Speed and lightness

General Discussion
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Quote:

How much faster would a light board say 5 pounds compared to 7 or 8 pounds. I have made my last couple of boards with really light glass job and they seem like they hover over the water. Am i just thinking they do this or do they acutaully go faster and float better.

Ps i am talkgina botu standar 6’0 thrustes and i am 5’8 150

Ok I’ll cut right to the chase…

  1. If you pump/drive a thruster, lighter is better because the board responds quicker allowing you to throw the board into the juice quicker. If you are not a solid shortB surfer, the benefit of responsiveness is minimized.

  2. If your lighter board floats you better, then the board may be riding higher in the water (less rail in the water)…I always guage my flotation when sitting as I compare boards.

  3. this new board your riding may have a different shape and bottom configuration that facilitates speed…rocker makes a huge difference. Without knowing what your comparing to this debate is futile…

  4. Roy is from another planet. Here’s a guy riding 14ft 50+ pound boards giving advice to a progressive surfer riding modern thrusters.

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If you want to know how heavy the boards I am currently riding are then try asking me before you post statements which are not exactly correct. As long as you post statements about me which are incorrect then I will correct you. I am currently riding an 11’9" board weighing about 20 pounds.

It remains to be debated whether or not the conventional thruster is or is not progressive or modern. My personal opinion is that they are somewhat outdated. Since the current standards which are applied to surfing competition are completely subjective and unquantifiable, it follows that my opinion on the matter is as good as anyone else’s.

I am not ‘from another planet’, but I do visit other planets occasionally.

R.S.

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Quote:

It remains to be debated whether or not the conventional thruster is or is not progressive or modern. My personal opinion is that they are somewhat outdated. Since the current standards which are applied to surfing competition are completely subjective and unquantifiable, it follows that my opinion on the matter is as good as anyone else’s.

Wrong. Your opinion on this particular subject blows and I’ll tell you why.

Show everyone here several pics of you riding a short thruster…dropping in late, deep bottom turn, smaking the lip vertically…pump down the line, repeat. Only then will your opinion be “as good” as others who can do this, have actually felt the differences in weight and its influence in shortB performance.

You dont ride shortboards so why do you think your opinion on this particular subject matter is good? While youre at it, post any pic of you doing any significant turn on one of your boards.

PS - that board in the pic sure looks longer than 11.9ft.

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Bert,

I am a bigger surfer. When I get up to speed If I ride a shorter board the weight seems to make little difference in manuverability. For me lighter is harder because I must have thick and wide to float. It still feels like my heavier boards go from point A to point B faster and my lighter ones go rail to rail easier. I think for smaller guys the difference could be more noticeable. I think too light can be not so good. They seem to lose momentum.

I agree with whoever said light was better for pumping… I at least my wife thinks so.

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If your goal is to do as many radical moves as possible then yeah lighter is better to a point and i think on shorboards we have either reached that point or are near it. On longboards i think we could still lose a few pounds (for better turning) on the other hand if you like to glide/trim/noseride then yeah that extra weight can help.

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Your argument is spurious.

You are simply asserting that shortboard surfing is ‘better’ than anything else. You are entitled to your opinion,but it is nothing more than a subjective value judgement. Why is ‘smacking the lip’ better than anything else? It isn’t, it’s just a personal choice how you ride a wave and nothing more.

I remind you that the subject of this thread is ‘Speed and lightness’ , not ‘vertical maneuvers’

Roy

PS You say that the board in ‘the picture’ looks bigger than 11’9". What picture?

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Roy,

please except the fact that most of the surfing population have a different take on performance than you do where quick manouvers, short burst of speed and vertical performance is more important than down the line speed. When someone here says performance, that’s what they mean. When someone says speed, it’s about short burst of it so they can use it for the next manouver. With this basis we can all discuss the same thing.

That’s not to say that you’re not on a valid route. You choose to ride whatever you want. I’m still having a hard time figuring out why most riders will not even try a board that’s not a 6’x18.something"x2 1/somehting", but that’s the realities we have to deal with.

Bdw. all else being equal neither lighter nor heavier is faster. Do the feather or the lead weight fall faster in vacuum?

regards,

Håvard

PS. I think whoever was refering to the avatar picture you used previously, the starboard on your site. It sure is longer than 12’, either that or you’re 4’ tall.

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Roy, you mentioned earlier on this thread: “I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that in the New Zealand Nationals zero points are given for radical takeoffs, bottom turns, tubes, or cutbacks. The Surfing New Zealand head judge explained that this was in line with international pro surfing standards.”

If the Surfing New Zeland head judge said that (something i can’t believe) he was wrong.

Radical takeoffs count when they are really radical, i mean, not in 3’ waves.

