a board thats good for smaller weaker days is not going to be a go-to for overhead barrels no matter what you do to rails, bottom, etc
grab your sleek pintail for when its cranking instead of trying to modify a board made for one set of conditions to match an oppsoite set of conditions. you will just wind up compromising the design. if you want to make a board that will do it all ok then it will do nothing really well.
i was riding my dd-esque today in some overhead pitching wedges (didnt think the waves would be up as much as they were today) and i took it hard on the best wave i caught - needed some more rocker and a longer rail line…
One goal I’ve worked on for years is a board that will go good in lots of conditions - the best thing I’ve found for making adjustments - say I only brought one board, and it turned out to be, for me, small/mushy, I’d change the fin set up: More cant, toe, maybe less fin in the backs (This is all quad for me now.). Makes a big difference.
To be sure - If I was faced with lots of small/mush, I’d have a board I thought was best for those kind of conditions… I’ve made and had 'em, but most the shorter ones have broken, and I’ve moved on in my designs. Also, I’m looking for the hole or cut backs… Rarely looking for the lip, or a manouver that’ll likely end the ride… Just me.
Its more about the rider than it is about the board
there’s a whole score of competant longboarders who ride heavy Pipeline/Porto with their logs even on SUPs who would disagree with the above.
If I were only allowed only one board for the rest of my surfing life matter where, it would be a fast paddling heavily glassed epoxy/EPS HP 9’0"-9’4" longboard with a 5 fin setup using 10" center box. Ride it as a 2+1, single, thruster or quad. Even though they went out of style in the 90’s they are still very viable boards.
simple vee bottom, pulled in tail either as a wing round pin or baby squash, continuous curve rocker or maybe a 3/4 progressive stager like Griffin does on his.
with enough practice and courage you should be able to surf just about anything given the board is not too light.
They don’t duck dive, but you can paddle out and get in very quickly which makes a difference in any kind of wave.
This is a shortboard thread. Talk of 9’+ 5 fin longboards…besides being lame are irrellivant to this thread. There will be time for boards like that when I’m 60.
What would you normally ride when it’s overhead and breaking top to bottom?
I think the problem is that the board is too thick for that kind of wave, or too small, or you are not in good enough shape to catch the wave. Too thick and the wave goes under you, you have to push harder on the nose to keep it in the wave. Too small and you can’t get it to the wave before it stands up, so you’re air dropping into the pit. Too weak and you get both.
Seeing old, out of shape guys trying to surf on boards they shouldn’t be on but not accepting that, is lame.
I’ll be 55 and if I go out on a 6’ board and can’t catch a wave I don’t blame the board. And, yes I do a lot of air drops when I ride short boards in good waves. I don’t make as many as I used to, but it’s not the board.
Finally, yes Oneula is my brother, so your lame comment set me off.
oneula you are right you can ride a board in conditions that your board is not suited for and you can make a board that will suit your style relatively well for a wide range of conditions. obviously the better your skills the easier it is for you to master heavy waves on an ill suited craft. im sure dane reynolds could outsurf anyone in those heavy NJ double ups on a dumpster diver but the average joe is going to benefit greatly from a longer and narrower board with thinner rails dropping into those double ups. you could even ride a longboard out there and make some waves but that doesnt mean its the best board for the conditions…
mako 6’6 is probably about as long as you are going to want in those tight pockets. pulling the tail into a round pin is good idea. slim it up some through the middle and up front too. even out the curve as those dd’s have kind of a funky outline. add more rocker and thin out the rails. you know what a board for good overhead barrels looks like! maybe a bit less concave than your groveler but i wouldnt go flat or belly - it is nice to have the bite that concave gives when you are banking off those steep sections.
Quite competant SharkCountry and in plenty good shape. Not blaming the board at all. Looking for ways to make a better one. I’ve got a dozen or more boards to choose from from 6’6 to 7’2. Several of them work well in bigger waves with a JC MelMachine 6’8 pintail being the best on big days. The particular board this thread is about is close to being the magic board for me but just has a couple quirks when getting in on bigger waves. Never said I couldn’t get in just that its harder to get in than I’d expect the floaty board to be and it starts to track like its on rails under my chest which I find odd. This thread is looking for ways to avoid those quirks in the next one I make which will be more geared toward bigger days so as to compliment the current board. Also keep in mind I’m riding these boards in a 5mil this time of year. Water temp here today is a balmy 39*.
I find floaty short boards harder to get into steep waves here as well. If you watch the kids on the their thin chips, you’ll see that they are already laying lower in the water than people with thicker boards. What I do is pop the short board’s tail into the water and get that extra push when it comes back up, and use your legs to add even more thrust. Time it so that you’re getting that extra push just as the wave meets you. The board needs to be heading down when the wave jumps up. Sometimes you won’t need more than one paddle then jump up to your feet. I use that technique a lot, even with mid size boards. I can catch waves that I would never be able to catch by just paddling. The timing is critical, too early and it doesn’t work, too late and the wave passes under you before you can get the board pointed back down.
Otherwise you have to get further on the nose and push down harder with your chest to keep the nose down and in the wave. Down side to this is the tendency to start pearling before you get into the wave. I learned this technique when I was much younger riding paipos and boogey boards. With paipos and boogeys you need to push the nose down hard to get onto some waves. So I hold the nose and push down hard and kick like a madman.
My boards get up to 3" in the middle, so I’m riding even thicker ones than you. Generally the PU short boards I have are about 2 5/8" to 2 3/4" thick, the EPS 3".
