floaties

A place for longboarders, eggers, fish riders... if alternative surfcraft is your game, here's the place to chat about it

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vb
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floaties

Post by vb » Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:08 pm

Was riding a nice little forehand close-out this morning and thought it would be ideal to try a floter or two. Only trouble is, I don't know how to do one. Is it just a half-assed kickout and hope for the best, or what? Any tips appreciated ...

theboat
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Post by theboat » Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:36 pm

When doing floaters on a mal, you have to exaggerate it and start pretty early ( like most moves on a mal )

You'll need some speed up, a bit of a bottom hand turn ( doesnt need to be big... just enough to get your speed) then you have to get your board up to the lip.

Once you are there, you can kind of just bash the bottom of your board against the whitewater and bring it back around to land. But if you want to do a nice floater, then get up to the lip and get the board flast ontop of the breaking lip (like you would for a skatey grind 50-50 grind) then hold it for as long as you can (instinct) and swing her back round to land it.

Alot of it is just instinct and reaction, you will find that you will be nowhere close to pulling it off, then the next wave you can get lucky and do it perfectly.

Obviously, about 70% of the move depends on the wave and how it is breaking.

A lighter, more H.P. modern board will also make it easier to bring around.

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the kalakau kid
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Post by the kalakau kid » Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:47 pm

vb,

in my experience, the board you are rding will either make floaters quite easy or bloody hard.
Vintage longboard = bloody hard
modern hi-performance board = pretty do-able.

The only things i might add to boats advice are:
Speed is good & will help you
Try it anytime you are faced with a closeout or a whitewater section that could link you to another clean section
Big floaters are heaps of fun but be prepared for broken boards
Often an ollie (like you would on a sk8r or snowboard) will help to pop the board up onto the top of the wave.
Think of floaters as driving over the top of the wave and then back down into the powersource, definitely not a half-arsed kickout!

hope this helps.

vb
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Post by vb » Thu Apr 01, 2004 9:04 pm

thanks fellas ... I'll take the advice. The board I'm using is a speed demon lightweight tri-fin 9 footer which made me think the move might be possible. It's light years removed from my old faithful 7/9 heavy-as-lead americas cup-single keeled clunker. You can only try ...

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