On a recent family outing, loaded with kids and a sedan, I reluctantly left my boards at home. Visiting a friend with a beachfront view I was mortified to see clean fun beachbreaks on the sunny Sunday. My mate has a selection of nice cheap softboards…
You know, the big barge-sized blue things with the fins that bend to 90 deg.
I rode one…but in the spirit of social fun, really…
All the paddlepower of a longboard without the control.
I sincerely apologise to the crew I cleaned up on a set wave when the 9’ blue beast went sideways at the slightest hint of an attempt to lay a turn.
I learned more about surfboard design in three waves on that thing than on 15 borrowed thrusters…
We all claim some understanding of board design, to various degrees, but trust me, theres reasons why we have stiff fins, tail lift, down-rails, edge, etc.
To redeem myself, I can claim to have set it in trim for long enough to pull into a little cover-up and busting out through the curtain still on board the barge…
I would be relieved to know if others can fess-up to a similar experience…
I sincerely apologise to the crew I cleaned up on a set wave when the 9' blue beast went sideways at the slightest hint of an attempt to lay a turn.
I do this all the time. Comes with riding a longboard you know. Before you know it, people start getting out of the way before you even get in. It’s almost like having any break to yourself.
I’ve had some out of control rides on my Girls’ Hot Grommet boards.
5’ long and paddle like a mal. One has a fin with a permanent bend in it and goes better than the one with the good fin? Both fins are made of rubber by the way.
But yes, I was shamefaced, walking through the local boardriders contest layabout area, having copped a warning from one of the bigwig club regulars I nearly ran over. Kook, yes, but only once!
I had a similar realization with a real floppy FCS center fin.
Before this I thought it was more the board’s fault…then one day, after having this happen too many times, I pushed the fin tip sideways with my thumb and it just flopped over. It was an old thin molded g3000 that seemed more floppy than all the others. Now I only use glass fins…they flex a bit but rebound strongly.
I started a thread a few months ago titled “Fins are Energy Tranducers”…that was based on related observations, but on a higher level of understanding. The initial post was just me free thinking on a keyboard, so some it doesnt sound intuitive. But I was glad to see Bill T. agree…I guess he understood was I was trying to communicate.
I’ll tell ya, your story reminds me of two years ago… It was a nice summer day and there weren’t supposed to be any waves so me and my lady decided to have dinner after work at the beach at one of the beach house grills and watch the sun go down… yeah. cheezy…
anyway, just after starters I noticed with the tide change a nice little ripple forming about knee high. so I begged and the missus let me run off to the renta-board-guy next door with big blue pop-outs, and off I went in my underpants! Had a whale of a time and the missus thought it was funny to see me riding a big blue board in my undershorts!! The blue thing rode like crap but it was fun and I didn’t mind eating the chicken dinner cold…
I have always found not taking your board with on trips which are at or near the ocean is the best way to insure that the surf will be firing. Recently went to San Fransisco, did not take any boards. Wouldn’t you know it, Ocean Beach was 3-4 ft. and looking extremely fun. Bunch of guys were out at Kelley’s cove, but the rest of the beach was looking pretty empty. Sat and watched other people surf for about an hour then went and enjoyed some of the great food San Fransisco has to offer.
A couple of years back I saw a guy catch the wave of the day at Hanalei on a bright yellow sponge board… Solid double overhead+ wave from way outside, doing the full high-line streak right in front of the pack.
I take one out every now and then. Typically i will do fin first take offs or dick around on them. I can kinda say I enjoyed surfing a 5’0" soft board i rode, you couldn’t bottom turn the thing(slide out) but you learn the fine points of board control.
Last night was knee high but, just super clean and all good friends out. Everyone trading boards from high end logs to overseas pop outs. Anyway rode a 11’ softy all the way to beach on my longest ride of the night. So fun! Only a ripple was left but just kept on going. Then on to the Angel of Death! A 9’ bar of soap of bending, wiggling, sliding; 4’’ thick yellow foam… with only a nub of a fin. I think the biggest smiles of the evening happened on that board!
Thinking back to when I was a kid it did not matter what the board was or looked like; the fun part was hanging out with my friends at the beach sharing a few waves. Good stuff in my book.
Saw that guy last October at Hanalei. Pretty amazing that he surfs so well yet still rides such a beat up piece of crap. There is either something very special about the board, or the man, I can’t tell which.
Maybe Kokua knows who he is?
Oh yeah, I have an 11’ soft-top that my dad bought so he take the grand kids out when he’s visiting. I love to take it out on those tiny knee high days. Plenty of fun!