Bottom turns… what can i say? if you are going to start judging on the ASP maybe your head judge will teach you that you can realize the wave score (of course, not exactly) just seeing what the surfer does on the base of the wave. If you see a surf video and you hide the top half of the screen, you look for bottom turns, and you’ll know which waves are well surfed. If you see a guy execute a big bottom turn, then he desappears on the top of the screen and he reappears with a lot of speed, control and commitment ready to execute another big bottom turn: you can be sure that this guy is surfing really good. A maneuver that you execute from the middle of the face without a good bottom turn will never have a high score. I don’t know if this make sense to you, but you can be sure that when we are judging we are looking all the time for big/good bottom turns. Ask Occy…

Tubes. Isn’t there some contest in Teahupo, Pipeline, Tavarua… etc? so the scores only reflect the final maneuvers?

Cutbacks. So when someone execute a long big tube and then he ends the wave with a good cutback, why those guys are giving him a 10??? they should know that tubes and cut backs doesn’t count. Now ask Taylor Knox, for example.

Of course the lenght of the ride counts too, but as we want to give the high scores to the best surfers, we try to search for quality, not quantity.

Maybe you agree or you don’t agree with this criteria, but it make sense to me.

For the ASP contest just remember:

"The surfer must perform committed radical manoeuvers in the most critical section of a wave with style and control in order to maximize scoring potential. Classic and modern longboard surfing will take 50/50 basis when rewarding points for committed surfing.

The surfer who executes this criteria with highest degree of difficulty on the better waves shall be rewarded with the highest score".

This is the ASP criteria, if you don’t like it, you can do your own contest choosing your criteria, and even you can do a world tour.

One more thing Roy, i talk serious when i say that i’m interested on your surfing, but since you said that you can’t post video here, please (if you want) send me your video clips (under 100 MB) to 986222899@terra.es and i’ll can see your surfing and your boards/fins performance.

Good waves!

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If you do get the video edited, please make the clips small;

I’m on a crappy dialup many klicks from the 'phone exchange.

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interesting…

honolulu!!! i didnt say a light board will turn twice as fast…i said halve the weight of a board and you halve the effort needed to turn it…

the corelation between weight and effort is linear in physics…its directly related to newtons second law…

double the weight of an object and you double the effort needed to move it…

going back to your broom stick example , i will agree with that point , that when it comes to rotational inertia ,the direct corelation between weight and force needed to rotate that weight is non linear…adding to your comment , you could get your broom handle and cut it in half , it would be easier to swing the two halves together rather than the same weight as one long length…i dont know the mathmatical formula , ( i could probably find it somewhere) but you would have to admit , that even if you got your broom handle and cut in half length ways , so it was the same length but half the weight , it will still take less force to overcome rotational inertia…

solosurfer…

yes your right a heavier board will have more momentum …and once its up to speed will carry you through sections with less effort from the rider,but the down side is it will take more energy to overcome the inertia of the heavier board and make radical direction changes…

the design of the board is extremely critical …a badly designed light board will still go bad …same with a badly designed heavy board…

sometimes we see the most obvious design change and blame that for the variation in performance…

havard!!!

im not sure exactly what your understanding was in regard to the , which will fall faster in a vacumn comment…but this was what came to mind when i read those comments…

regardless of gravity or atmospheric drag…

something with more mass will still require more force to overcome the inertia of the heavier object…

if it takes half the effort to move a lighter object to the same point,then that gives you left over energy to do something more…so now you could move that same object a little further with the same effort…

as an example , from a competitive point of view the longboards i build are so light , that if a rider was doing a roundhouse then back onto the wall for trim on a standard longboard,that same rider would do a faster roundhouse whip it back , then into a quick nose ride and then step back to be on the wall in trim again when using one of my light ones…the lighter board lets you do more in the same time with the same effort…

like halycon was saying tho …lighter is not always better …but certainly for high performance radical surfing in small to medium waves…lighter is better…

another point as well , im sure honolulu should agree with this , seeing as you seem to have a handle on the nature of physics…

if you do a long sweeping turn with your available energy…or with the same energy do a tighter turn on a lighter board … the second turn will push out more spray further, based on the priciples of conservation of momentum…ponder that last comment…it all adds up…

regards

BERT

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So board density profoundly affects angular momentum (somebody talked about snapping a turn off the lip being harder with the 4 ounce sinker on the tip of the board), and straight ahead momentum is increased with a denser board. I wish I knew why board weight was so important for down-the-line smoothness, it seems like the combined rider plus board weight should rule, but the board weight seems to have a disproportionate influence.

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My opinion is that lighter boards don’t necissarly go faster. But they do stick to your feet better in manuvers. Basically they are easier for your feet to put it where you want it.

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Hello Haarvard,

Yes I take your point about performance, which if I read you correctly means that what constitutes performance is subjective but the actual meaning of the term in practice is decided by the usage of the majority.

About speed and lightness, you have me wondering. On the one hand, a heavier item will take longer to accelerate than a light one if they are both pushed by the same force. On the other hand, a light object has less gravitational potential energy than a heavy one, which means that (air friction aside) the light and heavy object will both fall at the same rate when dropped.

