a hully hull

There's something about the shape and foil of a displacment hull thats so pleasing to my eye. I think it's the way that there are no hard edges just gentle curves, whichever angle you look from, that flow into each other.

It's a deceptive kind of shape, there's a lot more going on than there first appears and they somehow feel more organic than a pointy thruster ever could.

Still doesn't really feel like summer does it, despite a few small semi clean waves this week. I'm struggling to get enthused as a result but hopeful some portugese sun and waves will restock the stoke next week!

count trimula..

There's something refreshingly simple about the feeling of pure trim you get from a true displacement hull on a clean wave.

I hadn't ridden my hull for a while but just cruising down the line, connecting sections with that hot knife through butter feel was so much fun on this particular day.

 Nothing else gives you quite the same slingshot feeling out of a deep full rail bottom turn either. Good times!

While i'm talking hulls, this one was shaped by Tim Mason a couple of years ago. Tim's fundraising efforts i posted about a few weeks ago are still going strong and the Timmy Mason Trust now has full charitable status which is excellent news and a real testament to the Tim, Kate and all those in the UK surfing community that have donated time or product.

queen of the coast

So i was lucky enough to surf Rincon a few times on this year's trip to california, something i missed out on last year. Obviously it's traditionally a winter break but it does get a little swell in the summer and let me tell you it is every bit as good a wave as you might expect from it's reputation, even with less than ideal swell conditions!

The shape is fantastic, a powerful pocket and a nicely tapering shoulder, more speed and power than i expected. Fun when tiny on a log but i can imagine a hull being a mindblowingly good speed race there at medium size

Obviously it gets super busy on a decent swell but the cove was pretty quiet when i was there, friendly mostly older locals, happy to shoot the breeze bobbing in the lineup. I think my favorite thing though, is just how immersed in nature it feels, even given how close the freeway actually is. Dolphins regularly swam through the lineup, pelicans dove just feet away, even the scrub path from the parking lot is populated by scurrying lizards and nervous bunnies.

i'd better stop now or i'm liable to get a bit depressed about not living there! :-)

 L

ten piggies over..

On the way to Doheny one morning i rather randomly bumped into my friend Jake, who works for Almond and is a really talented surfer and one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. He was on his way south with Alex who runs the tenpiggiesover blog and John Wesley who does some shaping for Gato as well as his own boards.

Like everyone i've met in Ca, they were really friendly and stoked to hear about our little corner of the world. I've checked Alex's blog for some time so it was cool to meet him in person. John's car, an old vw type 3 like the one i posted a photo of recently, deserves a mention too. Very cool indeed!

Doheny was tiny and those guys headed on south to san o. I paddled out anyway and got a couple of fun ones eventually, alone with just a few pelicans for company. The photos make it look better than it actually was if i'm honest!

junk buster

MIKEY D's MINI SIMMONS from ALEK PARKER on Vimeo.


I just came across this little clip of Mikey DeTemple riding a 5'1 mini simmons shape. I think it really shows off how the design works in junk surf, the kind of conditions we often encounter at our beachies. You can really see the effortless lateral speed generation that i raved about in my review. Early Sunday's surf was a good case in point, shoulder high, slow, beachbreak that looked a lot better from the carpark. The paddle out revealed a lot of water moving around and waves with a peaky take off but not much wall on offer. I split the session trading boards with BGA and the aforementioned mislaid mandala quad fish, which is usually a lovely surf. While the mini sim's extra foam kept it gliding over flat spots between sections, the fish struggled to get moving leading to several waves of frustrating bogged cutbacks. I'm sure a more skilled operator than i would have noticed less difference but for me the velosim maximised the fun yet again. Changing with numb fingers after the biting windswept walk up the beach was rather less fun. Least the water is still warm for now!

The love affair with my velo sim continues.....

flying the friendly ghost...

Anyone with even half an idea of current trends in surfing outside the all encompassing thruster movement will doubtless be aware of the emergence of the mini simmons as a new branch on the board design tree. Coming out of the work of Simmons in the late 50's and his adherence to the principles of even earlier boat hull theory, the concepts were rediscovered by Richard Kenvin as part of his Hydrodynamica project. Working with Joe Baugess from much longer simmons originals  and apocryphal stories of simmons riding a styrofoam 6 footer til the windansea shorebreak destroyed it they first made a 9 foot replica in balsa that Kenvin and co. successfully rode in large waves in California and the Galapagos. Then they went shorter..

The result was an epoxy 6 footer quite unlike anything else out there, a seemingly simple shape with decpetive subtleties. This first board was named "casper" after the friendly ghost and started to pop up in photos and videos around the net a couple of years ago. Having been ridden by a number of high profile surfers, all well documented with glowing ride reports the idea caught on and quickly many different shapers began to take the idea and put their own spin on it.

I think it's pretty safe to say that few people in the UK have actually seen one of Baugess original shapes though there are a few UK shapers who are making a version. For the past 6 weeks or so i've been riding the little 5'8 in the pictures and it's very quickly become my favorite board. This one is a Point Concept Velo sim, designed by Ryan Lovelace in Santa Barbara but loving shaped over here by Tim Mason off Ryan's templates.

