spped, power, flow

It's taken a while but I've put enough time in on this Gulfstream Speed egg to write a few thoughts.

I really don't like riding modern 3 fin longboards but once the waves get head high, a single fin log gets to be a handful. Obviously ive got plenty of short funky sleds to ride in these conditions but when the saunton line up is clogged with performance longboards, it's hard to get a wave on a shortboard, even if the wave is hella fun once you get one! The idea was to create something with enough length and glide to get in early and compete with the crowd but still be able to surf it like a shorter board without the redundant extra length a prog log gives you. People often confuse eggs with beginners mini-mals or magic carpet style "short longboards" but a true egg draws it's lineage from Skip Frye and his San diego crew through to Donald Takayamaand and Bob Mitsven and is a refined performance shape that will cope with a big range of wave types and sizes

This one's 7'10 x 21 something by 2.6 ish. Untypically vague I know, sorry! Although you'll see this on the GS website listed as one of their eggplant models, in reality its a full custom shape Jools came up with after a long chat on a rainy Friday. Based on the Wild West Shooters Jools made Russ Pierre mixed with the Takayama Howard egg that I own and a healthy dose of shortboard performance design. It's a rounded pin widepoint forward egg with 2+1 fin set up. I'm currently running a 7"greenough 4a with futures sidebites in there which feels about right so far.

It's flat rockered with just a little nose kick and pretty thinned out since I'm only lightweight ( Jools has since made a couple of others for bigger chaps with more foam hidden inside) The rails are a tucked under down rail for most of its length becoming hard around the fins and underneath it's almost a conventional shortboard concave bottom contour. Final noteworthy point is a tail narrower than most off the rack eggs. The takayama howard model is almost an inch and a half wider for example! It's glassed fairly light too.

As usual Jools has totally nailed it with this one. It has good paddle speed and gets in early. Once you're on your feet, it begs a low bodied, fully rail engaged bottom turn rewarding with good projection and then you're off to the races. That flat rocker, concave bottom and down rail yields rapid trim speed in the high line. It's particularly fun to take a narrow stance in the middle and pretend you're Derek Hynd at J bay! Its a board that just feels fast and smooth.

Its length means that you cant just chuck it around like a shorter egg and it definitely likes a small amount of footwork or stance shifting to engage or break the rail line for trim and turns. That said, on a larger wave you can just plant your feet over the fins and go. Once you're outrunning the section and aiming to redirect, with back foot over the fin cluster, its really loose off the tail and wraps nicely back into the whitewater so you can set up again.

Compared with the "classic" Californian eggs like the Takayama Howard, it pumps for speed more easily. Those Ca eggs tend to have a roll entry into panel vee on the bottom which keeps them smooth but tends to feel like their pushing water in slack waves and does nothing to help you race a beachbreak section like we have to do frequently.

Devon Howard has been consistently  preaching that a 2 +1 egg is the perfect one board quiver and I'm increasingly inclined to agree. You can catch and trim small waves and even cheater 5 but still have the ability to duckdive out back on a bigger day. On those bigger sets it will get you in early, cope with your speed through the bottom turn and hold a good line through a section or let you draw big arcs on a softer face. The natural length and glide takes you through flat spots and its short enough to redirect then pump to make the most of onshore conditions. Finally, going with a multi fin set up compliments that natural speed on sub par waves and gives hold in steeper conditions. Single fin eggs work too but single fins generally expect more speed from the wave itself and can lose speed through a turn ( flex in the fin combats this but still...)

The WSL judge contests looking for Speed, Power, Flow. A good egg is the very definition!

sunny side up

Gulfstream's production skills just go from strength to strength and this little beauty is no exception!

7'10 of speed egg goodness. Flat, foiled, pulled in tail and nice performance rails. Your girlfriends mini-mal this aint!! 

I'm yet to get an A plus day in on it yet but early signs are really fun. There's a fair amount of rail line in there so it likes a bigger face to draw on. Its surprisingly loose off the tail for its length and trims super fast if you step up to the middle.

Roll on some nice head high lined up saunton summer swells!

instant fun

Quiver summer 2016

ceeperchunk

 

It's taken a while but i have finally managed enough sessions on the new mandala to form an opinion! I've never heard a bad review of one of Many's boards and im just going to add to the general hype about his shapes here.

Ive ridden quite a few different mini simmons over the last few years and prior to that i'd put quite a lot of time into various iterations of fish, both the classic twin keel and the double bump quad speedialler style. About a year ago i kind of rediscovered my little 5'6 Gulfstream keel fish. I think if i'm honest that it was maybe just a tiny bit too small for my shortboard abilities when i first had it and i never rode it all that much. Fast forward to last year and my general small board ability had definately ramped up a few notches. Getting back on the fish (which is very much from the performance christenson school rather than a cruisy "retro" place) suddenly opened up much more vertcal surfing and bigger roundhouse cutbacks than the seapea and other mini simmons allowed. However this new found "radicalness" (tongue firmly in cheek) came at the expense of the flat out mush/speed generation of the seapea or the TW bar of soap.

