: Lee’s thing is based on experience, mine’s just kinda thinking
here’s some pics. crud on the fin is just sanding dust from rebuilding base after moving pin and it hasn’t been wet since I did that. (sorry can’t post in line from here)
Call Spencer and ask him! I’m sure he’ll give you better info than we of the peanut gallery. Steve K and Greg Liddle were small guys and they ripped 22-23 inch wide hulls.
Tomorrow looks like a good day for R&D, Doc. Building south swell(S), high pressure, and just a hint of wind in the forecast. If it’s anything like this past weekend, you should be able to get that thing dialed. If not, you might just have to hand it over to a big guy like me (150lbs, size 8feet).
Today not the best for R&D. Long long lulls w/ occasional fairly powerful zipper lefts (backside). Some improvements w/ more cutting to go but now pretty clear that for this particular person (me) the board is too wide and not enough rocker as well, though narrower tail might help compensated for that a bit.
Finally got around to measuring rocker. If measure to actual bottom of board (not rail apex) the nose=3 1/4 and tail=1 1/8 Pretty flat is right. It does have its moments, esp nice in mushy weaker waves it is a juice extractor. Once I get the fin dialed it will either be my “longboard” or for sale…
Whoa, that’s FLAT. Slide the fin to the back of the box and scoot forward 1/2 inch at a time. Betcha this works; back edge of the tip of the fin one inch up from the tail block (Liddle flex fin).
Itty bitty sweetspot. Find it and mark it with something. It’s going to be back from where you’d surf a Liddle.
LeeV currently its at 12 3/4 from trail edge. I tried it a bit farther back and started to feel like too far between turn and trim. I will definitely move it back and revist that sort of fin set next go out though.
Give it a shot…Some times you’re just not gonna click with a board. I never clicked with my M3P, which seemed designed to do exactly what I wanted a hull to do…
