Author Topic: Love That New Board Smell  (Read 15347 times)

PonoBill

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Love That New Board Smell
« on: November 20, 2014, 05:24:59 PM »
I tested the new V3 Bullet Prototype today. Fast as hell but not for me. My geezer balance says no.

So I eased my disappointment by ordering a new V1 in middleweight trim. Just about everyone at the SIC shop started shaking their heads when I said I wanted a lightweight layup. It's a conspiracy. Geez. I don't know where they got the idea that I'm hard on gear. So we compromised on standard layup with a little extra squeeze on the vacuum bagging to get more epoxy out. Not a big deal in most boards, but at 17.5 feet it's probably a pound or two. The board should come in about 27-28 pounds, which will feel like a featherweight compared to my stoutly-built V2. I have to admit that the V2 has stood up to some pretty outrageous treatment, still dry--has never leaked--and still looks good.

Extra special good news is the delivery date--two weeks!! They had just started on a board for stock at the shop, so I hopped into the schedule by simply agreeing to take the grey EPS they already had cut and a gelcoat color they had in stock--lemon yellow.

Anyone that's thinking about a hollow Maui SIC board, this is a good time to act. According to the schedule I was looking at you can probably get delivery in January. Wait another month when the channel racers start ordering boards and you'll be seeing yours in late spring.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

OUTSIDEWAVE

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2014, 05:27:04 PM »
smells like you been sniffin' catalyst again!
SEA BIRDS THEY DO TOUCH AND GO AS THE WORLD JUST TANGOES BY.... SO I SADDLE UP MY SEAHORSE WITH MY FLYROD IN MY HAND.... 10'3 King custom  10'6"  c4 da beachboy

PonoBill

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2014, 06:31:44 PM »
Damned close. Mark was spraying a 6 man canoe when I got there, and everyone but him was outside the shop with the doors closed. I hung out for a while with the toluene fumes wafting around. Then bought the board. I felt the crap in my lungs for an hour. 
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

Area 10

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2014, 11:57:03 PM »
You are very lucky to have such easy access to perhaps the world's best custom shapers of ocean boards. The last time someone from the UK ordered a 17ft board from the US it arrived in two pieces.

I'd love to see you use that board in our conditions in order that I could learn whether they are really that different from yours, or whether it is just our relative lack of experience that means that boards over 14ft are not favoured. On a recent DW run, I was wishing I was wearing a headcam so I could show you how often on my Bullet 14V2 I was right on the tail of the board, with my front foot nowhere near where a steering mechanism would be. I was having to do this to stop the nose poking into the trough in front. But maybe if I was a better DWer then I'd be able to anticipate the direction changes of the bumps better and with a steering mech would be able to avoid pearling by following them. I must take some footage of our conditions and you can let me know what you think. supuk on this forum has got round the issue by building himself a custom 14fter that has a massive amount of rocker (maybe more even than the first Naish Glide), although other designers have taken other solutions. For instance the Fanatic Falcon's bulbous nose and thin tail, and the very low volume tail of the Bullet 14V2 (at the cost of a lot of footwork). In general, the issue of whether boards built for eg. Maui conditions are optimal for ours fascinates me. I'm wondering whether in 5 years or so, there will be "European style" DW boards that have different features than "Hawaiian-style" DW boards. I guess we need to catch Mark on a trip back to his home country and take him DWing and see what he thinks.

supuk

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #4 on: November 22, 2014, 12:32:05 AM »
You are very lucky to have such easy access to perhaps the world's best custom shapers of ocean boards. The last time someone from the UK ordered a 17ft board from the US it arrived in two pieces.

I'd love to see you use that board in our conditions in order that I could learn whether they are really that different from yours, or whether it is just our relative lack of experience that means that boards over 14ft are not favoured. On a recent DW run, I was wishing I was wearing a headcam so I could show you how often on my Bullet 14V2 I was right on the tail of the board, with my front foot nowhere near where a steering mechanism would be. I was having to do this to stop the nose poking into the trough in front. But maybe if I was a better DWer then I'd be able to anticipate the direction changes of the bumps better and with a steering mech would be able to avoid pearling by following them. I must take some footage of our conditions and you can let me know what you think. supuk on this forum has got round the issue by building himself a custom 14fter that has a massive amount of rocker (maybe more even than the first Naish Glide), although other designers have taken other solutions. For instance the Fanatic Falcon's bulbous nose and thin tail, and the very low volume tail of the Bullet 14V2 (at the cost of a lot of footwork). In general, the issue of whether boards built for eg. Maui conditions are optimal for ours fascinates me. I'm wondering whether in 5 years or so, there will be "European style" DW boards that have different features than "Hawaiian-style" DW boards. I guess we need to catch Mark on a trip back to his home country and take him DWing and see what he thinks.

