Well, as much as I hate to eat crow…I loved it…it surfed great! I thought it was going to be too small for me(waves and board both!) but it floated well enough and caught waves good,concidering it was 2ft.at best.
It just didn’t go as fast as I would have liked…Superchargers would have helped that problem out a whole lot !
Okay Randy French ,
If you’re reading this,I owe you an apology.Your longboards were to floaty for me ,but this stick was right on!
i used to be anti surftech until i had borrowed a buddy of mine’s 5’10" flyer over summer. i really enjoy the feel of these boards, after switching back to my poly boards i found the so called “pop” from the surftech to be legging in my month old poly. i am currently riding a 6’0" JC surftech with futures F4’s in everything from knee high beach break to overhead point surf, it handles it all, really fun surf. i guess just like many things out there don’t knock’em before you try’em, they might be right up your ally…
I think the key to those this things is to go shorter and smaller than normal or way bigger than normal but not something you’re used to or in between.
Then either the lightness and floatation can really be taken advantage of just like a firewire.
Light boards like these really don’t like speed as they get pretty squirrelly at the top end cause they tend to lift up off the water.
but in the right wave and mindset they end up feeling just like your shoes cause they follow how you throw your weight around just gotta keep moving cause there’s no carry thru momentum… Maybe longboarding just a big shortboard.
Fun as heck especially when there’s an absence of power and your line is short
have a ST merrick flyer and french for over three years now
wHATS funny is my 5’11 thumbtail epoxy shortboard board is much harder to duck dive than my 6’2 MBM pu (roughly same thickness, thumbtail has smaller nose / tail) and it catches waves the same, but has more pop and spring to it .
I remember the surftech saying in surfermag was shortboards ok, longboards . . .
for the ones that actually rode both surftech shorties and longies.
I have to confess that they do have some models that rock.I like the thinner ones. Not much glide and you ride higher in the water.They change my style and make me light on my feet.Good travel boards, easy to lug around.
I have a few fixed broken Surftechs that ride better than when they were new.They are very easy to put back together and the final weight is not bad. You can get a used one for $300 good as new.
I actually kinda liked the shortboard I rode (I think it was a Doc Lausch 6’2" model if I remember correctly), but you couldn’t pay me to surf one of the SurfTech longboards…They seem so corky and every little piece of chop “slaps” the nose when paddling and sitting. they just dont have the momentum of the poly noseriders that I like…
It makes sense that Surftech would mass produce a shape that works. – Basics. Same thing I would expect from a Rusty/Merrick/…Lost/Et Al/Surftech/Etc. Far from specialized. The other things you spoke of may be attributed to eps/epoxy in general. Although Surftech is an eps wrapped in pvc. It’s great that the board you rode worked good, but is it ‘Surftech’ or just the change from poly?
I have an 8’4 RA ‘What I Ride’ surftech that I bought for the wife. She hates the thing because it is too light and flops her around (she wound up busting HER nose with it. It took a long time for me to live down the fact that I gave her the board that broke her nose! ha!). Anyway I love the thing, its heaps of fun especially when the waves get abit overhead and clean. Biggest problem I have when I take it out is all my mates love it and want to use it. Saying that I don’t try and nose ride it (I am 100kg’s), but the thing is fast* and easy to throw around.
I have only ridden one 9’+ surftechs (a Takayama noserider from memory) and I didn’t like it, my problem was it seemed to have way too smaller fin it. To be fair the waves were knee high slop, easy to paddle into though!
I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I am sure a dragonboard is faster. It just feels that way ok?