RealSurf Surfers' Forum

Review up on Swellnet too.

Imagine pulling that out 15 years ago

Just a quick follow up on this thread - I love this board!

It seems so versatile, I pretty much use it from below knee high to head high - which is 95% of the beachies that I tend to ride. I generally dont bother taking another board on surf checks any more.

Whilst the obvious comparison is those little mini simmons things, this just blows them out of the water. Its sooo much easier to paddle, has great drive, and is just super fast off the first bottom turn. I find myself blowing past sections that I would have struggled to make it past on ANY board I've surfed.

Whilst it may not be super high performace if you are an absolute ripper, it turns plenty well for a general hack like me - the fact that I have two mates who have placed orders for theirs, and a third who is saving madly after riding mine probably says enough! I'm a happy camper.

Sounds like a sweet board, what size would a 80kg bloke be riding??

I'm 79kg and think the 5'4" is spot on. Possibly even 5'2" if you are an absolute ripper.

damo666 wrote:Just a quick follow up on this thread - I love this board!

Whilst the obvious comparison is those little mini simmons things, this just blows them out of the water. Its sooo much easier to paddle, has great drive, and is just super fast off the first bottom turn. I find myself blowing past sections that I would have struggled to make it past on ANY board I've surfed.

It's great to hear about your stoke.
It does make me curious, how many different ones you've ridden to say "the obvious comparison is those little mini simmons things, this just blows them out of the water"?
Pretty sweeping statement so worth some clarification to maintain your credibility.
I've only seen a couple of people riding them although I know they've been selling like hot chips (get it?) around here.
Noticed both Alex surfshop and Beachbeat Alex had Sweet potatoes sitting on their second hand racks outside while driving past.
Could well be the owners have been downsizing though as this seems to be the trend.
Go as small as possible without over-shooting the mark.
Plenty popping up on Evil-bay as well.
How do you find the deep double concave bottom?
When I've ridden the deep double concaved Webber mini-fish it loved hollower waves but planing across flat sections was not it's forte.
I'm assuming the wide tail has allowed the deep double to work even when running across full waves?

I like the look of them but I would prefer a customised version made more narrow. I'm not too fond of the width of those.

I haven't surfed one before but I can imagine it would be like trying to tip over a table to turn.

Cuttlefish wrote: It's great to hear about your stoke.
It does make me curious, how many different ones you've ridden to say "the obvious comparison is those little mini simmons things, this just blows them out of the water"?
Pretty sweeping statement so worth some clarification to maintain your credibility.

Sure, thats a fair enough question.

Whilst I'm certainly no expert, I sold my 5'2" Rake mini simmons in order to buy the sweet potato - and my good mate has a 5'6" Black Apache that I have ridden quite a bit (which is coinceidentally also now for sale so he can get a potato. PM me if you want his number!).

I found the simmons to be brilliant when right in the pocket, but mine was quite hard to hold through a big cutback, and sometimes felt slow to transition over from one rail to the other and once out on the flats they went a bit dead etc. I also found my little one pretty hard to paddle.

The sweet potato seems to have the good things the simmons does, but without the associated drawbacks. Not too sure if its due to the big double on the bottom, but it feels just like a big thruster to me!

Yep, I've spoken to a few people who got their first one too big too. I was originally set on getting a 5'6", but had to settle for the 5'4" due to availability. Vey happy I did now, I reckon the bigger board would have been way too corky.

Ha ha! I'll pass on his Rake.
I'm busy with my 6'4" dynocore and 4'2" gst (gut sliding torpedo) which incidentally has deep double concaves hence the interest in how you find the doubles on the spud.
It all boils down to what provides the fun.
I'm stoked the mini-simmons design has now spawned a new sub genre of board which the cluey shapers are now tuning to be less quirky and more user friendly.
The spud is one and Pridmore's dumpling is another.
Even my gst has mini-simmons dna in it.
As soon as I rode a mini-simmons for the first time I thought the board shape was more suited to me than a fish and couldn't wait to see it's development.

I guess all boards are a balance of elements aren't they... Comparing a wide tail with a deep single, thick rails and twins set right at the tail, it seems you're finding it slower to respond to direction changes than a wide tail with a deep double-vee, down-rails and quad/thruster cluster. That makes sense to me.

Still, I'm really loving the wide-tailed parallel outline type planshape in general to get that skimming/planing/flying feeling with very little help from the wave. Thats one of the main features of the simmons tangent to my understanding. The challenge a lot of shapers seem to be nutting out now is how to make that responsive and usable.

If you have create the effortless gliding/skimming combined with the responsiveness and control to allow the freedom to surf it all over the wave, now we're talking about stacks of fun in my books.

What I meant by my comment above is that I would like the look of the exact same board shrunken down to become more narrow, e.g. 19 1/2" to 20" approx.

Sweet Potato ? ....its a copy , why not get an original.

LIke I care, its fun!

damo666 wrote:LIke I care, its fun!

Well said Damo !....and good luck to ya !!!

There was a guy out at a well known point break during this last swell on a sweet potato and I couldn't believe how much ground he was covering and how many turns he could do. Lots of fish, standard boards, mals etc but he was going so fast on this tiny board plus he was no light weight grom. Pretty impressive surfing.

damo666 wrote:LIke I care, its fun!

Damo, great response, it is all about the fun , who gives a shite if its an original or not ? not me, ( unless you are a collector )... I just wanna ride boards that give me the most joy, no matter who makes em really, "ride what gets you stoked "....sometimes the originals ( whatever that may be ) just dont go as good, and I am not the biggest fan of the S.P personally but if someone is getting stoked from it, than thats good, it is what surfing is all about,enjoying yourself in the waves.... ride what ya want a reckon..... ps- quite happy after many celebratory bevvies but still the truth ha...

I am haVing a little quiver shuffle, anyone interested in a 5'6 rapidfire sweet potato with futures controller fins?

PASS

Yeah you cant go off the firewire website, you have to demo one....too many factors too consider other than weight and height such as age, level of fitness, experience/ability, body fat %
Firewire tend too point people onto boards too short then you see them on evil bay...marketing i guess. I like boards with 37-39 litres of volume so its good for me.