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Yes, in my experience, single carbon glassing (i.e. no sandwich), are more resistant to normal paddle hits and small hits on doors, ground... No more little dings and cracks everywhere. But once the impact strength is enough to break it (hitting the board with your arms / legs / paddle / ground while falling in hollow waves), the ding is bigger and more spectacular than just glass.

Sorry, missed to reply to this thread. Yup, the main info for this event is the facebook page.

"Mistral" winds can be very stong there. Alas, we are currently under an unusual long rain spell. normally here you get depressions moving west -> east, with rain and est wind before, and sun and howling "mistral" afterwards. Rain and no mistral seems forecasted for at least the next 10 days, which is unheard of at this time of year...

The problem for me is there are not a lot of 6"4" 230 pound sup surfers riding SIMSUPS that I can demo so I guess I'm sort of a guinea pig.

For the weight, let's Archimedes guide you. 230 pounds = 104 kg You will float at ~ 115 liters but with no extra flotation "buffer" to help balance in chop when feet move away from the center of balance. 135 to 145 liters will be comfortable wit some practice. More, and you may be actually less stable because of the "cork effect", depending on your conditions and practice.

For the height , let's just say that that at 1.93m you are 1.155 times taller than me. That means that the 31.5" board you tried would have been like a 27.25" for me - no fun at 50+ old!. Or to get the same stability as the Simmons I use of 30" you should have a 34.6" one ...

I would personally urge to go wide, but very thin rails, especially in the tail, to be able to dive them deep in the wave to get hold in good conditions. My experience with thicker boards with more meaty rails have not been good: it was stabler for the same width, but they kind of lose speed in turns. Not a real issue for vertical, contest-oriented surfing, but less fun for me.

Note that with designs with more pulled in tails, more meaty rails were OK as pulled in tails do not need to be as submerged.

If you are wearing booties, I seriously doubt that your problem is the deck pad.

We human beings are not designed to stand perfectly still. We have a kind of "blood pouch" under the feet that is used as a pump to help the blood circulate when we walk.

Try never to stand still, but always move your feet a little. Everybody will have "ants in our feet" (as we say in French) if they do not move their feet around a bit while paddling

To say nothing of the Hawaiian way of measuring waves... Hawaiian 1' is what we call 3' in the rest of the world :-)

if we take the opposite view, for me (167cm) to have the same stability as you (188cm) on you 32" board, I would be on a 28"1/2 board, and I can confirm this: I had 28"1/2 boards and was OK on them.

Also, I can see that a friend of mine has more balance problems when we switch boards, as he is 15 kg lighter... but 20cm taller than me.

Taller people will have more leverage (and bigger feet :-) ), so should not have problems handling the added width.

Volume is important for stability for beginners. But once you are experienced enough to get just enough volume to float you plus 10 - 20 liters for comfort in chop, the stability is more given by the shape and the width (averaged along the board length) than the volume.

Can you post a link to the video? I could then try to help you there (I do not follow racing/downwind news)

March is the coldest month for Mediterranean waters, and anyways, the big wind in south of France is Mistral/Tramontane, that are often very cold.

I have no problem at all with the owner of this site making a TON of money from his affiliate links and I really doubt anyone else has a problem with that.

I have no issue as long as the two big pitfalls are avoided: the contents do not suffer (useful information for readers on some subjects forbidden), and pretending to be a open community but being actually just a promotion medium for some brands.

Just as I have no issue with advertisement in newspapers / internet site, but I just wont subscribe to the ones where the advertisers impose the contents.

the south shore of Oahu which its share of slop.

I have a hard time believing that the south shore of oahu "slop" is even remotely comparable to east coast summer "slop" :-)

I would not advise the hokuas, which are boards designed for powerful waves, and will feel sluggish on east coast summer waves. You will have much more fun with wide, short, early planing boards (fast rocker).
I do not the Naish line well, but I guess from the web site more in the line of a Mana 8'5", but frankly, I think you will love any "simmons"-derived shapes that are discussed in this forum (see "Believe the Hype") around 8'5"

Once on the small boards, you'll go faster doing it the proner way, pumping the board and keeping it trimmed.

So true...
On the short boards, the best use of the paddle is just small quick moves (a bit as with ski poles) to help the board get into the powerful parts of the waves to tap the juice there. The paddle become more a rudder than an engine, in that it doesn't provide power, it helps you get into the power zone

For me it depends on:
- board length. Paddles your size or less are nearly mandatory for sub-7' boards, in part to force you to bend those knees to the max!
- wave shape. When trying to thread aggressive maneuvers on small waves, a long paddle wont simply fit in the space between you and the wave, you need to shorten it to be able to have room to have the paddle on the side rather than trailing backwards during turns. This is especially critical for chest-high hollow waves.
- It also depends on the blade shape. Short blades can have a shorter shaft, as you do not need to travel a lot to submerge them

This means you can perfectly enjoy cool surfing sessions on mellow waves on 9'+ boards with long (+6") paddles :-)

Is this a pic of Patrice at Sunset a few yrs ago?  Best backside turn I've ever seen.

No, this is Peyo Lizarazu, on a Barland custom as always. His backside bottom turns are totally mind blowing.

The process:
[1] fill your car/van/trailer with as much SUPs as you can
[2] rethink your setup to put even more SUPs in it
[3] upgrade your car/van size

... repeat from [1] :-)