today i took my 4’5 stub out for the first time and i was able to surf really well with it. i’m only 5’7 and 140 pounds but my friends also tried them out(ranging from 5’11 to 6’1, 160-180ish pounds) and they seemed to get on fine with the board. the board is 22 inches wide and the thickest point is 2 1/4 inches.
what’s the shortest you can shape a surfboard?(one that you can stand up and ride well)
The shortest I have gone and can ride is a 5-8, 22 inches wide. I kid a friend who rides a chipper and tell him its a 7-2 squashed down into a 5-8. I'm 5-9 175 and on the downward slope at age 51. 4-3 with hood and booties year round. My wave count has dropped the last couple of years, too. But, usually I don't give a shit as long as I get a few good ones and can still surf the way I like to surf. Mike
they certainly have limitations in paddling and wave catching. but if the the surf is under head high and reasonably uncrowded i can surf a 5 6 to 5 11 . im 39 years old, 6 foot 3 .185 pounds about plus 4/3 wetty rashy and booties.
i prefer these short boards they are faster and more radical in turns.
after 4 days surfing 4 hours a day and long trecks. then they can be seriously frustrating in catching waves that have fat shoulders or bowling peaks. enough to make you want to leave them in the trash. this is solid overhead waves im talking about btw.
in small waves short wide boards are the bomb
but why retro i do not understand?
a short wide well designed thruster will kick ass on any retro
There're no reason why you can't go down to 3'8" or 3'5".....I'm sure all my Bro's at Lowers would love to ride a board that short .....Heck , maybe you could start a whole new surf company!!!
Throw away your SUP Paddle...ride a 3'5" today....Heard it on Swaylock's........WaaHoooooooo!!!!!
yeah i was actually thinking about just specializing in ultra shortboards. it seems like to the kids at newport, shorter is better but then all they ride is thrusters. i wonder how big the demographic would be for some retro style uber short stubs.
There’s currently a fair share of discussion and design being generated in the how short can you go direction. Merrick and Kelly have been exploring this and finding ways to make more efficient planing surfaces in shorter than usual lengths. Lost had an article and video with riders on short stuff like 5’5", 5’2" and whatnot.
In the 70’s I recall a kinda eccentric guy that had boards that he called his “little pumpkins” and they were 3’6" to 3’10". They were really fat little things…well, like pumpkins. My own personal progression in the first go round of how short you could go once we started cutting our longboards down (circa '67-68) resulted in going thru 9’8-9’3-7’11-7’4-down to a 5’6" stubby.
At almost 6’2", climbing up on the 5’6" was a challenge. I also made kneeboards that guys were standing on, and saw guys riding Paipo boards at Makapuu in Hawaii…guys with flippers on standing and ripping.
How valid is your idea? Whereas we can attribute any new movement to different strokes for different folks, my personal take on it is IF you are having fun or not. I’m not impressed by Machado’s suring on the short fish when I see it on video. He is a super talented surfer, but you can just see the limitations. Likewise, there is a certain shortness to the turns and fluidity of any high level pro when they are on that short a board. Maybe design will eliminate those limitations, but at this point we aren’t any where near it, then again, never say never.
I’m not suggestng people need a big long board and be a poser. Far from it. As a designer shaper, I know that I can make short and long boards at ANY length. This means that by designing key elements to ANY board length, I can make the particular board ride shorter or longer by virtue of rocker curve, overall foil, and bottom configurations.
The fact is that if you have the ability of Kelly Slater, sure, you can ride a 5’11" at Pipeline…but don’t forget that 99% of the people out there couldn’t do so.
Ability plus design makes things possible, they go hand in hand…don’t forget that.
I wouldn't start with “how short”, but rather with "how little bottom surface”. And with regards to that, it's probably something a little less than 0.4 meters squared, but it will depend on the conditions. That's a rough empirical (and a quasi-theoretical) minimal surface area required to achieve the proper level of the force of planing. It's not the only (empirical) requirement however, as conditions do matter. For example, guns tend to be longer, but very little of the bottom tends to be wet at any given time. They're not only long because they catch the waves they are designed for better, but they're dynamically more stable in terms of user their friendliness. (Other strategies are available here, especially if you're being towed in.) But people are pushing that frontier back too.
