I definatly think that is high performance. but high performance at Rincon is totally different to what i would consider high performance in aussie beach break.
I personally think for high performance in aussie waves standard thrusters work a treat! easiest to sucsessfully rip on your back hand and boost airs. However i’d rather mix it up and surf a different board every day.
I feel sometimes (normally in okay/pretty ripable beach break, when surfing my thruster) I’m not as fast as i can be. i kind of just flow and surf the section the way i think it should be,
then i see someone get a really cool wave and i feel inspired to rip it more, i do “cooler” stuff but it doesn’t always feel as good.
to me i just love the feeling of me single fin in big wally open faces with power, carving around and meeting sections and flowing into manuvers before cruising back down the face.
that to me is the highest performance.
I definatly don’t just “stand and cruise” but i like reading the wave whilst surfing it.
I had a funny experience recently on a wooden board. Deep deck concave - only possible with a perimeter stringer. The max thickness was a coupla inches in from the rail, the rails were a beautiful wood/cork laminate. Unbreakable 8 pound shortboard…that got me thinking.
You don’t need a full wood construction to take advantage of the deck concave, you should be able to make a lighter thinner board than otherwise possible. …
And a deep deck concave feels awesome under your feet. That would make two advantages to the technique, deck concave for added torque to your toes, and even thinner board with the same breaking strength…I brought it up only b/c you mentioned “as thin as materials allow”…
of course it still might not be worth the trouble…
"high performance WAVES for high performance surfing / surfers " [his famous quote was along the lines of "formula one racers need a formula one racetrack " ]
This is very true. You do have to have the right conditions for the “high performance” you are looking for.
If you do not have the waves to match the board or the talent that you have in your capabilities then you do not have what you are looking for.
I’ve never ridden a concave surfboard so can I ask a question? Did you feel you could still move your feet around on the board if you wanted or did they feel more locked into one place? I know on skateboards, I ride concave decks in pools and ramps since I don’t really want my feet to move around, but for street cruising and downhill, I prefer flat skateboards because it’s easier to move my feet around the board. I like to move my feet on my surfboards too so I thought I’d ask what your impression of concave surfboards was in this regard.
Thanks for the kinds words of two sons of Ewa/Puuloa/Oneula/Kalaeloa
Butch and Bobby both cut their teeth in the waves of Shark Country right here in Ewa Beach.
I remember as a grem scared sh*tless on the shoulder watching Butch, Dickie Delong, and Isaac Tanaka carving some major backside bottom turns under 8 foot shark country pitching lips way before Bobby came to town with his little bros. Butch guys were my heroes growing up.
Butch became a chef and Bobby a pro and moved to country but both were 10 times better surfers with more style and guts than 90% of all the pro’s ever. Being a legend in the water is not always about winning contests and sponsership dollars like it is today. The only guy to win a contest from Ewa then was Robby Husic in 66-67 but then he overdosed on heroin in 6th grade. Nowadays we have tons of successful pros coming from our ranks. Funny thing is Bobby always rode “progressive shapes” like bonzers and his football fins and still was at the top of the heap. Kind of like Cheyne with his lazor zaps and MR with his twins, equipment is somewhat relative to talent.
It just seems like with the rest of the Best Foods Mayonaise lemmings these days everything pretty much looks and acts the same surfing-sponging-skateboarding and snowboarding have all merged into the same conceptual thing. I kind of liked it when you could tell the difference between the lines being drawn in each medium.
sorry it’s not on concaves Mar , and sorry to quote myself [something I don’t normally do],
…I just went down the shops , and saw one guy out in head high plus sets …25 knot onshore , backwashy … side chop too .
After I’d been watching for about a minute , he drifts up the face of a wave ,spins around , one paddle , drops vertical , FLIES off the bottom … stalls …and gets a stand up tube . Flies out of that , buries his arm to the elbow , bertlemann style , then brings it round . For the foam rebound . Pumps off the bottom …pumps down the line , and boosts an air . In the closeout end section , which he lands , no worries .
…but the words that come to mind visualising Drew’s wave from yesterday , and thinking about it a lot …
SPEED
POSITIONING
POWER
…mixed in with a healthy dose of STYLE, too, thankfully !
ben
[…by the way , I’ve seen Drew do all the above described manouevres on a single fin , too. I would call HIM a ‘high performance surfer’]
I've never ridden a concave surfboard so can I ask a question? Did you feel you could still move your feet around on the board if you wanted or did they feel more locked into one place? I know on skateboards, I ride concave decks in pools and ramps since I don't really want my feet to move around, but for street cruising and downhill, I prefer flat skateboards because it's easier to move my feet around the board. I like to move my feet on my surfboards too so I thought I'd ask what your impression of concave surfboards was in this regard.
This was a first for me. It was noticeably easier to move the tail around. You can definitely move your feet around, although with the added torque I don’t think it is as necessary. I swear, one ride on a good concave deck and you will wonder why every surfboard doesn’t come with one.
I've never ridden a concave surfboard so can I ask a question? Did you feel you could still move your feet around on the board if you wanted or did they feel more locked into one place? I know on skateboards, I ride concave decks in pools and ramps since I don't really want my feet to move around, but for street cruising and downhill, I prefer flat skateboards because it's easier to move my feet around the board. I like to move my feet on my surfboards too so I thought I'd ask what your impression of concave surfboards was in this regard.
This was a first for me. It was noticeably easier to move the tail around. You can definitely move your feet around, although with the added torque I don’t think it is as necessary. I swear, one ride on a good concave deck and you will wonder why every surfboard doesn’t come with one.
