post your modern day sickness

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steve shearer
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by steve shearer » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:56 pm

Braithy wrote: I struggle to get any kind of flow happening.
What do you mean "flow".

What happens for instance when you ride a single fin with full rails?
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Cpt.Caveman » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:02 pm

An easy explanation for pro surfers not being very outgoing and experimental with different types of boards is purely the risk involved. If you've surfed your whole life on low volume HPS thrusters and have developed an elite level of skill that is earning you a living, and you also have the skill to surf it in small and weaker waves while maintaining speed and flow, why would you want to risk disrupting the familiarity that gives you higher confidence when big pay checks and your athletic future are on the line? The skill can make up for what an alternative board might otherwise provide seeing as most pros can find an unnatural amount of speed in small waves where most recreational surfers start reaching for more volume.

Once you reach a pinnacle of skill I don't think the board is as important, as JS said about Parko, he just needs a simple board that allows him to express what he wants on the wave. He fills the rest of the canvas himself.

I have no doubt there are huge performance advantages that will come from the low volume HPS mini simmons movement like Dan Thompson. More speed for less effort and still very high performance in essence. He has loads of videos of himself ripping the bag on a range of his shapes and proves they are valid modern high performance shortboards, but still has trouble getting pros to ride them as go-to boards. I reckon they don't want to jeopardize the confidence they get from familiarity and using skill to make up what the board might lack.

Another example is Maurice Cole's and Greg Webber's deep concaves. In their eyes the deep concave is a real advancement to generating speed and lift and the boards still walk and talk like a HPS, but to my knowledge no pros ride them. They still ride their subtle and conservative shapes that they have confidence in instead.

On a side note, I started on low volume HPS thrusters too and didn't realise I was finding surfing a little stale until I started experimenting with different variations of the fish and different fin configs. Now I generally surf shorter and wider than I used to, and the sport element of high performance surfing is only one aspect I enjoy in surfing when I feel in the mood or when the waves are suited for it. Other times I enjoy variation in surfing experience and like each board to fill a very different type of surfing in the quiver. Thats far more valuable to me that having one board that satisfies high performance surfing really well.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by crabmeat thompson » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:08 pm

steve shearer wrote:
Braithy wrote: I struggle to get any kind of flow happening.
What do you mean "flow".

What happens for instance when you ride a single fin with full rails?
Linking turns from top to bottom. Getting speed, linking some sections together. Flowing with the wave.

On a single I will go up and bring it down, but with rounder, more drawn out turns, I can't snap one into place. But again, from memory all of the singles fins I've ever ridden are big boxy rails. Like a McCoy.

I'm seriously thinking about my next fun board to grovel on, to be a single fin. Modern rails & rocker & foil on an old MP planshape and single fin. I got no idea if it would go or just sound nice in theory.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by steve shearer » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:16 pm

don't take this the wrong way Braithy but it sounds to me like your surfing mindset is pretty firmly locked into a certain way of being and approaching the wave, with a proscribed range of turn angles ......IE you will pretty much try and surf every board according to the way you ride a HPS.
Success or failure depends on how well the board corresponds to that mindset.

Singles in shitty surf are boring ridden with a HPS mindset. They just go far less well than multi-finned boards.

Ridden differently they can be fun ....mostly as mid lengths.

Shorter single-fins can feel awesome in good surf with bottom tension and lots of wave power/forward speed/curve. They'll sit right back in a power pocket/tube and not tend to accelerate out of it like a multi-fin.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by crabmeat thompson » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:26 pm

steve shearer wrote:don't take this the wrong way Braithy but it sounds to me like your surfing mindset is pretty firmly locked into a certain way of being and approaching the wave, with a proscribed range of turn angles ......IE you will pretty much try and surf every board according to the way you ride a HPS.
Success or failure depends on how well the board corresponds to that mindset.
Yeah and no, I guess.

A quad is stiff and unresponsive for the most part for me, especially in shitty waves compared to a thruster. I find after a two-hour session on a quad my knees ache from getting it to turn. But if I wasn't getting it turn like that, I was falling behind a section and bombing waves ... and like I touched on, a lot of the places I surf are really competitive to get waves. Once you get one, you wanna milk it to the death.

I think that's why I like the twins so much. Super fast and lively with minimal effort.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by black duck » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:37 pm

steve shearer wrote:
Nick Carroll wrote:
I had that MItchell Rae flex-tail that went so good at G-land and Bali (hey Black Duck you surfed it yet?) but I could never really come to grips with it at the Points around here. It just seemed too .......weird ./.... at times...

IN clean hollow reef surf though........
No...unfortunately not. Numerous dull reasons have precluded a trip to collect. My brother, however, has been having a ball on it, so I'm told.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by BA » Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:04 pm

Natho wrote:Im like shearer. Ive in fact reduced volume over the past few months and found my boards are performing better than ever. It happend by mistake when I got a board that was thinner than it should have been. Just so happens that that was one of the best boards Ive ever had. So ive gone thinner and am loving the extra response. Mind you the rockers are a little flatter and Ive gone a fraction wider to compensate. It also gives me more reason to keep up my fitness levels which is a good thing.
Me too. I'm now riding boards with the same dims that I was riding 10-15 years ago (I'm now in my forties). I prefer the responsiveness. And you do tend to keep yourself fitter to be able to ride em. No retro fatties for me thanks.

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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by crabmeat thompson » Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:32 pm

steve shearer wrote:don't take this the wrong way Braithy but it sounds to me like your surfing mindset is pretty firmly locked into a certain way of being and approaching the wave, with a proscribed range of turn angles ......IE you will pretty much try and surf every board according to the way you ride a HPS.
Success or failure depends on how well the board corresponds to that mindset.
One thing this had me thinking is Slater on his 5-fin setup. Particularly the New York event. Was he not making the same critical turns and drawing the same lines you'd expect him to draw on a thruster?

