I just visited the rusty site looking for a board that would perform well on small waves and I scroll through the selection of boards and I find the “air kerr”. Here’s the description:
‘The first board specifically built for going above the lip. Wafer thin, narrow and with low rocker at both ends, heavy concave all the way through the nose to the tail, and a wide tail block. All aimed at maximum boost.’
My question is, wafer thin & narrow are not really the standard for making a small wave board right? How is this board supposed to catch and perform well in small waves with this design? Is it the low rocker? or the concaves? Is it supposed to be ridden really long to compensate for the width? I’m just baffled. Thanks for all the replies.
It’s for grommets who weigh minus 8o lbs… does go against all principles, But flat rocker is good for speed. I like that CJ model. Sure like to try that one. Maybe they mean small wave Hawaiian style.
Thanks for the replies. I was scratching my head for a while trying to figure how that board would work.
If it wasn’t for swaylocks I wouldn’t even know what a small wave board should look like. “If the Rusty people say its for small waves it must be”. Oh well, I just feel sorry for the person that gets suckered into the marketing hype.
The Air Kerr isn’t really a normal small wave board - they probably just put it in the small wave category becuase they had no where else on the website to put it. Your normal small wave design is short, has a flat rocker and a wide tail and a curvy plane shape with concaves for lift or extra thickness for bouyancy. The wide tail adds low speed planning area and puts a bit of straight rail between the feet. Straight rail gives you drive ie more rail in the wave more upward force which you turn into speed (the classic fish is the best example of this). There is way more straight rail in the Air Kerr board than normal so I’d say Rusty has tried to turn the drive factor up, to the detrement of other concerns i.e. being able to turn. It’s probably narrow so its more aero dynamic when Josh is spinning the thing around in the air. Or the narrowness might be so he gets his fin cluster smaller this might aid boosting, I don’t know. Anyway its a highly specialised board for airs not small waves. Before tow in surfing big wave boards were all long and narrow now they are short and narrow. Remove the requirement for paddling and the design changes radically. Same with the Air Kerr remove the need to turn and it stops looking like a normal small wave board.
Hmm. Interesting Pinhead. Those are very good points. I guess it just sounded weird to me that a small wave board would have those characteristics. I guess a specialized board would be kinda counter-intuitive to what we’re used to just like the new tow-in boards. I guess the only thing to worry about in a design like that would be ease of wave catching, right? But I guess it’s not only for small waves and as you said, they might have just put it there because they had no other place to put it in. Thanks for the insight.