Mystery Hobie

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I thought I would try posting this on swaylocks and see if anyone could help me out. I’m trying to find information (any information!) about a Hobie I purchased while in New Zealand in 2006. I attempted to contact Hobie USA 4 or 5 times now, and never received a response. I have also contact Hobie Australia and South Coast Longboards in Australia (whom forwarded my email to Hobie Aus), and nobody has yet to responded.

On to the board. I was told it was shaped for Daryn Mcbride (NZ longboarder) and that it was made in Australia. That is all I know. This was told to me by the seller, who said he was a friend of Daryn’s. So I don’t know if either of these are true.

There are no dimension written on the board nor has a shaper signed it. There are, however, two numbers on the deck towards the tail. 180 and 21461. I don’t know if these are serial numbers or something else.

Please view the pictures in my photobucket album, as there are too many to post here.

http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll296/soulbazz/Hobie/

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

cheers,

b

 

 

2

Mark Johnson just got back to me:

Its a Hobie Vintage, for anyone wondering.

If anyone is interested in the Vintage model, I can tell you its a great board! Very smooth turning, flowy and stable; it catches waves great too. I surfed it for 6 months at Raglan (from waist high to overhead) and it was epic; it quickly became my favorite board. The board is great for clean pointbreak type waves.

To compare it to my other Hobies, it seems to catch waves and paddle better than the Fusion with no appreciable lose in performance (at least to me). I have surfed the Fusion at much larger beach break type waves (Playa Hermosa) however, and the extra rocker in the Fusion seems to be help when things get steep. Compared to the PP Slug, obviously it doesn’t surf ripples like the slug can, but as far as everything else, the Vintage is a much more all around board.