Hey gbzausa, hope we’re not getting too far afield from the original premise here, but that’s been my experience too. You know the area here in L.A. where I’m at, the hipster and retro movement is strong, so everybody not necessarily riding what the surf stars are riding, but still plenty of old guys not getting waves and feeling frustrated - yet unwilling to try a bigger, higher volume board.
I have a thread on the subject, don’t know if you saw it, but I put it in errors and bugs cuz it deals with that taboo subject “getting older” haha, so kinda off topic for most people.
I think the question the OP asked has been answered , often these threads veer off onto related but not necessarily dissimilar topics . Yes Old man and the sea and getting older is one of those subjects that I would hope that every surfer has the chance to experience , old guys get stoked too , if you are an old guy that cant get it up you buy Viagra , if you cant catch a wave , get the right board , its probably gonna be wider .
No thread on width would be complete without a discussion of Lords ratio?
At some point a longer aspect ratio is quicker? Some shapers are making narrower boards. Afaik the wider board planes quicker so is generally seen as faster but breaking surface tension is different from when the thing is already playing.
My test with a very short and wide board failed and I’m still not sure if I want to try it again because I still don’t have an idea of the extremes.
I was under the impression that wide+straight is for adding speed, and narrower+curvier is for adding control. Guns aren’t narrow to add speed, but to add control.
The original posters question was , " at what width do you start to see the actual width of the board start to slow it down ," that is a pretty specific question and to apply it to surfboards it may not be a question that can be answered because it may go outside of normal or accepted or practical dimensions used on surfboards , if you build a 9ft surfboard with a 28 in width and it is no slower than a 24 in board , then to answer the question you would have to keep adding width until you came to a point that you can no longer paddle the board and at that point if the board is no slower the answer to the OP question no longer matters , not being an expert on these things but I would imagine the effect the width would have on a surfboard would depend on the length of the board , a 28 in wide 5ft board would have a different result that a 28 x 9ft board , but is a 28in wide 5ft board still a surfboard it certainly would be outside the normal , accepted , practical , dimensions . several sways members have stated they have not noticed any loss of speed on wide boards another has posted pics of a small girl on a wide sup charging some large surf and to do that she needs speed . It is a difficult question to answer as applied to surfboards , I do not know the answer . Does the Lords thesis specifically address the OP question ?
Surfboards are constantly evolving and I think if you look carefully you will see that guns have also changed , the boards being used to paddle in at Jaws are wider and shorter .
WARNING…FIVE FIGURES OF SPEECH USED IN THIS CONFUSING REPLY
Great point about XXXL wave boards going wider over the past few years. My take on board design, epecially width of boards, is totaly based on the herd mentality. Until 2005 when Clark foam closed like an outhouse door on a windy day, non EPS board shapers were held hostage by the blank catalog. Not to say the motivated couldn’t widen a PU blank if their life depended on it. Also you could argue the blank catalog was based on quality feedback from riders and shapers alike but molds still costly to make and carefully considered. Just looking back 30 years in all water sport diciplines, everything has changed but one thing remains the same. It’s the indian not the arrow.
The same pilot will not get the same performance from a hang glider that he/she gets from an F-14 Tomcat.
An arrow with a one-inch diameter performs differently from an arrow with a 1/8-inch diameter. A 2-foot arrow performs differently than a 3-ft arrow.
“Wave speed” increases as wave size increases. Approximate wave speeds for 6-ft, 12-ft and 24-ft waves would be 13.1 mph, 18.6 mph and 26.3 mph, respectively.
As speed increases, turning radius increases – regardless of board dimensions.
Bert Burger pretty much established boards at the same volume and rocker and outline, length, can work better wider than narrower. To answer your question so you don’t have to start a new thread.
Pic of renowned american indian who was the only boy in a family of 6 children. His sisters named him “boy who sits when pees”.
I made a 4’2" x 24.5" x 3.26 (37L) paipo as an experiment to try to get under a luggage allowance, doing everything I could within those limits to reduce drag and help it plane.
It didn’t work. It’s just a pig to try to get planing, working roughly as well as an 80’s potato chip board in terms of ease of catching a wave. 70-75kg rider. Mild concave. Very wide tail and nose. Twin fin but also tested a single. Rails fatter than I intended (long story).
It’s obviously not enough testing but after this I can feel (!) that this length:width ratio is probably just under the limit. My total guestimation (!) is that 4’10" could have been alright.
If someone could just tell me something like “A flat plank of 2” thick wood 6’ long is best cut at no less than x inches wide and no more than x inches wide for efficient planing on a 10km/h wave" that would be a reference point to build on. I have reference boards in my head for guessing but I these are middle of the road rather than the extremes.
Planing is only one aspect of riding a wave. One reason I’m not convinced that a straight application of the golden ratio is appropriate for surfboards is that they have neither a sail not a prop to provide the propulsion. As far as getting onto plane they have to fit into, they have to be configured to capture and utilize the wave’s energy for that. Surface areas being equal, the shorter you go the less margin for error you have WRT positioning, timing and transition from paddling to surfing. You can do a 6ft board with the same volume and surface area as the 9ft longboard, but the two boards will have ver different characteristics for paddling and transitioning into surfing.
Way too many variables to say what is right or wrong. Size of the wave, steepness, speed that it is coming in to shore. I have been trying to make a one board quiver, and even though the size of the waves I ride at several places is reasonably close, the faces, power, and other variables have left me knowing that I will always need to have the right board for the waves I want to surf.
I rode a 2 foot high slab once and it was quite a challenge. A long board would not make it easier.
I see guys riding 28”—-32” SUP’s in good sized surf, but the question is whether not THAT is high performance surfing and could they make those turns and cutbacks on a board that wide; without the paddle.
So I gues the reason why most SUP’s appear slow to me and sometimes look to be struggling to even make waves, is due to the outline curve and tail rocker not the drag caused by the huge amount of wetted surface?
So you have extreme width and volume to be able to stand up, but you need a relatively narrow tail and plenty of rocker plus a paddle to turn the darn thing!
My point is SUP’s can get in very early due to the volume, but IMHO you could do the same thing with a surfboard that has the widpoint aft of center, lowtail rocker and with a width of +24 and a huge tailblock like veebottoms, velo or cheyne horans 83 bumtail lazorzaps and you can still surf rings around most SUPs and haul ass down the line in comparison!
Remeber I’m still talking small waves and bigfoot surfers.
