=D
Every circus has a clown. You must ride a thruster.
If your just not that good of a surfer or your still stuck thinking single fins are good on performance boards then your right…leave the quad fins alone and stagnate as you go strait!! Hahahahaha!
Single fin? Quad?? Why not bonzer!!! Anyway Bill Thrailkill, I agree with you, single fins are fast and it feels great just to let them ride deep in the pocket and let the tube ride be… I guess it all depends how one wants to ride the tube, I prefer a relaxed approach therefore I enjoy a single fin. I guess at Teahupoo (never been there) it’s more about getting in and out and not about hitting the lip. I wonder if anyone has ever surfed a single fin at Teahupoo, if they work at Pipeline they might work there too. Anyway, if I ever go to Teahupoo I will use no fins on my board. In that kind of wave I prefer a 42" board and the fins on my feet… can hit the lip too on a bodyboard jejeje. Last thought: Kelly Slater is an alien…
Actually your comment " every circus has a clown " is exactly my point. Except it’s a whole bunch of clowns watching to see what so and so rides before they call it an accomplishment. Quads are not new. Neither is the so called McKee forumula…we used to call them quatros. I rode a quad exclusively all through the early nineties. When all of those like yourself we exclaiming 17’’ wide Slater driven elf shoe thrusters were some new accomplishment. It even changed surf blanks…for the worst…the next decade.
No accomplishment at all…quads have always been a legit design, but not favored for various reasons after awhile. Folks have abandoned quads at least twice and gone back to thrusters. But hey…Kelly decided to ride shot fat boards too as were made fun of in the mid eighties…those two must now be " legit. " If Slater rides it…it must be legit. No need to leave quads alone…just no need to run out and buy one either since I am more than familiar with them and don’t need Slater to legitimize them for me. I always thought Twinzers rode better than the other quads anyway.
Your signature line is the best thing in your response. ****ing A right. Yeah Baby Yeah!
It was am absolute pleasure to watch him ride those waves. If kelly would not be on tour, i dont know if i would be watching as much as i do now. Everytime he does competition it is exciting stuff to watch, and even more because he always has insane moves and tricks up his sleeve, or some small wave with big scores. Just insane no? that 9.50 was so high and pinching, but he rode it out all the way, even for a not experienced tube rider i can see that is amazing. He also chose to ride smaller waves in the final and wins. Not the first time he does it that way, why does nobody else do it?
Wasn;t it cool to have him name McKee? Does McKee already know? McKee answered he has never seen a single buck for his set-up. When i offered to paypal some, he refused, not wanting some garage builder from holland to be the first to pay him for all he shared... I hope for him some big name will step up and donate a dollar for every surfboard built with his set-up, and that must be plenty!!
One winner, one quad rider. That is the fact. Not many were interested in vertical surfing at ‘Chopes’. You guys remind me of ex’s sometimes. Bicker, squabble and yap.
M.R., S. Anderson, bitch about that too, why don’t you? I agree Wouter, he is good to watch. Singles might be perfect there. That ‘go gonzo guy’ got vert on a tow-in.
I think envy creates animosity in some towards Kelly.
solosurfer- My original post was for the people who doubt or haven’t tried a quad…so we’ll just figure I wasn’t talking to you since your obviously well aware of the quad and it’s performance characteristics.
And all you haters can down Slater as much as you want for your own personal reasons but the truth is still clear, he surfs better then anyone alive so in the end what he rides IS important to anyone who wants to progress as a shaper and stay on the cutting edge of MODERN designs. Sure quads have been around since the 80’s and sure Solosurfer rode them in the 90’s but on what kind of shape? Are you still riding the same shapes you did in the early 90’s? Don’t you think other road bike racers look at what Lance Armstrong rides? Don’t you think other surfers look at how Lairds tow-in boards are shaped? Wouldn’t you as a shaper want to know what the best surfer in the world rides? How his boards are shaped? Where he put his fins? I would…but maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m more capable of seeing the pros and cons of what someone else rides and more adept at putting the pros into my own shapes?
Solosurfer- I hear your dismissive comment allot from other people, “Oh I rode quads a long time ago…that’s nothing new.” Well I don’t buy that, there is something new, they have progresses to a new level after years of refinement by guys like McKee along with the refinement in board shapes… and the best surfer alive has realized this fact and has chosen to go with 4 instead of 3. You remeber Slater, the 10 time world champ, Pipe Master, Eddie Aikua big wave winner, Mavericks winner…the guy who has access to the best shapers in the world… multi million dollar shaping machines and more money that he can count… you want to call that guy some “so and so” and call the people who follow him clowns??? OK then.
Slater doesn’t legitimize the quad, he simply adds to the credibility of the new modern 4 fins surfboard.
I take no issue with Kelly at all. He is the greatest champion surfing has ever had. Might be the best competitive surfer ever in the history of the sport. My issue is because Kelly rides something…that in itself doesn’t validate it. Quads were already validated, they have their inherent issues like all other surfersboards…and those issues have not changed.
The best thing to happen to quads was the introduction of fin boxes where the fins could be adjusted. Thrusters just work. Singles just work. Twins ride like twins. Quads take a bit more tweaking sometimes. IMO. Not every surfer likes the McKee concept. Others like them different. Neither is more valid because Kelly did or didn’t ride them.