What I have found here is that a short board that usually works great in small surf will have too much foam or have too wide of a tail in solid overhead surf for high performance surfing. I talked to Keone Downing about this when I was getting boards from him. You can ride the boards, but you’ll be adjusting your riding to make the board work. Unfortunately there’s no magic all around one board except a high performance longboard. I’m not one of them, but that’s what guys here will ride. One board except if you go out into 20+ then you bust out the big gun.
It was more a comment about grasshopper’s observation that there’s no such thing as a one board for all conditions and based on what’s happenning here in Hawaii for decades starting with Ben Aipa going through Lance Hookano, Bonga Perkins and now even the younger guys, that’s not true.
When the young guns here discovered that they could catch every wave in a set they wanted at any break they were allowed to they immediately gave up their shortboards for the longer high performance longboards. Most of these guys were semi-pro if not pro caliber shortborders who transferred their skills to a longer format just to be bigger wave hogs. Same thing happenned when SUPs came along. Now they could sit further out and catch waves early than even the longboarders.
But I’m in the same boat of you nearing 60 and still refusing to give in to the darkside of longboarding or SUPs eventhough its almost hopeless these days to compete against it all as you get older. But there’s something pure of trying to maintain the commitment to riding a shortboard as an elder statesman or “uncle” in the lineup. Most of the time these days there’s only one other guy in the lineup teh same age if not older riding a shortboard. A decade ago, whenever I surfed Makaha, Buffalo would yell at me telling me i would have more fun with a bigger board than fighting the crowds on a short board.
Which takes me back to Grasshopper’s observation about the inability to find that “magic” shortboard for all occasions. It’s pretty close to impossible because things are in constant flux including ones’ health, weight and stamina. The closest I found was McCoy’s ultra short Nugget styles or Griffin’s designs but even then you’ll end up finding something wrong with them if you are looking for it.
For over 40 years I’ve been searching for this panacea of the ultimate do anything anywhere single solution (still am). And in the end I’ve found myself shuffling through over 3 dozen boards and just as many fins of every design for every possible situation in most any break i would ever wish to surf because In the end they become just like golf clubs.
I think those boards you have are great, I really like the look of them but if anything I would skinny down the nose area and move the volume mre towards the tail so the nose area doesn’t come into play during take offs or in the “hook/lip” of the barrel. That’s why McCoy’s short stubby no-nose was so far ahead of its time, just no one other than Cheyne understood why. I’ve found that when shaper filsl out the nose area to increase volume for size or thickness reduction the noses tend to get hung up in windy take offs or in really curvy parts of a wave where you are trying to redirect the rail line for a cutback or lip blast… The only way you get around this is to reduce the length so much that the nose no longer has any meaning like in Tomo’s new designs. They are becoming just longer versions of Morey’s boogie board design from the 80’s
These are just observations.
I’m sure you know what your are looking for and no matter what anyone says here, we’re not riding the board, you are…
oneula and sharcountry definately have the island style. waves on mainland east coast break so much differently than hawaii. you have so much more time (even in hollow waves) and more places to draw speed/power from on the wave in the islands. their board preferences and techniques reflect that. i miss hawaii…good luck with your new board mako…
as far as one board for all conditions, thats a preference. some people like to ride the same board all the time so they know it inside and out. i like to ride a bunch of different kinds of boards based on the conditions and my mood at the time. my ‘all arounders’ tend to collect dust as I almost always prefer a specialized board for the conditions at hand…
As much as I am enjoying the stories/opinions on this thread, it is getting pretty far off-track of poor Mako’s original question, which is pretty specific. He has a board that tends to get stuck and track straight when paddling/taking off on bigger, hollow, NJ waves, which are quite often accompanied by hard offshore winds, which make matters worse.
Mako, I make my own boards for NJ and I have experienced exactly what you describe. I prefer wider/shorter boards for NJ (due to short period and steep face) and try to vary the tail width more than anything (narrower for bigger/hollower waves for control). I like wide-nose boards because they seem very efficient for planing quickly whereas pointy noses seem like a waste of length and foam. I get the hang-up/tracking problem you describe when my boards are too light (EPS) and/or have too much single concave up front (too much lift, nose doesn’t want to drop down the face).
To solve this problem, I use PU blanks (still w/epoxy) and have softened the underside rails in the nose rocker. This allows the nose to sit lower in the water when taking off. Combine this with milder single concave starting further back and I have noticed a big improvement. The front of the board sits lower in the wave face and doesn’t get hung up in the lip nearly as much. The softer rails up front also allow me to angle into the wave on take off much easier (no tracking) which sets me up for the barrell. As you know, in the fast-twitch waves of NJ, getting into the wave at the right angle with the right timing is EVERYTHING.
Bodyboard and flippers if it’s really square sandy peeling tubes… or just flippers and bodysurf if you want to get intimate with the tube… After a while of riding these two approaches, I came to the conclusion that if I wanna ride this type of wave standing up, low volume heavily rockered shortboard about my height is the ticket… two or three stroke under the lip approach… Very similar to bodysurfing…
One of the problems that Mako and other east coast surfers face is that the waves can be steep, hollow and yet not have the same energy pushing them that a similar wave in Calif or hawaii would have. Make the same basic board without the forward concave. or at least move it back some. If you could post some photos that show the bottom shape and planing surface. use a straight edge to high light the concave.
or maybe just order a twin, twin keel, cheater quad or modfish from Greg Griffin and see what a flat bottom with sharp edges nose to tail and well designed fins and fin placement can do.
works in florida probably should work in new jersey too
