First impressions were that it was well built and finished, and it made a nice "twang" sound when you tapped it - doesn't sound anything like your typical PU / PE stick.
This one was a Professional model, 6'0 rounded pin / roundtail. It's narrower than what I usually ride at barely 18", and has a more rolled sort of deck that reminds me of some of the boards I had in the 90's! It also has those pinchy rails from about the duckdive grab point, pretty much all the way to the nose. Rear rails are pretty hard / square, and even at the mid point the rails are pretty low ( again, more like boards I stopped surfing some time ago because they didn't work for me ). It's lighter than anything I own at the moment, about the same as a EPS / Epoxy board I made 10 years ago and glased too lightly, so that it snapped on its third ever outing.
In the water, first thing I noticed was the paddling. Just. Awful. Felt like I had a pile of weed hooked on my leash ( at one stage I even turned the board upside down to see what was making it pull so much water and found nothing ). Despite that is was pretty easy to pick up waves on which was unexpected.
The surf was less than spectacular, just short sectiony beachies tending to close out, but the board turned quite well once it got going. The few times I managed to find a lip to hit among the slops it behaved reasonably well, and the lightness made it very responsive. One thing I did notice was a reluctance to get out of the foam, and a few times I got really frustrated because no matter where I shifted it made no difference. Sometimes it felt like there was all this turbulence under the tail slowing it down - something the fishy swallow tails I normally surf in small weak stuff don't suffer from. Certainly I have 3 other boards that I would have had a lot more fun on yesterday.
I probably could have chosen better with fins, I stuck two FG-5 sides in and an M-3 center to loosen it up a bit. Next surf I'll probably try my TC Whitelies or Aqualines in it and see how it goes - I just couldn't be arsed pulling them out of one of my other boards yesterday.
The paddling and sensation of drag were certainly issues for me, but we'll see if that improves in some better waves.
Will report any more findings later.