I had previously been assuming that a heavy board and rider combination would experience equal ‘push’ from the wave and that thus the lighter board and rider would accelerate faster. Actually, since it is gravitational energy which is the main driving force in surfing, it seems that the heavy setup is going to accelerate at the same rate as the lighter one. This must be why I find heavy boards to be a good speed board solution.

Cheers, Roy

PS The board in the Avatar was 17 feet

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Hello Soup, If there are two board and rider setups of the same weight, but one has a light board and one a heavy, then the heavy one will feel smoother because it has a lower centre of gravity, and because the inertia of the heavier board will make it less affected by chop.

Roy

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Hello Bert,

Your reference to ‘spray throwing’ is interesting, and highlighted a difference in our approaches to surfing. Throwing spray is something which is seen as a performance indicator by the mainstream, because you need some speed and a forceful direction change to throw a big ‘fan’. I come from a different school, where spray throwing is seen as energy wasted. if two boards follow exactly the same path at the same speed, but one throws a big spray and the other does not, then the board which has not thrown the spray will come out of the turn with more speed.

Regards, Roy

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Hello Coque,

It’s nice to hear from you. I have only ever been to one formal competition so you know a lot more about it than me. The National competition I am talking about was in Raglan and I remember that there was quite a lot of complaining going on about the ‘no score for tubes policy’ amongst some of the older locals. There was also a bit of grumbling about my friend Marcus and I taking our big boards in the open divisions. Of course we were soon eliminated but got to have a blast on the ledge anyway. About the only scoreable move I pulled off was a vertical takeoff on the ledge. It was low tide, about triple overhead, and as bumpy and ledgy as can be. I had my trusty 70 pound 13’9", and when the bottom drops out of the wave riding that board all you can do is roll it onto the rail as you go down, hang on, and pray. It was good for a macho pose!

Another bit of fun at the competition was on a saturday with a big crowd watching during the shortboard semi finals. The waves were so tiny that the heats were temporarily suspended because no one could catch a wave. I was able to go out and be the only person riding the tiny peelers in front of the entire stalled contest machine and crowd, which definitely appealed to my sense of mischief.

The judges stand at the point was set up so that it could only see the ledge (which is the outside section). This is because the ledge is the hollowest section when the wave has any size. When the wave is small, the inside section is where the real action is. During my longboard heat I surfed behind the judges stand and out of their sight because there were beautiful fast peelers there and I was not there to win anyway. The other competitors diligently tried to surf the extremely slow and weak outside section beacause the judges could see them, and were making a poor show of it. We had a good laugh over that one!

Good waves to you too, Roy

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Quote:

if two boards follow exactly the same path at the same speed, but one throws a big spray and the other does not, then the board which has not thrown the spray will come out of the turn with more speed.

the comment you made above , i dont really agree with…

ill give you my reasoning…

its possible to come out of a turn with more speed than you went in…you do this by levering off the water you are displacing…

a fundamental law of physics is " for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…

the larger volume of water you displace , the larger the force acting back on the rider…

a typical textbook example is the person standing on ice,if he removes a shoe and throws it , then the weight of the shoe will act back on the person moving them in the opposite direction ,with the same force as the weight of the shoe…just like a canon or a gun will recoil after firing…

the surfer can use his own energy and actually create speed by using the water to spring or lever off…

but for that to happen the board needs to be set up for that purpose…

so its possible to already be moving and then gain more speed again by levering off the water , displacing it at the same time…

as long as your board is set up to release water…

one of my other hobbies is drag racing, my job on the team is making the body so its efficient , good down force, minimal drag, and of coarse as light as possible …its a known fact the lighter it is the faster it will accelerate…plus the driver has more control over a light vehicle…its very important that i understand the fors and againsts of any modifications i make to the body, with speeds of 500 kph , peoples lives are on the line…so im forced to spell out every change clearly to the rest of the team , before i get the collective go ahead…

any sport that requires equipment to be moved around quickly with radical direction changes ,relys on lightness to aid performance…its plain simple physics…

roy there is some truth in your comment above , it comes back to board set up…

but that starts another whole subject in motion…

regards

BERT

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Hello Bert,

Thanks for your comments. With your drag racer, You will go faster with a lighter car than a heavier one where the same amount of horsepower is applied in both cases. I was wondering if it might be the case that a surfboard is different because it is usually propelled by gravitational force, whch increases with the mass of the board.

I hear what you are saying about being able to push off the water during a turn. What I was driving at is that with an underwater horizontal foil if you push off the water the foil pushes back, effectively making the water feel harder, and the turn is performed with less spray. You kind of zip around the turn with no fuss, and pushing harder just buckles your knees with little increase in spray. Theoretically this is a bit more efficient than throwing buckets of spray but it depends what the surfer likes the board to feel like also.

Great photos Bert. Regards, Roy