Yes…it was good of Kelly to give credit. He could have done that on that short fat board he was riding also since that movement had been going on, like quads, almost a decade before Kelly started riding the stuff and folks started acting like it was something new or more validated.
Hello Solosurfer,
I tried not to say anything and just mention personal motivations, but you answered me anyhow. You pick up on subtleties.
So, who are you to say that the design does not validate itself, when he chooses to ride it? For him, in that contest, those waves, that board, quads was the set-up of choice.
Why bother about it? I am probably be wrong, but you seem sort of bothered about it all?
Why doesn’t the design validate it? What should Kelly ride, why? Please explain yourself as i am trying to do here.
As you say, any design has + & - and it is about seeking the perfect balance in the moment. Kelly also states that he is paying attention to the moment. As he said “to what the ocean tells you”
Maybe Ambrose should enlighten us all, yet again
Later!
I don't think there is a right answer or a wrong answer, just different viewpoints. Some people follow professional surfing, and care about what the winners wear, or ride, or endorse. Other people surf because they enjoy surfing, or build boards because they enjoy building boards, they draw ideas and inspiration from a wide variety of sources, and don't follow or care much about what the pro surfers ride or wear or endorse. I think swaylocks has participants from all along the spectrum. One thing for sure - while people are looking at what Laird or Kelly or Jordy are riding, Laird and Kelly and Jordy are looking elsewhere, to see what they'll be riding next.
I don't follow or care a whole lot about pro surfing, but I do enjoy watching all of them surf. I don't surf like that, in those conditions, so I'm kinda detached from it. But I read an article in Surfer mag about a program where anyone could surf with a couple pro's, and have them coach you. I thought that was cool, would love to do something like that.
It doesn’t bug me. Just my writing style and it’s just typical surf industry reasoning. Kelly won on one board. It validates that board for that contest. If he doesn’t win on that board again does it invalidate the board? Slater has ten titles under his belt and is getting older. My guess is if he was on the tour five years ago and the same board was offered to him he would have stayed on a thruster. The atmosphere on the tour has loosened a bit towards different designs which has not been the norm. Quads always could hang with thrusters on a given day. Ask Joey Buran. Problem is…for whatever reason…they don’t stick around.
They are quirky like twins. Magic ones are great, but they are few and far between from the feedback I get. I did an interview with Rick Bullock on my blogzine and in the video he states the same thing and he shapes a hundreds of boards a year to primarilly a younger short board market. Right now…four and five fins are the rage. End of Story. Slater has been experimenting with a few things and everyone acts like it’s all new or he is on to something.
Nothing new under the sun for the industry. There is NOTHING new about quads. These quads are pretty much the same quads that were always out there on on a modern plan shape.
As to what the " ocean tells you " Damn…another person who thinks the ocean has some mystical powers. The ocean tells no one anything. Some boards work differen than others and Slater can ride them all. I can’t surf one tenth as good as Slater, but I don’t need to. I have been riding and dealing in surfboards since 1976 or so. Seen most of it come and go in the shortboard era. There isn’t much new under the sun and no surfer riding something validates it to anyone else but that surfer on that day in those conditions.
Look! Here is a video to prove it all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_LJHQy-idM
Check the Dora boogie at 2.50 ish
Cheers
Mooneemick
somewhat lost in the dust is the simple fact that all of Kelly’s boards are set up to ride either quad or thruster. Kelly showed up at the surf camp my son was staying at in mainland Mex earlier in the year while some points were firing up to DOH. My son, a quadaholic (trying to help him, he just can’t stay away), said Kelly’s was swapping fins regularly - down the line barrels, rode quad…more open faced manuver orientated waves, rode thruster…so not surprising he went quad at Teahupoo, which pretty much defines down the line barrel…
son came back from that trip, had a quad/thruster board made, and what a surprise, down the line he goes quad…hit the lip time, goes …
Yeah, and he did some pretty turns after the barrels too.
I disagree with so many of your points, I don’t even know where to start. I suggest you take a few steps back and think about this objectively. Try to think about it without being influenced by what other people tell you.
[quote="$1"] As to what the "ocean tells you " Damn...another person who thinks the ocean has some mystical powers. The ocean tells no one anything. [/quote]
Well, at least it waves to me!
We have more than 5 senses although most learn to develop and use only 5. Not everything that is told is told in words or human language for that matter. Everything alive communicates, the ocean is alive, the waves are not essentially made of water, they are the energy that moves the water… Just ask the best surfers in the world… dolphins…
Funny you would assume that because all my feelings about how quads work are based on the boards I have shape for myself and rode, and the many quads I have shaped for good friends who loved and raved about them, and not from anything I heard! Can’t think of anything I “heard” anywhere that influenced my feelings on the subject only the rides I’ve had. Maybe some of the things I’ve SEEN influenced me, guys riding 4 fins, guys like Nathan Fletcher, Tom Curran, Slater, Tom Carrol, Cory Lopez, on and on… But maybe I’m just star struck and all those guys are clowns too. If I was influenced it was only to shape one and try it for myself. That’s the real deal… test pilot on the real thing. No hearsay, no guess work, just trial and error on some actual equipment! Although not much error only revelation. And doing it when guys like you are downing it makes it even sweeter. The convincing came from the boards I shaped and rode, Slaters confession only tells me that one of the best is following the same path I am.
bugger, I was enjoying that read, and you keep out of it Huck, haha, I think you are both right and there is no need to stop now, cheers H.
you deserve a cookie! =D