I’m dealing with a surf environment that has lots of rocks - I encounter them paddling out and ding the hull all the time. What are folks doing as far as laminates for “stronger” boards… on clarkfoam blanks. Breakage is not the issue,… its dings. Corran
more layers of glass (e.g. double on the bottom), heavier glass (no 4 oz), bigger laps.
I have been doing 1 4oz and 1 2oz on top and bottom. You think 2 x 4oz is enough, or should I 3x 4oz? Corran
I just glassed a “rock board” for a friend (who doesn’t wear a leash) with 2x6 oz top & bottom, & big laps. So, I don’t think 3x4oz is necessarily overkill --it all depends how often your board hits the rocks, how much you care about weight vs strength, and how powerful the surf is where you are.
There’s not much you can do to prevent a ding if you get drydocked on a rock. The kind of glassing you’ll need to prevent a hole if you get high-centered will bog down the board too much. Ditto for preventing zippers when you paddle over a rock. But are you blind? How do you bang these things paddling out? Maybe choose a better water entry route. Most of us simply don’t paddle over rocks, having learned early that patching big crush holes and zippers in the bottom of the board isn’t much fun.
I’d say paddle yer board upsidedown and backwards through the suspect areas, works for me.
Avoiding rocks in the surf can be a pain in the a**. Zigzaging between the rocks when surfing is bad enough, but spotting them in the whitewater when caught on the inside and duckdiving really sucks. regards, Håvard