Ask Carroll

[Nick Carroll]

Well I guess, yeah.

I don't wanna judge anyone's board choices here, ol Morgs asked me about whether I went to an old longboard sometimes to regain some feel, and it made me think about feel on a board.

Lots of surfers opt for blunt simplicity in board design and for sure they are choosing wisely for themselves, but I feel there is a generic misunderstanding about surfboards and feel/sensitivity there which is rarely commented on.

Sensitivity is only synonymous with difficulty if you find a toey sensitive board hard to ride. For me, I struggle to maintain interest in a board if it doesn't give a lot of feedback and respond to pressure in a lively and energetic fashion. Like, I'll surf my singly sometimes, but more than one surf in a row on it tends to cause me some irritation because of the things it just can't do. In my own surfing life, for instance, I rode through the whole back end of single fins in the late 1970s and they hold no mysteries for me whatsoever, there is no doubt in my mind that three fins superseded them for the best reasons in the world (ie they work better) and you'd only go there out of curiosity. Which I don't have.

But I would encourage all surfers to ride whatever boards they feel they need to ride in order to investigate their own ideas about surfing and what they are capable of doing. Just understand that many many surfers have walked down that road before you - it's worth understanding that.

[Beanpole]

Tend to agree with you mrmik. A bit like driving a Ferrari off road.....or over speed bumps

[Natho]

It mildly irritates me when people refer to wider/ fatter boards or more foam as 'sensible' or 'functionable'. It's horses for courses with surfboards. What may be 'sensible' for one surfers level of surfing and likes may not be for another. Most surfboards are functionable and sensible for a given surfer on a given day.

[Beanpole]

Functionable?

[MrMik]

Age is not a barrier to learning, even though you will never surf like you could've if you started earlier, you can still improve. I started at 47, now 57, and I'm still learning. I read NC's book on the dunny and subscribe to several magazines that keep me entertained and reasonably informed. In the last coupla yrs I've hooked up with a mate with similar aims and that has been a massive help. We started out just learning about position and timing, so now we get heaps more waves. Then we concentrated on foot position and relaxing, hence more freedom and flow. I surfed a 6'5" single fin for a yr to get the flow and rail turns into my repertoire. Lately we have be aiming at getting more open on the board, especially on the backhand, front foot more in line with the stringer and front arm open and sort of pointing in the direction you want to go. Now surfing a 6'3" thruster (plus 6 others) and aiming at the fall backwards(sort of) frontside reo. I'm getting about 50% of em, although I struggle if the wave is a bit bigger and critical, I need more ticker! I always paddle out with a plan and listen to criticism with a open mind. Video is your friend, make sure you have a good look at yourself regularly to see how you are going.

Have you got tubed, yet?

I'm still waiting for the first tube standing up....

[Davros]

Started at 47. Respect. You must of had a prick of a time up to 50, but really enjoyed the last 5 years. Most blokes are talking about how they surfed in there 20's at your age and playing golf.

[spork]

Started at 47. Respect. You must of had a prick of a time up to 50, but really enjoyed the last 5 years. Most blokes are talking about how they surfed in there 20's at your age and playing golf.

Did the golf thing in my 40's, same as with my pursuits, got to a certain level (off 6) and realised that there is a big step from there to zero and I didn't have the time, so backed off and now just play social.
Yeah, had my first barrel at NH when a local shaper called me in to this clean 4' shorey. I was 51 and riding a tufflite Wayne Lynch 6'6". Got in late, pigdogged my way to the exit and got spat out about 20 ft down the line. Had many barrels since then, the best stand up one on a 6'4" Firewire at Cokes in the Maldives, a big glassy day and just about as good as it gets there. I was standing up, but I'm only a little bloke, so it wasn't like firing P'pass or somewhere in the mentalwais. I am a frother though and surf pretty much every day, heres a pic of me at Lohis that World Surfaris used in a poster, without permission I might add!

