great expectations...

Surfing is a funny thing sometimes, the most fun sessions can come from the most inauspicious beginnings. Conversely sometimes the expectations of a great session are high and it just doesn't quite deliver.

Last time i rode my Mccallum mford was what i can best describe as a shocker! Lovely 3 foot offshore day but people everywhere, tired arms and i just couldn't get into a rhythm. Everywhere i sat was the wrong spot. I left the water deflated amid others joyous tales of fun waves.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and i sneak off after kids story time to catch the evening high tide glass off. Calling it thigh high would have been charitable and the tide dictated short sections and close outs. I grabbed the Mccallum again on a whim, expecting only the extra excercise of paddling a 5'6 instead of a 9'6 around. How wrong i was, over the course of an hour i hooked into quite a few tiny reelers with sections to race and spray to throw. I rushed home with the fading light feeling more alive and with the fire duly stoked. A timely reminder of the capability of the mini simmons platform to add excitement to junk waves!

Sometimes the most fun comes when you least expect!

changing man

you know that can't get into your suit quick enough feeling?


I

velo - city

It's taken me a while to feel like i've surfed this board enough to properly review it here but i've had it out in a decent variety of waves now so here goes!

It's a 5'6 x 22 x 2 - 2.5 Mford model by Jeff McCallum. The template is based on Greenough's velo kneeboards with the rails and base borrowed from a mini simmons. The wide point is well forward and the bottom goes from a gentle roll quickly into fairly flat then a big single concave through the fins. The deck is scooped out a bit, though nowhere near as much as a proper flexspoon kneeboard. The fins are beautifully made half moon style quad keels glassed on and beautifully polished. In fact the whole board is a work of art from the shape to the tint and the finishing. It's definately a board you could have on the wall if you wanted!

Paddling is fine, in fact the concave deck feels really comfy and "connected" with your chest. Despite the width it's thin enough to duckdive fine too. It paddles into waves smoothly and then you're off to the races!

It's a really laterally fast board, covering a lot of ground with each pump along the wave. There's a real feeling of squirt out of each bottom turn. It's great at racing sections down the line and it's short enough to coax up and over encroaching white water. It's got a lovely, smooth, knife through butter feel through the water, closer in feel to my old velo - sim than the bar of soap. A little bit of hull smoothness but without the "squirlyness" the greater belly on the velo-sim gave. The lack of rocker and width let you carry through flat sections easily and it's much more of a junk buster than the bar of soap has been so far.

All this lateral speed needs to be reined in and the smoothness carries through cutbacks. I'd probably describe it as like a very smooth fish, a flowing softness to the lines it draws. Not as shortboard feeling as the bar of soap, not as hully as the velo-sim.

The width and the position of the widepoint does need a little getting used to, both setting on a rail and bottom turning on your backhand but it's not a problem after a couple of waves. Thats about the only negative thing i can say, all in all it's a worthy addition to the quiver and a keeper for sure!

searching for a life less ordinary.....

aren't we all?

a minor disaster...

So in my minds eye this was a cool little set up for a photo of a new addition to the quiver (it's a 5'6 Mccallum Mford just so you know!) All good until i dropped the camera about ten minutes later...... Much of the charm of taking pictures with toy camera's like the holga comes from there cheap build quality yielding quirky images. It also means they are very much basically cheap crap plastic!

So i dropped the camera, lunged for it, nearly grabbed it, watched in slow motion as it bounced off my outstretched hand onto the pavement, inwardly groaned as the back of the camera flew off exposing the nearly finished roll of 35mm to bright daylight...........in the words of the great homer simpson DOH!

Thankfully i only lost a couple of pictures, a few were unscathed and these two i sort of rescued in iphoto. All part of a fairly crappy week where my laptop died taking a load of files with it and i came within an ace of rolling my van but thats another story!

I'm going to write a proper report on the board when i've ridden it more but first impressions are that it's really fun, even in utter junk surf, up and planing early with a really shocking amount of lateral speed with a real positive on rails feel and without the slip slideyness of wider tailed simmons shapes. Oh and it looks beautiful, a real eye pleasing shape with a real organic tactile feel, much like a nice hull has........anyway......

torn like an old dollar bill.............

Possibly the best laminate ever!

Ride report to follow soon but this video pretty much sums it up.......