Bottom line was to start looking for something that sat between the two with more of the fish's urning ability but still the speed generation the mini simmons excel at. 

Manny would be the first to say that very little is new in board design but he does seem to have a talent for adding his own tweak to things that work very well and his family of ASQ (arc swallowtail quad) boards are no exception. Broadly speaking they are a version of the mini simmons platform with a rolled entry and flat rocker but they are narrower than the classic outline with a little more curve. They are quads and the bottom goes from belly into spiral vee instead of a single concave through the fins. The rails are more foiled than a classic simmons also.

All of this adds up to a really fun board that hits the middle ground i was looking at. It generates tonnes of speed in mush - the simmons style belly and the big concaves guaruntee that but the thinner rails and the quad set up along with a narrower curvier template yield a much more responsive board that will go more vertical and wrap through cutbacks much harder/easier than a traditional simmons shape. I think the vee and the quad fins help here too.

It was a long wait but oh so worth it!

a devon terrier.....

George with all the beach essentials! Thats my old Dano Old pleasure which has found an appreciative new home with Mr Barrett. I loved the shape but always found it had a little bit too much heft for my diminutive size to man handle in our beach break waves. It suits George to a tee and i always enjoy watching him pilot it through a busy saunton line-up

keepers...

There was a thread on the Magic seaweed forum a while ago about keepers, those boards you will never sell. Thinking about it i'm pretty fickle, there are a few boards that i was sure i'd never get rid of which went to make way for supposedly bigger and better things. That said, there are a few in my quiver that have survived the periodic culls and that i'm still really fond of.

Ask me again this time next year and who knows but currently...

5'2 Gulfstream SeaPea by me!!

5'2 Tyler Warren bar of soap
5'6 Jeff mcCallum mford

Both rare, both beautiful, both fly! The McCallum has the best laminate ever, a signed, defaced Dollar Bill.

9'4 if6was9 mod log by Neil Randall, my current beau for logging and the board in the pic above. Based on Dane Petersons logs with a greenough fin. Super fun off the tail and super good on the nose in steeper waves. It's pretty much where current "cutting edge" longboard design is right now.

9'6 classic Malibu jai lee noserider by Peter White, such a good noserider it's almost cheating!

dharma bums

We had a fun little weekend swell hereabouts, not too busy and fun size. The water has definately dropped a degree or two though. A slightly optimistic wetsuit choice on saturday left me shivering outside the van a couple of hours later. Great to see a couple of seapea's in the water. Looked like they were giving as much fun as mine did on saturday!

In the spirit of sharing the seapea stoke, i managed to finagle a few waves on Thom's Bing Dharma on saturday then a whole session in fun shoulder high beachie on sunday using BGA's new dharma. Both were 5'8

Just in case you are curious, here are my semi-learned thoughts! First thing i noticed was how much more foiled it was than i expected. I had kind of imagined the dharma to be on the mini sim side of the fish but that isn't the case at all. Although there's plenty of foam under the chest, it's really (nicely) thinned out at the rails and nose. The rocker is eally flat and the 5'8 paddled beautifully early into the clean zippers on offer. The other thing that immediatly struck me was the depth of the single concave, you could almost feel the base curving upwards under your fingers as you grabbed the rails to sit up or duck dive.

Once into a wave it felt a lot more "neutral" than i expected, more like a shortboad that wants some input from the rider rather than a simmons or fish that needs guiding but goes immediatly towards its own characteristic line. The tail feels narrower than it is and almost disappears beneath you allowing you to direct with force wherever you want and without having to push or fight to break a line. This shortboard style nature translated to easy backhand surfing and a really fun couple of hours.

That said, it is very fast laterally and will trim past sections almost without the need to pump. I'm sure cheater fives would be possible if you were so inclined..

Not at all the board i was expecting but a really great shape. One that i think perhaps likes a bit of shape and isn't quite the mush buster that the outline photos might suggest. It felt like a quad fish that you could really drive around and get up in the lip - i made a couple of late timed floaters i had absolutley no business keeping my feet on! If you normally ride shortboards i think it might be an easy transition, it's definately more on that side of the spectrum than a loggers shortboard.

Definately one to snaffle another few waves on in the future!

p.s. kerouac = genius

kids in the sweet shop

made by Michel

This beauty is a 9'10 RON model log custom made for my friend BGA by Michel Junod
Junod isn't a massive name this side of the atlantic but he is very well regarded in his native California both as a surfer and a shaper. He hails from the Santa Cruz area and was heavily featured in Thomas Campbells the present movie which is probably where you have heard of him before if you've been scratching your head!







 He makes beautiful surfboards but they are great value because his name doesn't have the worldwide cache of Bing and others. His boards deserve it though. The shapes and finish are every bit as good as other californian prestige brands.

BGA is most definately a fan and has had a few different boards from him over the years. This one came over with Nineplus and is one of Michel's Regular Old Noserider models. It's defiantely got a little bit of a piggy wide point back/ hippy influence but it's more of a full all round log shape than his Pignar or Two tone models. As a result it probably suits our average days  little bit more.

