Has anyone ridden a “mccoy nugget”? What do they ride like?
Do a search for ‘nugget’ or ‘mccoy nugget’ or ‘lazorzap’ and check the archives (wow! i said it!) there is litarelly TONS of info.
Hey Bandman, got 2 nuggets (6’10" & 6’4") and will never part with them. Great boards. Check McCoys website, it’s not hype at all, they really go as good as he states.
thanksbro
Aloha Bandman,
contact geoff mccoy through the mccoy surfboards website, he’s working
on establishing contacts in US to have his Nuggets built in the USA.
should eliminate that blasted shipping charge. alohajeff
Bandman,
I am the licensee for North and South America for Geoff Mccoy shaped nuggets. Geoff will put you in contact with me anyway if you E mail him. He has some things going on right now that may prevent him from returning e mails timely. Geoff is a great guy and a wealth of information. One of our sports last great masters. I have sold quite a few of them and have had no one complain. I have had a few sell their quivers and simply ride nuggets. They are just so easy to ride and handle a variety of waves types. Tubes? Wooooweee. We will have them available here in the U.S. soon. I have found a way to ship them from Oz without such a heavy cost. Still expensive, but not as bad. If you have an open mind, try a nugget. We also have the handshaped Lazor Zaps retors availbable for the first time in over 25 years.
Let me know if I can help.
Solo
One of the great things about swaylocks is the archives. A variety of opinions from a variety of great minds. This place is a gem for information.
Hola bandman!
I have a 7’2 poly McCoy nugget and I love the thing. At first I found it a bit awkward to get used to but once you learn to place your weight on the “loaded dome” the board is very lose and responsive for it’s size. I can paddle and catch waves just as easily as most longboarders, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you are looking for a small wave board as it seems to work better the bigger the surf gets.
I would definitely recommend getting a poly straight from the source, mine has very durable so far. Another thing that I have noticed is that the nugget is grate for late take offs and step drops, no problem. All in all a very versatile and user friendly board, once you get used to surfing off the back foot.
Regards. Sami
[img_assist|nid=1041766|title=McCoy Nugget rocker|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=76]
the McCoy Nugget is a very different from the modern potato chip. The hull is completely convex from nose to tail - about as much roll as a HP longboard. Its very thick and keeps its thickness into the tail. Rails have the usual modern tucked under edge blending into edge in the tail, however they are chunkier than normal. The only flat part of the board is the deck and it has no dome - its turned upside down the usual short board trend. Nose looks narrow but actually its wide - the tail is so wide it makes the nose look narrow.
this is my friends 6’ 1" tuflite nugget with the rocker measuring tool I use (wooden stick and pen wedging the stick in place on the mid pt). sorry the pic is a bit small, i somehow ended up displaying the thumbnail pic.
Dimensions are:
13 1/2" nose width
20 1/4" width
17 1/4" tail
3" thick.
Fin placement from tail:
Front 11 1/4"
Rear 3 1/2"
Rocker measurements at 1’ intervals:
----- front —
N - 167 mm (6.57")
1’ - 57 mm
2’ - 15 mm
-------- rear----
2’ - 6 mm
1’ - 20 mm
T - 1 3/4"
What this means is that it has more nose rocker than normal - more flip and a good amount of rocker throughout the front half of the board.
It has less tail rocker than normal - throughout the rear half not just the tail end.
I’ve had 3 surfs on this in chest high slop and I like it. If I was to choose a nugget size it would be this one. Any shorter and would be too loose for my requirements. Any longer and duckdiving would be impossible (and I could barely duckdive this one). Its 45 litres and I weigh 56 KG. This board therefore makes a good test for me, I know I keep going on about my 6’ 6" Flyer2 as the gold standard of all round shortboards, but the only way I can attempt to give an objective impression is by comparing it with this. Other boards I have liked are the Doc Lausch HVP 6’ 7" which I once owned and the Peter Mel machine 6’ 4" (which I borrowed just once) - all tufflites including this McCoy nugget. So despite being a small person I like high volume and I’m not coming from the direction of a standard potato chip - I no longer get on with chips - must be my age! (48). I don’t know what a chip rider would make of the nugget.
Its a fair bit looser than the longer flyer2. I’m sure a lot of you can relate to this but when stepping down on to a looser board until its wired it feels squirrely with lack of drive. However the nugget is a user friendly step down with the high volume making it easy to paddle and catch waves and I soon got it wired. An initial problem was finding the sweet spot on all that tail width and I found my toes clawing into the deck in an attempt to control and bank it into a turn but that problem went away after some waves.
One of my concerns was the teardrop shape would make it want to pivot rather than drive, however this board will readily pump and drive forward once wired. However under my feet at least it seems a bit slower to react to subtle movements necessary for extracting every bit of speed out of a sloppy wave than the longer Flyer2 and generally I would describe it as a bit slower.