But it's my guess, that by 'how short' you've assumed a lot more. (Likely obvious to most, but not to me apparently.) That is, perhaps you've assumed that you've got to be able to catch waves with a certain minimal level of ease. If so then the minimum surface can increase, it depends on the strategy employed. If the choice is to increase length, it's not because it's required during surfing, but because it's required during 'catching'. The two [catching and surfing] are virtually two different sports. But even then the limit is likely to be around 0.4 to 0.5 meters squared (see Tom Morey's a.k.a Y, 'The One', a fin-less chip of a thing, slightly larger than your average skimboard.)
What tends to push board to be longer, among other factors is that there is a minimum width which works for us humans, and it's somewhere in 50 cm (20 in) to 58 cm (23 in) range, give or take. It's amazing how little this width (usually appearing as the maximum width of the board) varies over the full range of surfboard classes. Well excluding SUPs, which seem to be breaking new ground(?) by pushing the full meter barrier(?).
I'm not saying that the only way to make a board that catches waves easier is to make it longer, just that there is this standard, or constraint if you like, that tends to make you go either thicker or longer, or both. This same standard also constrains you when you try and go shorter.
Neither, by the way, am I saying that the only reason to go longer is to make catching waves easier.
The minimum surface area will change with conditions, but collectively I believe it's in the 0.4 meter square plus or minus range for the average mid-range kind of conditions experience worldwide, the constraining dimension being that 50-58 cm give or take, maximum width of the board.
kc
ive seen guys on a skim video that were paddling into waves and standing on skimboards...not maui skimmers either
also, standing on bodyboard is not difficult for an experienced surfer, as well as taking off in the hook, which almost eliminates having to paddle for a wave. of course you probably need certain type of waves and still have to be able to paddle yourself into position.
like pointed out though at some point you see performance suffers, and there’s disadvantages like making way through currents/poundings and if you have to jockey with other surfers!
the shortest board ? as big as your stance two feet spayed , pidgeon toed, buffalo stance*, tippy toes, slalom skiink, parrallel or quasimodo. that amounts to about 2'8'' as the illustrios and astute deadness has eloquently has spoken yep all that (but being a hopeless buttinski spending yesterday with some new russian cousins) I must add that your criterion must change with every change in board length,
THE NEXT DIMENSION
so you wanna stand up?
stand on one foot?
stand on your hands?
stand on one hand?
the shortest you can go is to allow your elf the transition to standing on one hand.
hand boards aside your stance at maximum cannot exceed the forward or rear extremity
if of course you dont wish to explore the transition to barefooting as exemplified
by our waterskiing cousins whom we currently lag far behind,and as they
slowly overtake our beloved subcultural aquatic niche we can soon be able to complain about the
damn barefoot surfers taking off
on the shoulder on us…
opening the door to the next controversy
you think sup gripes were bad…!
go to the shorts
adapt your harvest desires ,
turning radius
lateral resistance
and
wave count
accordingly
…ambrose…
when you go too short
dont gripe right away
wait and somebody else
will gripe at you first
thank you nina cherry
i actually think heaps of people would be and are getting into riding short short boards. it’s where i believe things are going. lots of people seem to be able to ride those cole aviso 5’0 trunk boards. right now i have a 4’7 ted spencer ( that i could go shorter on) and a 5’0 stubby singlefin shoe sort of thing that i ride when shortboarding. they work great in newport.
yeah I’ve been riding my stub at newps and it’s been so good. i can’t wait to try it out at trestles. I’m thinking, if my longboarder friend who’s 6’0 175lbs can ride my board, i could probably ride a 4’0 with no problem. i saw a guy on youtube riding a 3’11 paipo and he seemed like a pretty heavy guy.