Same nose rocker as the old Naish. 

DavidJohn

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2014, 01:25:12 AM »

I tested the new V3 Bullet Prototype today. Fast as hell but not for me. My geezer balance says no.


Pics please.. You did take pics for us didn't you..  :)

PonoBill

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2014, 08:37:23 AM »
I didn't shoot any pictures, but I will.

Area, one of the problems with extreme rocker is the board sticking at the transition. You've undoubtedly experienced that feeling of getting the brakes slammed on when the nose comes down--even when it doesn't pearl. The boards that "fit" a short period wave don't fit anywhere else. The gorge is a lot like you describe, only the faces of the waves are probably even steeper since they are formed by wind blowing against a 3 to 6 mph current, and it's pure windswell in relatively shallow water, so it's very short period. For a brief period of time the original Naish Glide 14 was the "magic" board in the gorge because it would catch swells automatically, and ride them a long time. What it couldn't do was catch speed from one swell, allow the rider to find a way through the next one, and connect the rides, swell, to swell. Catching a single swell is fun, connecting bumps together is cocaine.

It's also a lot faster, and that's why the boards in the Gorge have progressed to flatter shapes and SIC boards have a dominant hold--they don't catch. Well, the V1s don't,
the V2 does a little, and the V3 certainly doesn't--there isn't anything to catch.

I currently ride a production Bullet 17 V1 in the gorge, and it is wonderful. It barely fits between the waves, so you hardly ever go straight, but it hooks bumps together until you just can't stand it and fall off in simple giddyness. I suspect that you guys will be going to flatter boards as you start hooking rides together more. The key to all that is not just Mark, it's Jeremy Riggs. Which reminds me, I need another lesson. I was a little pitiful on my Maliko run yesterday. If someone could really can one of Jeremy's wave reading lessons we'd all progress a lot more quickly. But he hangs over your shoulder (effortlessly, a few inches away) and tells you what to do, what to look for and how to take advantage of every microbump. I thought Jeremy's teaching wouldn't work in the Gorge since the waves are so different and don't have the same mufti-direction pattern that Maui waves do. And then he showed up in the Gorge and proved me totally, absolutely wrong. Some of the best paddlers and downwind experts take lessons from him. I think Art Acquino did yesterday, and he's ridiculously fast in the Gorge.

That said, there's no reason a dealer in the UK can't be an SIC dealer--the production boards come from Cobra, just like probably half of their other boards.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 08:40:59 AM by PonoBill »
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

Area 10

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2014, 10:20:57 AM »
That said, there's no reason a dealer in the UK can't be an SIC dealer--the production boards come from Cobra, just like probably half of their other boards.
Well there is, actually. It's a long story that is all to do with Flow Sports' (in Germany) European marketing strategy, and their lack of experience with the UK market. As a consequence there are a couple of retailers you can order SIC boards from in the UK, or you can buy direct from Germany. But there is no UK SIC representative/dealer, and currently no shops that hold SIC stock, so no demos. I've got three SICs, and I might have as many as everyone else in the UK put together (UK population is 64 million people).

Area 10

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #8 on: November 26, 2014, 11:10:41 AM »
Area, one of the problems with extreme rocker is the board sticking at the transition. You've undoubtedly experienced that feeling of getting the brakes slammed on when the nose comes down--even when it doesn't pearl. The boards that "fit" a short period wave don't fit anywhere else. The gorge is a lot like you describe, only the faces of the waves are probably even steeper since they are formed by wind blowing against a 3 to 6 mph current, and it's pure windswell in relatively shallow water, so it's very short period. For a brief period of time the original Naish Glide 14 was the "magic" board in the gorge because it would catch swells automatically, and ride them a long time. What it couldn't do was catch speed from one swell, allow the rider to find a way through the next one, and connect the rides, swell, to swell. Catching a single swell is fun, connecting bumps together is cocaine.