It does however catch waves more easily.
It also comes off the top more readily however I’ve only managed one good one - waves and ability limited the number of these I tried. But that was enough to tell me it does off the lips well.
I’m not going to swap my Flyer for the Nugget coz maximum speed is important to me. I also suspect it won’t handle such a big waves size range as the flyer, but I haven’t tested it in anything bigger than chest high.
Considering how well it catches waves its very manouverable and my mate loves it for those reasons plus he is bigger than me and can duckdive it well.
The reason why I think it has good pump speed despite its exagerated outline shape is the belly in the hull. I’ve explored this concept in a different way with my “blob” model - link to resource here:
http://www.swaylocks.com/resources/detail_page.cgi?ID=742
I deliberately went over-wide with the blob model and put a non drivey fin set up on it (second generation twin fin as opposed to keels). I then tried to compensate for these characteristics by putting long board style belly in it. I think adding the belly gave my blob model its manageable characteristics and this experiment was quirky but successful.
good post… here’s how I see it…
I find that boards with a long section of belly (in this case nose to tail, but particularly through the middle) feel loose but lack responsiveness. The perception is that because they go rail-to-rail with ease, they’re easy to turn. But that’s not necessarily the case. You might get it to roll up on a rail easily, but there’s a lag in the turn. The bottom is allowing so much water to run off the rail that the fins have to engage much more in order to get that drive through the turn. But belly also lets the board sink deeply on a rail, allowing the fins to do more work. So while there’s a lag initiating the turn, there’s great drive coming through and out of the turn.
Combine those deeply engaged fins with a hard edge behind the fins, and that’s where you get some bite - so they work in the tube. The rail ahead of the fins almost has to have a tucked edge, so water won’t flow from around the bellied bottom, right on around the rail. You need some kind of release feature there so you don’t constantly bog and dig rail.
So a wide-tailed board (17+ inches!) almost has to have belly, or rolled vee, to compensate for what would otherwise be a very stiff feeling board. On top of that, proper fin placement and template is essential, because the burden of the turn is on the fins much moreso than the rail.
What is commonly refered to as belly is not what Mccoy’s loaded domes have. They also have much less of it throughout the middle part of the board. Also…I find wide tailed plan shapes are more loose and the trick is to control the abundance of looseness already available. Which is why they have more of a dull edge than a sharpe edge.
The way I hear Geoff tell it…he is looking for a board that a neutral and does nothing on it’s own. In other words, it will do what the surfer wants or is capable of only.
[img_assist|nid=1041871|title=McCoy Nugget rolled V|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
This is the hull of the McCoy Nugget I borrowed, curves slightly exagerated by my phone cam - it is 8mm of rolled V - with the stick balancing on the centre line of the board approximately in the middle of the board the distance from each edge of the hull to the stick is 8mm .Solosurfer, despite your description this tuflite example does not flatten out in the middle. It maintains its roll towards the nose and blends into panel V in the tail. Its called the “loaded dome” which implies more than just roll so I suppose it has to be put into the context of the rocker measurements which are given in my previous post - more nose rocker throughout the front half of the board than a chip type shortboard, less tail rocker than a chip type shortboard.
Since my last post I’ve had two more surfs on it, during which time I have got it wired to my satisfaction and learned how to consistently duckdive the high volume beast AND I’ve done another good off the lip 
- by off the lip I don’t mean just a carving top turn or step on the tail top turn, but one of those where the board really flicks off the top with the nose arcing around - re-entries - 2 good off the lips in 5 surfs is a reasonable reflection of where I’m at with my surfing! both re-entries done at the easiest part of the wave - the end closeout section, but it does confirm my previous thoughts that it does these things readily.
surf number 4 was in miserable small slightly onshore close-outs - however it was useful in that I was able to find my feet positions straight away and building on my previous experience and anticipating the board was going to be looser than my regular ride meant I didn’t have any initial problems with it feeling squirrely. Surf number 5 was in rather fun conditions - shoulder height, straight swell with light onshore and the beachbreak banks in good shape - high tide Jan-Juc for those of you who know it - the beach is steeper at high tide giving the wave a bit more guts. And in this surf I had a lot of fun with all my adjustment problems out of the way.
I’m a small person so the way I duckdive this is to start preparing for the dive early - not actually dive early but start raising my body off the board in a crouching position earlier and also to press down with my hands more towards the nose. The other thing I have to do is to not attempt to dive so deep and press the tail down earlier - otherwise I will “get stuck” and not be able to redirect the nose towards the surface. So basically I’m diving less effectively than on my longer thinner Flyer, but in shoulder height beachbreak its fine and I didnt have any problems.