Famous.jpg (59.83 KiB) Viewed 5049 times

[Cuttlefish]

Nick, have you tested the Maurice Cole Mermaid model? Thoughts?
Just picked one up today in Vicco to give a whirl. Not sure what to expect with a concave that deep? Picked it up brand new in my dims below cost so couldn't help myself to at least try it.

Where'd you get it?
I felt up a metro today and its tweaked my interest.

[Davros]

"....had many barrels since..." more power to you, if I get a half arsed pig dog cover up/shut down I'm happy in Sydney.

[spork]

A guy once said to me that if you charge the closeouts, some of em wont be...close outs that is.

[Natho]

Cuttles, I will PM you where I got the board. I'm not sure if the owner of the store wants it public knowledge that he is clearing out all MCs boards below cost. He had a fair few MCs but unfortunately only had one board within my dims. There is a reason why he is getting rid of the boards below cost which I won't go into here.

[dUg]

Good to see some insightful, testing questions being asked and answered here. At the risk of getting needlessly deep, NC... I've long suspected websites that supply surf reports and surf forecasts are not in the hands of people with purely egalitarian agendas.

On the contrary, I believe they are owned and run by control freaks possesing a burning desire to save the best locations and conditions for themselves, plus a small select group of particularly hardcore / aggressive / possessive groups. I mean honestly... why else would you tell all the kooks what the surf was like? It certainly wouldn't be for the ad revenue...

My question is, what do you think of this theory, and following, do you believe web-based surf report and forecasting websites are predominantly forces for good... or evil?

[Nick Carroll]

Good to see some insightful, testing questions being asked and answered here. At the risk of getting needlessly deep, NC... I've long suspected websites that supply surf reports and surf forecasts are not in the hands of people with purely egalitarian agendas.

On the contrary, I believe they are owned and run by control freaks possesing a burning desire to save the best locations and conditions for themselves, plus a small select group of particularly hardcore / aggressive / possessive groups. I mean honestly... why else would you tell all the kooks what the surf was like? It certainly wouldn't be for the ad revenue...

My question is, what do you think of this theory, and following, do you believe web-based surf report and forecasting websites are predominantly forces for good... or evil?

Well, there may be some such people in control of various forecasting websites, but I don't know 'em.

The guys I know or have known quite well include Sean Collins, Ben Matson and Ben McCartney. Sean was founder and developer of the first professional surf forecasting operation, Wave-Trak in California, which morphed into Surfline and is now Surfline.com. I got to know Sean really well while living in California and over the years after when I'd spend up to three months a year in CA and nearby. He was definitely a control freak but in a great way -- a super committed surfer who had a mix of interests and personal qualities that lent themselves perfectly to surf forecasting, or more broadly, an understanding of how weather and climate interacts with coastlines to produce surf. Like many Americans I know, he was smart and business-savvy and had little hesitation in turning his skills to the development of a business, yet he did so mostly just to fulfil his bigger goals of being able to spend time working on understanding surf meteorology (and scoring really good Mexican pointbreaks). Pretty much everyone else in the game has copied Sean or taken his lead in some way. I admired the hell out of him and wish he was still with us.

Ben Matson runs Swellnet and I like Ben immensely, I am sure he won't mind me accusing him here of being a forecast nerd, his enthusiasm for what he does is infectious and if anything I think he could spend more time himself working at the coalface of his website. For sure like Sean he is a control freak but most science-oriented people do have that streak. It deosn't seem to me like he's hiding or manipulating anything at all.

Ben McCartney is Coastalwatch's head forecaster, he doesn't own the company but he'd be the one tweaking stuff in the manner you describe -- I just think it's insanely unlikely, Ben is a most serious minded gentleman and I suspect quite sensitive in his own way, I bet he gets rattled enough by people yelling at him about forecasting without actually trying to add to the angst out there.