Tim actually does a very fine copy of the Baugess which is shorter and thicker than this with a more pronounced s deck and has a slightly more complicated bottom shape. My board is bellied to flat to concave through the fins, 5'8 x 22 x 3 but foiled out through the rails. The fins are wood keels but more semi-circular in shape than those for a classic fish.

So after digesting all the hype i was keen to get a feel for the shape people are raving about, and let me tell you it's a hell of a lot of fun!! It's definatley a board that draws lateral lines rather than truly vertical ones on the wave. The feel is probably best described as being like riding a bar of soap. It rolls from rail to rail smoothly and cuts through the water much like the feel of a hull. It's a board you need to get low on as you bottom turn and it feels great in a high line trim. Where it differs from the hull is in turning.The fins are set well back, only a few centimetres from the tail and the board will pivot off the bottom or the top much like a normal twin keel fish. Once you outrun a section it cuts back like a skatey loose fish so you can set up for the next speed run, then repeat til your grinning like a loon and hooting yourself!

 It's much friendlier on your backhand than a hull too. Like a hull, the roll in the bottom gives it a slightly "unsafe" feel as you put it into a bottom turn. It requires a bit of practice to get the right amount of weight on the rail as you start the turn, you almost need to gently but progressively weight the rail but once you have that figured it performs backside too.

Like any board, it loves a clean down the line wave, i've had it out in headhigh and under surf so far and the speed it generates is awesome. Where it really excels, however,  is in junk surf. I can honestly say that a couple of weeks ago i had the best surf ever in 1-2ft sloppy windswell. The combination of effortless speed generation and quick direction change facilitated by the bottom contour and short length respectively give you the ability to chase the open face through, over and around whitewater and maximise the fun in poor conditions. It could be the ultimate junk wave design, as long as you're not a died in the wool shortboarder desperate to live out your slater fantasy for every surf.

While Tim obviously isn't the only shaper who will make you one of these, i honestly think few shapers in the UK understand boards derived from hull principles as well as he does and for something like this you want someone with that knowledge. Ryan, whose original design this is, has a proven track record in these types of shapes with a group of like minded test pilots and Rincon to work out the flaws. Once again not it's not going to be everyones cup of tea but it is a MUCH more functional daily driver than a hull while still retaining the smooth feel and different enough from a Lis style fish to warrant having both in your quiver.

 These shapes are a different branch of the tree than conventional concave bottom shortboards and if you believe Kenvin, are the true ancestors of the modern high perfomance board as well as both skateboarding and snowboarding. Big claims but the proof as they say, is in the eating!

Velo sim stoke!

Huge, massive thank you's to Tim Mason who battled the traffic to drop off this beauty today. 5'8 Point Concept Velo sim designed by Ryan Lovelace and shaped in the UK by Tim. It's mini simmons-esque but way more foiled than the Baugess caspers with a hull entry into a single concave through the ply fins.

First impressions from a brief session in sort of surfable chest high junk were really fun. It feels very much like a hull crossed with a fish, smoother and more laterally fast than a keel but more user friendly than a hull. I think it's going to go really well in a much wider range of conditions than the hull but still have that feeling of super fast trim.

Proper report when i have a few more sessions under my belt

hull-o-rama

Hull-O Malibu from www.KORDUROY.tv on Vimeo.

Jimmy Gamboa. Funny thing about hulls is that if you're watching someone surf one, it doesn't look like radical surfing, but you can bet he feels like he's going 1000 miles an hour. Super fun boards, and a feeling i'm addicted to. If only i had such a good wave to ride mine on!

footprints

This is from the first roll out of the diana toy camera i was given for my birthday (thank you mr Gardner!). Typically mixed results, personally i think this shot was the pick of the bunch. Weirdly, in exact opposite to the holga, the view finder shows far more than the shutter sees and that scuppered a fair number of the shots on the roll. Nevermind, at least i know that now and on the plus side they were all pretty well exposed.

I sit typing this a while before it's going to appear, still buzzing from a super fun surf at sunset p-land. Mostly friends in the water, strong offshores and a swell building with the tide added up to very fast, fairly hollow zippers. When i got there, it was most definately log size and i rode the dano from the post below. I had a feeling it would like the wave there and i was right. Cutting back it felt far more alive and the speed and hold in the pocket on the nose was incredible. I had one especially memorable head dip cheater five where i was certain the tail would break out and it never did. It's a really fun board and my opinion of it gets better each session!

As the tide pushed up so did the size, as is often the case at p-land. It started to get a little too exciting on such a big board with no leash so i broke out the hull and rediscovered the joys of forward trim again, and burnt a lot of brownie points as a result. Still you have to make the most of these long evenings, all too soon the nights will start to draw in, slowly but inexorably......

twinkling toes

I tell myself my hooked toes are an evolutionary advantage to aid my control while hanging five or ten but really i'm just deformed!

With the forecast looking promising, hopefully today's wind allows just a temporary rest between the fun waves of the last week and what lies in store for next.

I've had plenty of hull related stoke recently, culminating in probably my best session on the slippery wee thing on Tuesday. I know i've said before but the feeling of smooth drivey projection off the bottom and the knife through butter high line trim are just awesome. It's also kind of fun lending it to friends who are good surfers and watching it confuse them. Trying to surf hulls off the back foot just doesn't work (eh Ben?)

There's a Isaac organised surf jumble in St Merryn tomorrow, in the village hall i think. He'd love it if lots of you stopped by. I wish I could!