We’ve been making those soft flexi fins for soft surfboards ever since the first Doyles. A year or two ago I made a mold to make more contemporary thruster style fins. I threw some polyproylene in and made some pretty stiff retrofit fins. We also make them with semi stiff urethane. But, they are not as stiff. But, they hold up to abuse better. The polypropylene fins make a remarable difference in your ability to do more than point and gluide. But,if you hit something they are going to break.
Back in the early 70’s I had the pleasure of traveling with the great David Nuuhiwa. We were traveling across country and had a stop in Texas at one of the dealers there. We were flying in a private plane so we couldn’t bring boards and would have the dealers just hook us up wherever we went. So we arrived and there was surf so a session was arranged. David (obviously the major surf hero/star at the time) was given a brand new latest greatest model while the junior member of this surf crew (me) was given this true POS off the used rack. Full S deck, straight rocker, bad outline etc. Turned out Davids board was a bit off somehow while the POS rode really good in the extremely mushy conditions. David spent the day slogging through the deadest surf you could imagine while my POS board screamed. I always wondered what the TX locals thought. That POS sure made me look good. Sometimes you just never know.
Kind of an opposite story line but your story reminded me of it.
Long ago I was living up at Sunset Point and one day the waves were really small so I decided to walk up to Log Cabins to visit my friend Joey Burnel. Anyway I got to Joeys house and was sitting in the back yard and I noticed that sets were coming in at inside rock pile, just one after another while everywhere else was essentially flat. I didn’t have a board with me and since this was pre-leash days no one was going to lend me a board to surf inside rockpile. Joey told me that Timmy Davie had left a board under the house and that I might be able to use that. So I searched and low and behold I found it. The nose was gone as was the tail. The glass was partially stirpped off the bottom but the fin seemed to be on OK and the deck was good enough so I now had a ride. Inside Rockpile is a very tight and hollow peak that bowls real hard and this day it was about a foot or two overhead … no one else out. I dropped into my first wave and the thing would barely go at all. Really really slow with all the drag from the dings and glass hanging off the bottom. Turns out the waves were short enough that I could still make those tight bowls without much speed and the thing was so slow it would just drag me back deep into the tubes. I got some of the most epic barrels of my life that day on something that just barely rode but somehow fit the conditions perfectly. Sometimes you just never know.
Can’t believe I ‘m reading this ,just had a bad nites sleep,got cleaned up by longbd rider yesterday,complete kook, helmet and all in 3’ rincon smashed up my shoulder and have a couple of days out …Josh I know it wasn’t you as it was a hard bd,I am now definitely a soft mal fan! I actually like riding every type of bd…I was caught surfing a soft mal after a shoulder Reco…and used the great excuse it was for my daughter! story…embarassing moment!!!..in France 15 years ago,Iwas in an Expression session at the RC pro,it was solid with good barrells but with a solid shorebreak that was dumping right on the beach.as they announced me as one of the participants… I ran down into the shorebreak, I tripped over my legrope,rolled down into the actual impact zone where I was slammed by a 4-5’ shorey,which rolled me up the beach and then sucked me back down,for another 2 waves ,I couldn’t get to my feet and was covered from head to tow with gravel type sand …all this in front of 20000 people…so all I could do was stand up and take a bow…as the bloody commentater was giving a narrative on how not to paddle out!Yeah…embarassing to say the least!
Howzit Greg, When I lived on Oahu's north shore I lived on Ke Iki rd and log cabin's was the closest break to our house. It was one of my favorite waves and gets so good. The fact that it actually has 2 different breaks depending on swell direction is another plus. How about the west swell break when you have to drop in and make your turn around the 2 mushroom coral heads, quite exciting. And then the north swell break has the inside shallow flat reef. There was a time when it was called dynamites and wasn't ridden much since the bottom is as much or more dangerous than Pipe.Aloha,Kokua
This summer I was out surfing and a young teenager paddled out on a 6’4" soft top. It was real mushy and we were the only 2 out so we got to talking for a while and i gave him some tips here and there. Turns out that he was vacationing with his family and, being a skateboarder, wanted to give surfing a shot. He picked surfing up pretty quick and after a while I offered to switch boards so he could see what a ‘real’ board was like. He had a hard time on the narrow thruster, but I had a BLAST on his soft top. Some waves I would just belly ride it, other waves I would stay on one knee, grab the a rail, and use my other had as a pivot and pull into a fun tailslide (similar to doing a 360 on a body board). The pathetic rubber fins had almost no grip on the water, so I could really rip the tail around. Tons of fun. After about an hour or so he wanted to switch back and he pratically had to tear the soft top away from me. I told him “one more wave” at least a dozen times. Sometimes ‘kooking it out’ is the way to go…
