[say in up to head high , and under , 'fattish' surf ...]
At what point / with what board design [features / dimensions]
do you find you can stop having to pump , to gain speed ,
and are able to glide through sections ?
can you please share what sort of stuff works for you , apart from longboards ?
as an example / to get things started ....
for me , as a 51 year old , who doesn't paddle as proficiently as 20 years ago [ " S U R P R I S E ! ! ! " ] ,
.....it is around 19 1/2 - 20" of width , 2 3/8" of thickness , and [probably] 6'3 , upwards ... my 6'6 Walden 'CD4' is quite a bit wider than that , and , if the wave is not too critical , it works a treat !
with more rocker and an inch or two narrower it would be even better for me in more critical / powerful waves ...
.... cheers for sharing , and please , feel free to post photos too , if you like !
I try and keep my shortboard and longboard approaches separate and distant from each other, but of course there are times where I’ll try and pump my traditional longboard, and times where I will try and trim and glide the shortboard. And neither board likes to do the task best suited to the other and when i find myself doing it, I chide myself.
My 6’8" x20.5.x 2 5/8 ( I weigh 100 kilos) ridden with a 7" center and smaller side bites would not reward me with bursts of speed in fatter waves, compared to when ridden more as a thruster, and I would have a tendency to take a step forward and just trim through sections rather than pump and the speed gained would be similar. But when the waves have plenty of punch, this fin set up keeps a large solid sweet spot, but also feels limited in top speed compared to a thruster set up with slightly smaller center fin. The latter set up has few detractions, and is better all around, where the deeper single excells in powering around whitewater, or stalling for the barrell and never sliding ass in punchier conditions.
The soft tailed/railed longboard has a limited top speed, and pumping that board is more to get the board in a position on the face where it can extract what energy there is to make the next section. It is rare that I do this, and I try to get off the tail soon as, cause a longboard being surfed from the tail is in my opinion, ugly, and like cheating.
Last time I surfed my shortboard, it was not really big enough, and I found myself with a major longboard hangover and just kept trimming it rather than pumping it, and one of my friends told me to stop doing that, it looked foolish, and when I started pushing water through my thruster fins, I started having a lot more fun getting a lot more speed, and more of a workout.
As I age, I do find myself thinking of a better crossover type board suitable for more widespread conditions, but then run into my deeply instilled prejustices of Longboard or shortboard and anything in between is ugly.
Hi chip
For me recently it’s all been about weight. My daily board is a 6’6" round tailed quad, 22" wide and almost 3" thick. I’m running fcs pc7’s. It’s glazed heavy 6oz bottom with double 6 oz deck and it’s been glossed but matted off. The weight gives glide, I rarely pump it, perhaps a little in real slack surf. It also has a relatively low rocker but it is feeling good on the hollow ones at my local reef.
Cheers
Rich Www.thirdshade.com
are you talking about a relaxed glide or more of a driving easy to make sections type of board? For me at 61 and in need of more paddle power an 8' egg bonzer seems to be the ticket. I would like to get down to about a 7'6" same thing round tail egg about 22" wide. I have found that an egg works for a great many conditions even in over head surf.
I think there are only two design factors that affect glide; rocker and fin(s). The rest are fine tuning your specific needs or style.
The flatter the rocker the more glide. The less frontal area on your fin(s), the more glide. Single fin hulls glide as do no-toe keel fish. As soon as you start toeing fins or kicking the tail rocker, it’s like throwing out a sea anchor.