Ask Carroll

[offshore1]

Apologies for holding the floor, but one final question if I may: do you consider Braithwaite more a butler or a valet?

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, while we're on the subject of twins and fishes, I recall sometime ago you stating something to the effect that riding a fish will interfere with one's hps ability.
Could you expand on that theory a bit?

And on another note, I'm wondering, while I'm in the middle of doing a marginal job of ding repair on a crushed swallow tail tip: do you do your own repairs?
Or is that something your butler Braithwaite does for you.

Well I'm not sure what I wrote about back then, but... classic Fishes are very much lateral surfing boards, a lot of planing, split pintails which mean very straight outlines from midway back, barely any rocker, massive long-base fins without any tip or flex, designed to paddle in pretty easy and run down the line of a flattish-faced wave for some distance, do swoopy laterally angled cutbacks, and also hold in to the face of a slightly hollower but very clean wave.

If you ride one of these - especially if you ride it because that's the kind of surfing you enjoy and find easy to do - then you will develop a style around that. You'll grow used to all those facets of a Fish and will search on a wave for the lines that will fit it. You will also grow used to the Fish's slower response time at the beginning of turns and will adjust your eye for the wave to suit.

So most modern high performance boards are a lot of more varietal than that, they're designed to surf at a wide range of turn angles and to recover from things like slides and airs, and turn in tight parts of a wave. There's concaves to flats, quite a bit of tail rocker and variable outline curve, and smaller raked fins with a bit of tip and some flex, and an assortment of tails (seems a bit as if the elegant round pin or thumbnail is the mot juste at present). Paddling is a bit of secondary consideration in such boards. They are very fast twitch and respond instantly to turning pressure, and they don't like to plane flat, they prefer to be almost constantly moved on to a rail where they can generate a lot of speed off the concave curve.

If you shift on to a board like that from a Fish, you'll really battle with a lot of things: the paddling mobility, the reaction speed, the turning angles that are generated with very little effort, the turn timing, and most of all the clash between the board's performance capacity and your Fish-adjusted eye for the wave.

Now if you are a talented and experienced surfer who regularly rides boards across a wide quiver range, you'll adjust to the change quite fast, indeed you may be looking to be stimulated by that change in some way. But that's not the vast majority of surfers - as a rule we tend to plug into a certain style of board, stick to it, become attached to whatever level of skill we develop on that kind of craft, even bag other surfers who ride something we don't want to ride.

Be that as it may - the combination of factors here makes a transition from lots of Fish time to leaping on a high performance board very awkward, even more awkward in a way than that from a longboard to a hps. At least with a longboard transition, you'll adjust based solely on the size difference.

Re dings, yeah I fix some but others, like complicated ones, I take to a fantastic man who lives in Mona Vale. No way am I letting Braithwaite near any of 'em.

[Nick Carroll]

Apologies for holding the floor, but one final question if I may: do you consider Braithwaite more a butler or a valet?

Well how did Blackadder regard Baldric?

[Drailed]

If you shift on to a board like that from a Fish, you'll really battle with a lot of things: the paddling mobility, the reaction speed, the turning angles that are generated with very little effort, the turn timing, and most of all the clash between the board's performance capacity and your Fish-adjusted eye for the wave.

This.

Yep.

[offshore1]

Thanks Nick. Very informative.

Re dings, yeah I fix some but others, like complicated ones, I take to a fantastic man who lives in Mona Vale. No way am I letting Braithwaite near any of 'em.

I'm sure the Brian would have some cunning plans.

[crabmeat thompson]

Apologies for holding the floor, but one final question if I may: do you consider Braithwaite more a butler or a valet?

Well how did Blackadder regard Baldric?

with great fervour and insurmountable gratitude?

[Nick Carroll]

You got it.

[Drailed]

Nick, when was the last time you pulled out a shaka, or even double shaka?

[crabmeat thompson]

nick skyped me this morning from his new kitchen and he opened and closed proceedings with a double shaka- Yewww combo.

[el rancho]

Nothing wrong with a few shakas thrown here and there, just to piss off the all the serious uptight surfers in the line-up.

[Trev]

Apologies for holding the floor, but one final question if I may: do you consider Braithwaite more a butler or a valet?

Well how did Blackadder regard Baldric?

so, Braithy aka the brian aka baldrick.

Yessss!

[Beanpole]

So Nick did you catch the Legends Expression Session?
Do you think Shaun looked head and shoulders better than everyone or do you prefer Michael Hos style.......which reminds me a bit of yours.

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, when was the last time you pulled out a shaka, or even double shaka?

Well following the braithy shaka farce, I went surfing for a while then cruised up to the surf club where my under 17 and younger board racing crew was awaiting a training session.

Instantly they began hurling Shakas my way, based solely on the fact that I was carrying an actual surfboard.

"What in God's name are you doing?" I shrieked. "Shakas? For Gods sake!"

they continued to harass me so I made them paddle directly out to sea for a combined 14 minutes then back again.

[Nick Carroll]

So Nick did you catch the Legends Expression Session?
Do you think Shaun looked head and shoulders better than everyone or do you prefer Michael Hos style.......which reminds me a bit of yours.

Oh yeah I watched that

I have a lot of water time at Lowers and feel quite confident that I would have pulverised the bloody lot of them relatively easily.

Shaun looked like he was ripping the afternoon before when it was a bit bigger. He's still a fantastic surfer as is Michael.

[alakaboo]

Isn't there some sort of masters world surfing tour? Have at it, Nick.

[Drailed]

Haha.

There was a bloke in cronulla the other day with a shaka tattoo on his chest. He couldnt surf that well.

[Nick Carroll]

Isn't there some sort of masters world surfing tour? Have at it, Nick.

No. It's boring. I'd rather try to win an Australian masters ironperson championship.

[JET01]

Aren't Shaka's all about thanks?
I picked up throwing Shaka's driving around Hawaii... Out of context for this conversation maybe... But I just can't shake it.