Without a doubt the Nugget catches waves more easily than my Flyer2, it also paddles better - I’m sure of that. With the better waves I am to see another one of its good points. I had a wave with a nice tapering wall and good shoulder which allowed me to pump the board with bottom turns done at the bottom of the wave and unweighting at the top with step on the tail top turns. Doing this definate sort of pumping I was able to really feel and use the power of the wave - this is a sensation I’m always seeking as opposed to feeling disconected. Additionally I was able to pack more of these bottom and top turns into the wave than I would have been able to do on my Flyer.
Where the Nugget compromises is in its ability to cut a fast line across the top of a wave, my Flyer does this with more glide speed and in particular I can get more speed with small rail to rail manouvres in the appropriate places - trying to find steepness in the top part of a slopey wave - particularly when its onshore. The Nugget doesn’t seem to respond to the rail to rail manouvres with more speed in the same way and compared to my Flyer feels sluggish.
I think whats happening is that the top to bottom pumping is a more rear-footed surfing than the high line approach, possibly I’m making good use of the short straight rockered rear section of the board. Trying to take the high line for maximum speed is a more even weight distribution between front and rear feet. Possibly having more length of the board in the water for the high line means the greater front rocker is slowing it down. NJ’s explanation of how the way concaves V roll can affect rail to rail manouvres also makes sense to me. So bigger definate manouvres such as cutbacks, top to bottom pumping and off the lips are more responsive than my Flyer - this is because its shorter, but the rail to rail manouvres are less responsive.
One incident of note is that that yesterday on the Nugget I managed to get some decent speed across the top of a shoulder height wave, but the chop caused me to spin out - I think it was the fins spinning out - the board suddenly slipped sideways and I fell off. I take this sort of line across bumpy waves all the time and I’m sure that my Flyer wouldn’t have spun out. For this and the previous surf the original Future MC fins were replaced with the smaller JC Vector fins - the double foiled ones. The Nugget seems to go better with the Vectors - it might be because I’ve got the board more wired, but I think the smaller fins work better than the bigger MC fins. This is the opposite of my Flyer2 - when I put smaller fins in my Flyer it went worse - although the smaller fins weren’t Vectors. I can’t explain why I think the Nugget goes better with the smaller Vectors, I also don’t think thats why I spun out. Fin positions of Nugget given in my previous post - absolutely standard distances from tail, but they are much further apart than normal due to the tail width.
I know the small rail to rail pumping at the top part of the wave is wiggling, but for me its a very effective way of getting speed in less than perfect waves and thats why I prefer my Fyer, but the Nugget is a good wave catching and manouverable package.
I don’t feel like re reading my post, but if I said flatter that was wrong ( I think I said less roll )…but there is less roll in the center than on the nose or the tail unless Geoff has changed things up a bit. Also…if your riding a tuflight…your not riding a real Mccoy regardless of the label. Those things do not ride the same and are not nearly as stable as the poly ones are and they lack the drive. Cheyne loves them, but Cheyne can literally ride anything. Other folks seem to like both, but I have riding these designs almost exclusively for a few years now and I don’t like the surftech versions at all. Like all surftechs…I think they ruin a good design.
McCoy must do variations of the roll then, this one maintained it in the centre. tuflite V PU is a personal preference. Shape is most important but I agree they do ride different. The spinout incident aside the Nugget is stable, the most unstable board I've ever owned was a wide single concave, so the convex Nugget doesn't have this problem. I love tuflites in all shapes and sizes. This is a pic of me on the wonderful surftech Donald Takayama 7' 10" egg in Santa Cruz[img_assist|nid=1041899|title=Takayama Egg|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=427]
[quote=“$1”]
McCoy must do variations of the roll then, this one maintained it in the centre. tuflite V PU is a personal preference. Shape is most important but I agree they do ride different. The spinout incident aside the Nugget is stable, the most unstable board I've ever owned was a wide single concave, so the convex Nugget doesn't have this problem. I love tuflites in all shapes and sizes.http://www.downthelinesurf.co.uk/shop/item/125/Geoff-McCoy-Lazor-Zap
Click on the movie symbol to hear the old master himself describing the loaded dome.
Glad you like your Surftech. Try a real one sometime. You might be suprised.
Interesting article here by Tim Baker on Geoff McCoy - he discusses the loaded dome and some of its intricacies.
http://www.coastalwatch.com/news/articl ... Is%20Earth?Hey bunyip where u been Link to previous thread about the article
I sent you a PM a while back. R u still coming to Wales later in the year?
Mark
Hey Mark - thanks for the link - completely missed it…
Got my tickets and coming over to the home country in October. Also got a board ( a secondhand Nugget - see, not really hijacking the thread!) - will post more on the original thread…with some pics.