More comfy for paddling, too.
I have not yet riden a concave deck eitherm but would expect the foot locking feeling of the skateboard would not be there on the surfboard. Because of the width difference between the 2, the skateboard concave deck is much more extreem than on the surfboard. My understanding of the concave deck on the surfboard is 2 fold: (1) enables the responsiveness off a thin board without the railband area being too thin (2) enable the board to flex creating a dynamic board but still having enough railband area volume for strength
Thanks for the feedback Blakestah. Follow up question from 4est’s post - how thick are the rails on a concave board? Do they have to be made thicker than they would if the board wasn’t concave and didn’t have the perimeter stringers? Did you find them harder to sink or the same?
Thanks for the feedback Blakestah. Follow up question from 4est's post - how thick are the rails on a concave board? Do they have to be made thicker than they would if the board wasn't concave and didn't have the perimeter stringers? Did you find them harder to sink or the same?
It sounds like an amazing idea!
The shaper had the rails down pretty hard. But they wrapped in a good 2 inches to the max thickness of over 2 inches. I didn’t measure it, but I’d guess 2.5 inches or so. The concave sunk a lot more than a hull concave, maybe 3/8" to 1/2" deep. It did feel better paddling (which was always the claim by the shaper), but I had it on a few lined up waves, and the feeling when I had it hard on rail was pretty cool. Like WAY more controlled than a non-concave board. If a foot is 12 inches wide, the heel or toe ends up pretty much in the area of the concave with the most curvature - this board was a quad with a 16 inch tail…
These are not the same as gluing a few piece of balsa on and shaving them down. These rails are built first on a rocker table in isolation from the rest of the board, one layer at a time using techniques developped by the shaper.
I’m pretty sure the technique is adaptable to a thinner thruster too. Run max thickness about 2 3/8" 1.5 inches inside the rail with a 3/8" to 1/2" concave in the deck…
I am not against hard rails at all, but they have to be designed into the whole board. You can’t just slap them on to any ole shape. The rest of the boards design features have to accomodate them.
Hawaii’s waves break in fairly chopped up water due to the strong winds. It is often a surprise to new arrivals how much chatter their boards have as they pop across all the wind texture. Sometimes too low or too hard of rails forward, don’t cope with all this chop so well and a bit of forgiveness can be an asset. Most people are regularily surfing much smoother conditions, much smaller waves, and going slower… all where catching a rail is less likely and not so punishing if it happens.
Though in the 70s those classic Pipeliner boards we made and rode, had flat bottoms forward, low hard boxy rails and the template had ears forward so that the inside rail would catch and allow the board to hang very high on very steep walls. See Photo But that was pretty exclusive to Pipeline where the radical stretch of the water on the face would smooth out the water enough to allow such rails to work, and the hollowness meant you were not likely to catch the outside rail or edge!
This was a first for me. It was noticeably easier to move the tail around. You can definitely move your feet around, although with the added torque I don’t think it is as necessary. I swear, one ride on a good concave deck and you will wonder why every surfboard doesn’t come with one.
… I guess young George was onto something , from back in 1965 onwards… It’s just taken us all a while to catch up / on , eh ? [if at all !]
something about the perimeter volume i didnt like about concave decks…as if when i pushed the thickness towards the perimeter i lost the feeling of the rail…not an easy geometric problem to overcome…you gotta have a superthin board to get the same feel but i could be wrong…not enough experience there to make a solid judgement…
gotta correct a previous statement i made here…been surfing my 5 pounder the last few days (today’s surf was about as good as it gets) and decided to try the AM fin at the center for more drive and power…worked like a charm…so while i prefer the rusty’s front, i also like the AM center…
talk about performance boards…today was pure validation…it was a 50+ wave day in killer conditions…just me (crowd of one!) and the chopoo-esque hh+ peaks…peaky barrels everywhere occasionally well overhead…super late fast critical drops and i didnt miss a single drop…would of pearled a few on my other board but this board made near impossible fins in the air drops seem easy…board is lightning fast too…like buttah…definitely nailed it with this one as opposed to my previous attempt…i’ll chalk that other one up for tuition expense…
something about the perimeter volume i didnt like about concave decks..as if when i pushed the thickness towards the perimeter i lost the feeling of the rail...not an easy geometric problem to overcome..you gotta have a superthin board to get the same feel but i could be wrong...not enough experience there to make a solid judgement...
I agree, it is still an area in which some playing with the shapes needs ironing out. I think you should be able to have maximal thickness of about 2.25 inches at 1.5 inches inside the rail at the center of the board (fore-aft), and taper it as you go towards the tail. Probably a 1.75 center thickness is possible without risking failure. Towards the fins the max thickness could be closer to 1.75 inches, which is not so out of line with standards today. Interesting engineering problem.
I’ll also say I haven’t seen anything on swaylocks similar to the rails on the board I rode. The rails almost fully define the board shape, the rest of it (internal ribs, top and bottom lams) are just add-ons. The rails are built first.
Titus is radical. Can you give some more dimensions on those boards? i.e., width and thickness, maybe nose and tail, rocker if you want to be really generous. Bottom contours? How big a wave are you guys using those in? Is it an issue getting in early? does it have to glassy? I’ve heard Titus is a fitness freak so maybe he’s like the only one who coul get one of those over the ledge taking off on a day with offshores? Oh, and are they standard poly boards or epoxy Eps?
