its kool you mentioned this topic …
coz i was gonna rehash the old thread on width verses thickness…
just recently ive found the crossover point where width alone doesnt help, and your back to relying on volume for benifit…
your board silver back is still smaller than mine , and im a tad lighter than you…im about 220…
ive yet to find a wave so small i cant ride it …
but my longboard is a different story…
i did a super thin longboard with a concave deck…first time i rode it was in a comp , i was late ran over the hill and my heat was next…just waxed and straight into it …
the surf was pitiful , sets were knee to groin high, most of the time you were going straight in on dribble foam waiting for something to happen,
i came in from that surf a bit undecided…i bombed that contest, semis casualty…
a few days later there was another contest in the same region…this time the waves were good over the 3 days nothing under waist high up to head and a half on the good day…
just seriously blazed won every heat and took out my division…same board…
so just recently one of my team guys went to france for the world longboard titles…
he was seeded into a higher round …
i made him a board like mine , wide, thin ,concaved deck…
the surf was shocking,he said his heat was delayed 3 days just waiting for a swell…then it was knee high super soft dribble , just going straight in white water…he bombed…
he says to me “your chunka would have gone off”…
i had a board that was 9’-1" x 24 1/2 x 3 , 19 1/2 nose 15 1/2 tail…with block rails ,the thickest barge youve ever seen …
if the waves were non existent it went…
because you cant quite swing your longboard like you would a shorty , you cant use your muscular effort as well to get speed on the take off on a longboard…coz you just coast into the wave , its harder to really push off the first pump if its super small and dribbly , if the board is to thin,
i found with the chunka that if i was going to slow to move , i could push it down real hard into the water with my first pump, then as i lightened up , the board would cork out quickly , i could repeat that a few times until i had worked some speed from no power…
but my thin longboard doesnt have corkability to get it started in nothing…
justin reckons the guys who did well in the crap had long,wide,thick,flat boards that kept tonking all the way to the beach…
he said there was such a difference between a knee high wave there and a knee high wave here…
without a doubt my thin longboard is the best ive ever had for performance and nose riding,
but when your on a moving knee high swell with no suck , or ankle high dribble foam then my old chunka was better…
so theres a cross over point where the volume starts to help again…but its at an extremely low speed range…
but on the short board , its short enough to keep moving side to side for speed , so you can keep it on top of the water…
but if your style dictates that you just stand on your board like a dead weight thru the flat sections or on total dribble , then thickness and width will help,
if you have plenty of movement in your shortboarding then you wont need the thickness,
silver back!!! how much tail rocker did you put in …
that can have a bearing on paddle speed and floatation…
ive got 1 1/2 in my magic carpet…but its a flat curve, where as a flat with a last minute tail flip will pull the tail down…
but i suspect it must be pretty extreme in the thinness in the tail coz i havent experienced that with mine…
finding new boundries all the time…
regards
BERT
) because I think even the most lousy windswell in Hawaii will have so much more power than what we normally surf here… Altough the best surfers can surf any board in any conditions I don’t think the average potato chip will cut it for the average joe here in the conditions we’re having. It easilly shows in the density of fish surfboards in the lineup at the local spots, even when it get’s ‘good’.