BA just mentioned a key word for me when comparing a thruster to a quad. Responsiveness. Thrusters have it more, would that be a fair assumption?
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Nick Carroll » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:36 pm

^^^actually rule number one in making board calls for yourself -- don't draw that guy into the fcuken conversation more than you have to.

"Cause he could surf a 1970 McCoy twinfin and still pull alley-oops.

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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Natho » Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:57 pm

Agree 100% Nick, but it's amazing how many people are influenced by what Kelly rides.You only have to read some of the pro quad threads on here.If Kelly rides em then they must be good.Same with all that Dane dumpster sh!tter blah blah.

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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by crabmeat thompson » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:16 pm

Nick Carroll wrote:^^^actually rule number one in making board calls for yourself -- don't draw that guy into the fcuken conversation more than you have to.

"Cause he could surf a 1970 McCoy twinfin and still pull alley-oops.
Curren is the same too.

But with Slater. Shearer made a reference to having a different mindset, draw different lines on a quad etc ... You know Kelly way better then me. Does he bring a different mindset to his quad surfing, or does he ride the quads to enhance what he already did on a thruster?
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by black duck » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:17 pm

Nick Carroll wrote:^^^actually rule number one in making board calls for yourself -- don't draw that guy into the fcuken conversation more than you have to.

"Cause he could surf a 1970 McCoy twinfin and still pull alley-oops.

McCoy was doing twin fins in 1970???
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by steve shearer » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:25 pm

Braithy wrote:
But with Slater. Shearer made a reference to having a different mindset, draw different lines on a quad etc ... You know Kelly way better then me. Does he bring a different mindset to his quad surfing, or does he ride the quads to enhance what he already did on a thruster?

I think you are missing the point a bit here Braithy......I was talking about different mindsets to surf boards of VERY different performance characteristics.

I don't think that is the case for Kelly. He is super tuned into the differences between quad and thruster set-ups for a particular bottom curve and outline curve, rocker and volume.

Those differences he can utilise for different waves where the can offer him a performance advantage.

That's why I find it so hard to imagine you can call a quad "stiff and unresponsive". Quite clearly when you see Kelly surf 'em (especially the same board he has ridden as a thruster), they are not.
So it must be something else about the board that makes it so.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Donweather » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:30 pm

I'm a big believer there are quads and then there are QUADS!!!!

A man called McKee is a top bloke when it comes to QUADS, IMO.

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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by crabmeat thompson » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:35 pm

steve shearer wrote: I think you are missing the point a bit here Braithy......I was talking about different mindsets to surf boards of VERY different performance characteristics.

I don't think that is the case for Kelly. He is super tuned into the differences between quad and thruster set-ups for a particular bottom curve and outline curve, rocker and volume.

Those differences he can utilise for different waves where the can offer him a performance advantage.

That's why I find it so hard to imagine you can call a quad "stiff and unresponsive". Quite clearly when you see Kelly surf 'em (especially the same board he has ridden as a thruster), they are not.
So it must be something else about the board that makes it so.
ˆˆ Or like Nick said, Kelly is a freak who can surf anything and rip.

But you're right, I'm probably completely missing the point. I just find for me, quads are not as responsive as a thruster. This seems more evident on my backhand.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by spork » Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:38 pm

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These pretty much cover most of the stuff around here, I Know the Black Beauty is as retro as they come, but i'm with SS and I love that Curren style carve.It works great as a step up board and loves points (duh). The roundtail quad is my everyday board and will handle a wide range of conditions and more importantly, my gumby style. The little jigger is a small clean wave weapon, but hates chop or waves above 3' despite Machado dragging an even smaller one all over indo and charging huge reefs one one.
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When it gets to this level of self important stupidity I lose interest.
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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Nick Carroll » Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:26 pm

black duck wrote:
Nick Carroll wrote:^^^actually rule number one in making board calls for yourself -- don't draw that guy into the fcuken conversation more than you have to.

"Cause he could surf a 1970 McCoy twinfin and still pull alley-oops.

McCoy was doing twin fins in 1970???
(sigh) yes.

Under the aegis of the North Narra crew (Fitzy, Dappa, Col Smith, MW etc) and also of a very young MR, who always remembered the boards and was prompted by that memory to pick 'em up again after watching Reno at the Coke contest on a fish.

Heaps of those twinnies were made, not just by McCoy but by others, using the popout-style s deck stringerless blanks of the day as well as more conventional stringered versions. The tails were chopped off square and the fins hung off the back like fangs.

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Re: post your modern day sickness

Post by Nick Carroll » Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:40 pm

Braithy wrote:Kelly .... Does he bring a different mindset to his quad surfing, or does he ride the quads to enhance what he already did on a thruster?
He reckons four fins are better in the barrel, drawing a faster line along the rail without back fin drag. He's probably right I reckon, just from watching him and lil brother riding them in those situations.

Re your problems with turning one, well there's four fins and then there's four fins. It is a tricky design that often leads to a reduction in choice of turns and sometimes a very bad-concave-style stickiness along the rail. The board wants to do what the fins want it to do and there's nothing in the board to gainsay it. A good designer will find ways around this and the good quad makers largely have, typically outline curve and a more vee-centred bottom contour, but good quad designers are not common from what I've seen.

Three fins add a pivoty element to turns that most four fins can't provide. You might find that more apparent backside because most surfers weight their heels back way more on their backhand bottom turns than at any other point in their surfing. That weighting really brings the back fin and tail curves into play.

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