I feel all additions to the pool of knowledge about surfing and surf related subjects are good things (note I say "pool of knowledge", not "commentary", I find a lot of commentary about surfing to be boring, uninformative and tedious) and thus on the whole I feel that surf forecasting services are forces for OK-ness in the world -- certainly the work that guys like Sean and the Bens have done has added to many surfers' lives. Sean sure as heck taught me a lot of trippy things about swells, winds and coast effects that I might never would otherwise have known and I'm sure that's true of all the thousands of people who've read his Forecasting 101 stuff.

Can't really speak for the many other sites, magicseaweed and the like, who just seem to re-program the NOAA data and present it in another, not quite as accurate graphic form, I mean good luck to them but they're not adding to our pool of knowledge now are they.

Logic however would suggest that any surf forecasting site that made a point of misleading its customer base would sooner or later lose the goodwill of said base, who would simply hop off to one of the many rivals. They might accidentally mislead through an inaccurate forecast from time to time, but consistently? That would be a recipe for business failure.

dUg I sense this is a personal issue for you, I seem to recall some time back you became engaged in some sort of business venture with a surf site developer and the whole thing somehow went sideways. Are you sure your query is not arising from some personal bitterness, rather than a desire for knowledge? Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

[SharkBoy]

what are you riding these days Nick?
and waddya think of those tomo mph boards?

[Nick Carroll]

ummm shit haven't I answered that already? Maybe not.

Mostly splitting between four MCs, three of 'em round pins and one square squashtail, three of 'em 5'9" and one of the round pins a 5'10". All slightly different bottoms, the 5'10" is an ultra concave as is one of the 5'9"s, the other 5'9" round pin is a slight vee to concave to spiral vee exit with a variable thruster/quad setup, and the 5'9" square is a flat to deep concave to flat with a bit more rocker than the others. I use medium sized C-Drives in the 5'9" deep concave and the squaretail one, FCS proto Accelerators in the 5'10" and G3 hand foils in the vee to concave one. All these boards do quite different things so I just flip around between 'em depending on what I want to do or what the surf is doing.

Then 6'3" and 6'5" AB six channel pintails if there's actually swell, a 6'3" Hayden pintail for hollow peaky beachie barrels, a 5'11" Jed Done carbon flextail quad for playing around on 4-6' days at chunky reefs, a 5'11" bonzer that I don't surf much 'cause I need to get a better fin for it, and a pile of bigger boards if needed.

The Tomo mph boards, I dunno is that the Vanguard thing? I'm a big fan of that shit.

[Natho]

I think we could be about due for an updated pic of Nick's quiver. Say some close ups of some of those MCs?

[bobjs]

the other 5'9" round pin is a slight vee to concave to spiral vee exit with a variable thruster/quad setup,....

All these boards do quite different things so I just flip around between 'em depending on what I want to do or what the surf is doing.

Any chance on expanding on the purpose of the vee/conc/spiral vee board compared to the other 3 board - what type of surfing/feel and or type of waves?

Also, any thoughts on the MC reverse vee

[Nick Carroll]

Well the idea was to make a slightly softer version of the deep concave, with the vees breaking up some of the water pressure. That board feels a fair bit more like a normal high performance board. It's a really good tube rider, feels like the little vee off the back allows you to make cool little adjustments in the barrel, and because it's not as fast and lifty, it doesn't just try to escape the barrel straight away. It is also better backhand than forehand.

I've had my most fun surfs on it in a solid 4' rip bowl right, a longish hollow 4' down-the-line beachbreak right, and a good slabby bowling left.

Tried it as quad but not really into it.

re reverse vees, I've had some crackers, they're not crazy like the concaves, but affect a clean smooth feeling through all turns, graceful, excellent tube riders, something in them to me feels like a very fast single fin actually. I saw one Maurice had made for Curren last Bells, a 6'1", and it was so fcuken sick, I wanted to cry and run around like an idiot.