Gettin' it dialed.

I've been surfing a lot more lately.  It's more fun than building boards for me but, I'm also getting better ideas.  The waves here in Ormond Beach are peaky fast beach breakers.  The rides are pretty fast and sometimes long.  Anyways, there are a couple of things that make huge differences for me.  The first is the volume of the board.  A couple of my boards have too much buoyancy for me.  What happens is the nose will flap up and down if I'm too far back.  It's a little touchy if there isn't much nose rocker.

My favorite board for bigger days is a 9' that's 2-5/8" thick.  It's fast and turns well.  The rails are slightly pinched and the fin set-up is 2+1.  I took out my shorter quad fish but, I didn't have as much fun with it.  It felt just a little bit corky.  Your results may vary.

Solarez

We've got a little swell headed this way so, it was time to pull off the stickers and fix my board right. I used Solarez for the first time today.  It worked out well and the UV curing is much better than mixing. Another good feature is the chopped fiberglass already in it.  I was able to fix all my splits and dings much quicker.  

Summer fun

I've been having a fun summer of seeing family, friends and surfing.  There hasn't been anytime to build new boards but, I have been getting the wood ones out when the conditions are right.  I still have to finish my blunt nose longboard and have some ideas for new boards.

Riding the fish.

I took out my 8' fish and got some fun rides.  The waves were kinda small.  The board worked good and it has plenty of glide to stay with the mushy conditions.  There were a lot of curious people asking me questions and giving compliments.  It's so much fun to take out the wood ones.

Ridin' the balsa cedar evo

I finally got a good day to take this one out.  The wind was blowing off shore all day and the waves were small but, there were some set waves rolling thru every so often.  This is a 9' evo that Ron Ferrer built before he went to Hawaii.  It's light and that made it easy to swing around.  I liked the way it turned with that thin pivot fin.  It made it's way down the line with good speed.  I really enjoyed the session and would like to take it out again when the waves are bigger.

We got waves.

Tropical Depression Beryl kicked up some 10'ers.  Fun to watch from the beach.  It was too wild to surf and only a couple of guys went out.  BOth of them got worked.  I'm looking forward to the next tropical depression and getting some waves before it gets crazy.

looking back

I have been fortunate to have owned and ridden lots of boards when I lived in CA. One of my favorites was a G&S 7' 2" egg. It was a good design and was easy to surf. The only times I used my longboard was when the surf was small. I still like to ride longboards on small mushy days. Now, I'm riding shorter boards and looking forward to seeing where this takes me. I don't see myself building any boards until next year.  I'm going to design a 7'2" fish with tapered rails and quad set-up.