hey rich …
the drawn out line on this board will give it a drawn down the line feeling , the rail carrying the softer tuck right into the tail should hug a steep face and late drop …
so my suspicions are the fins arent giving enough forward projection at heavy angles of attack …
which leaves the board feeling like its dropping off the face coz it leaves you behind and eventually gravity takes over …
because the rail line is long it doesnt give you any room for last minute adjustments in how your posistioned in the curl , its more of a point and shoot out line , so if you point wrong, the fins dont have enough fine control built in to make any adjustments to your positioning either …
because you have heaps of toe in on your front fins , you have to turn way deeper into a turn before your fins start to pull you into the turn by themselves …
now when your on a steep face your only relying on 2 rail fins to do the work …
automatically you will have angle of attack just by being on a steep face , this is where toe in is critical …
less toe in will mean the front fin will get an angle of attack earlier , as soon as it does get aoa it will pull one way , up into the face , so now you have the confidence that your foils are pulling the tail up into the pocket allow the rider to weight up slightly on the outside rail and project down the line …
to much toe on the fronts and it wont pull the rail/tail into the face , you can still get it to pull but only when you actually lean harder into the turn , but of coarse you wouldnt do that naturally in a steep part of the face , and if you do lean hard enough for the fins to actualy be on the right angle , your rail is not in sync with the direction you really want to go…
so the feeling you then get by trying to compensate for the package is a feeling of the tail droping out …
to give an example , i normally run more toe , in my big wave down south boards , because they stand up as big peaks you seem to drop forever and are nearly always forced into a high speed bottom turn in which to little toe would give the fin to much angle of attack at to great a speed and hence the chance of spinning out in a critical situation at the bottom of tons of lip , the extra toe even creates a little extra drag , but hey at that speed its more about control and hold …
but my big wave up north boards dont have extra toe …
the waves are so down the line you dont even get a chance at a bottom turn , so now your looking for more down the line projection and the ability to hug a steep face without using your rail to hold it , so the fins have less toe so they pull the board up the face but the rail edge is hard so it wants to release , and if i have to load a turn at speed more reduced tail area takes care of that …the type of rail you have is great for those fall out the lip type drops where you want your board to land on the face and not slide once its hit clean face , but in certain fast down the line situations can leave you feeling a bit high like its getting sucked up the face and wont let go until you really point it towards the shore , but thats not really the direction you want to go when your looking at feathering lip 50 meters down the line and double steping coral bombs underneath you …
so in all cases theres a conflict of interest between the toe in , outline and rail set up …
where the board would feel best is when you have plenty of open face to play with , it will still handle late drops and take offs as long as you dont want it to project down the line up high without doing a bottom turn …
reshaping the board is not an option …
if you must keep it a quad , i would reduce the toe on the fronts and make the tails virtually straight and put a centre foil in the tails , it may be possible to reset toe in , in the actual fin bases so you dont have to reset the boxes …
the next option combined with the first is set another box and have a larger centre for those up high down the line style take offs …
and another thing is doing a slightly harder resin edge , the rail isnt really the main problem , it will hold the face but hold it so well that it climbs high and then gravity becomes the final master as it drops out …
the rail is fine for a powerful heavy drop , but the limitations are steep face at slow take off speeds , if you have a decent drop you then get the speed required to make the rail work , but then the fins are letting you down …
so right now a few elements of the theme are missing , you need to give it a clearer theme or direction in one way or another …
first the fins , then the centre box , and finnally the bottom edge if the projection is still not there …
regards
BERT