It's also a lot faster, and that's why the boards in the Gorge have progressed to flatter shapes and SIC boards have a dominant hold--they don't catch. Well, the V1s don't,
the V2 does a little, and the V3 certainly doesn't--there isn't anything to catch.

I currently ride a production Bullet 17 V1 in the gorge, and it is wonderful. It barely fits between the waves, so you hardly ever go straight, but it hooks bumps together until you just can't stand it and fall off in simple giddyness. I suspect that you guys will be going to flatter boards as you start hooking rides together more.
Thanks very much for the advice. But in the post you refer to here I wasn't asking about rockered vs. relatively flat boards. Most people here are already DWing on boards like the Fanatic Falcon which is a flat board by DW board standards - probably has less rocker than your SIC, and you bump-ride any sizeable swell with your foot right back on the narrow tail. I even have to stand a lot of the time with my back foot over the fin while bump-riding if I'm on my Bullet 14V1, and on my Naish 17 (albeit not as much as with the Bullet V2) and they have plenty of rocker.

Instead, I was asking about long DW boards (i.e. boards over 14ft) and how you use rudders if you are continuously bump-riding with your back foot over the fin. Presumably you aren't. The conditions we have here sound a bit like you describe the Gorge, only instead of river current, you have massive tidal effects working against the wind, that make the waves stand up, and short fetches, shallow and very rippy waters, and a helluva lot of wind.

Would you also advise e.g. our friends from South Africa that when they are more experienced they will progress to using longer ruddered boards, and that they are missing out on a lot of fun and speed using the current 14ft fixed fin boards that they mostly do? Thanks for your help.

SUPJorge

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #9 on: November 26, 2014, 11:50:02 AM »
The issue of fitting DW boards to conditions interests me too. We're in the learning stages in South Florida but working our way through many of these issues. Biscayne Bay is effectively a 3/4 semi-circle, open to the Atlantic at the 4-8 o'clock positions. When the wind has any East component to it, we DW East-to-West from Key Biscayne to somewhere on the mainland, depending on the wind direction. When it's coming straight from the North, we drive upcoast, jump into the Atlantic and DW back South.

Problem is the Bay is shallow all the way across so no matter how windy (e.g., Hurricane Isaac in 2012), it's short-period stuff. The ocean side is deeper and longer period. I spent Saturday and Sunday constantly levering the nose of my V2 out of the back of the wave in front of me. Still waiting to get the V2 out in good ocean conditions but expect it'll fare much better there. Crazy as it sounds, I'm thinking of getting a V1 for the Bay.

PS. Taking a class with Riggs in on my bucket list.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 11:52:48 AM by SUPJorge »
14' SIC Bullet V2 - 9'1" Naish Hokua X32 LE

SUPJorge

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #10 on: November 26, 2014, 11:51:18 AM »
Deleted re-post. Uffff.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 11:53:25 AM by SUPJorge »
14' SIC Bullet V2 - 9'1" Naish Hokua X32 LE

Eagle

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2014, 01:04:05 PM »
This vid shows some SIC team riders surfing on lower rocker boards in short period wave action at the Gorge -

Fast is FUN!   8)
Dominator - Touring Pintail - Bullet V2 - M14 - AS23

yugi

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2014, 05:04:55 PM »
A10, we got a 17'4 V1 in our gang. I've ridden it a bit but only in light winds. Not really enough for it to be faster than a 14'. Our strong fall winds didn't come yet. We also have a 14' w rudder waiting for a solid breeze. The natives are restless.

Eagle

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #13 on: November 26, 2014, 05:15:59 PM »
Congrats on the new board btw PB.  This vid seems to illustrate the necessity to keep weight over the tail when in surf mode -


Fast is FUN!   8)
Dominator - Touring Pintail - Bullet V2 - M14 - AS23

Argosi

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Re: Love That New Board Smell
« Reply #14 on: November 26, 2014, 05:51:21 PM »
This vid shows some SIC team riders surfing on lower rocker boards in short period wave action at the Gorge -



Nice video. Anyone know how windy it was in the video? The bumps look like they're about 2 feet from top to bottom.  They are very close period but pretty well organized. Looks like fun conditions. We get bigger waves on our lake when the wind blows 20mph. The ground swell causes the waves to build to about 3-4 feet in localized areas. Last weekend, there were 5 foot waves in just 15-20mph of wind due to the bottom features where I was downwinding. Our lake is about 185 miles long and about 45 miles wide.

I'd like to see the Gorge on a windier day.

 


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