I rode this one the other day in waist high semi-clean medium speed beach break and i was really impressed. I normally dont like long logs, anything over 9'6 and i usually find that the extra inches are a hindrance rather than a help. Not so here, despite it's size, the RON has a nice weight, not too heavy, not too light. It has a nimbleness off the tail (in a traditional pivoty sense) that belies it's size and i found it was easy to whip through fades and cutbacks for me even though i'm only ten stone. The gentle roll in the bottom and nice round 50/50 rails undoubtedly help too.

Up front there's a subtle teardrop concave and perched with toes over it's very stable both in the pocket and when the wave fattens a little. It paddled great too but then there's a lot of float relative to my (fly)weight. BGA is taller and heavier than me and it suits him to tee. His daily driver for the last couple of years has been a 9'8 junod two tone which is a superb noserider when the wave has some shape but at mushy gutless saunton it's not the easiest board to get the best from. The extra width in the front half of the RON gives more forgiveness when the wave gives less and it's flattering his surfing already.

In short it's a good value californian all around log and well worth thinking about if you are in the market!

testing testing 1,2,3......

I've just stolen Gordon from Wavedreamer's pictures of the aforementioned Will from Gulfstream testing the first stock SeaPea. This is Will's take on it:


As you know I have been given the responsibility of testing our new board, the Sea Pea. Mainly im testing this one to see if it surfs how we want it to, and most importantly like its Father, Chris Preston's aka CP, Sea Pea.

I knew of a few subtle differences before surfing it. There was slightly less rocker, and i felt it had a slightly straighter rail line. It looks fantastic and was praying that it surfed as well as the original one.

The first session was in horrendous 2ft woolacombe. Strong NW winds had been blowing all day saturday and it wasn't til 5 oclock that i mustered up the stoke to get in. Gordon from Wavedreamer came along with his camera to document the event.

To give you an idea of how bad the surf was, there was only 2 other people actually attempting to surf, both of which were on shortboards and were having no luck at all. To say this board made me smile is an understatement. It didn't even have many good long faces to open up its turbos but good golly did it surf well. There is few boards that accelerate and trim quite like this board did in conditions like this. The whole experience of surfing this type of board is rad.

I also surfed it early Sunday morning in super clean 1-2ft. It was really weak and gutless but the Sea Pea served its purpose yet again. While a few keen loggers where in trim and getting nice nose rides, the Sea Pea was flying across little walls and making me wonder why i haven't owned a board like this for the last 5 years. Dam you CP.

Testing boards in good waves is no real test, most board will go well in 3 ft glass, but very few will go well in 2 foot absolute wind blown rubbish. This board is one of those few. It finds speed from the flattest wall, and drives through forever searching for the next section. You can beat sections that wouldn't dream of making on your standard thruster. It caught waves very well too, being flat and floaty gives you plenty of paddle speed. Once up, a few moments after, a subtle pump and I was going mach 10.

I will say a few constructive criticisms of it though;

- friends wont want to surf with you anymore as you get too many waves

- your hair will end up long

- you'll grow a moustache

- words like 'rad' will and 'stoke' become normal day to day words

If you can deal with the above then come and get one! See below for a few little snaps of it in action. More updates to come when i have had a few more surfs on it...

There are more of Will's thoughts and pictures of the orange SeaPea here.

it lives......

 

The Sea Pea is finally finished and in my grubby mitts! Massive thanks to Jools, Matt, Ellis and Will at Gulfstream for your time and patience! 

I know you are all dying to know how it surfs. 

It's great! Really 'effin great!!

 I can honestly say that if i had bought it off  the rack i would have been really happy so to know that i designed and made it pushes the stoke-o-meter off the scale!

First session was mid to high p-land, 3 footish sets, really just windswell cleaned up by the southerly blowing cross offshore. I've ridden quite a few different iterations of the mini simmons and this one is definately a good one!

 It paddles great, despite being 5'2. There's quite a lot of foam in there and i think we struck a good balance between float and duck divability. There's a hair more rocker than some versions of this shape, something we borrowed from the bing version and that really seems to work when you're up and surfing and yet isn't enough to affect wave catching or "mush busting"

It's fast, really fast and skatey and responsvie, section racing and feeling lively under foot like it will react to every little pressure change from your feet. The bottom has a pretty subtle roll up front and that transitions quickly a single concave that deepens through the fins.

 There's not much of a hull feel here, more jet powered fishy. That translates into whippy cutbacks and a board that is really happy to go backside with no real nursing required, something that can be the downfall of mini-sim style boards.

Personal bias aside, i honestly think we've come up with a great shape. Like i've said before, these style of boards go great in the UK but up til now getting hold of one was difficult. Well now you can get one that you know will work great and you know it will be lovingly shaped and beautifully hand finished by Jools and co at one of the best factories in this country.

 The 5'2 x 21 5/8 x 2.5 Gulfstream sea pea in full flow, available now...... disco fingers not included!

Big thanks to Tom for the company and the picture!!

planing

Jools hard at work in his shaping cave.

It's hard to explain just how difficult it is to cut a decent shape with a planer (for a newbie like me anyway) The foam is so fragile and the planer so aggressive that the tiniest change in angle or speed is reflected by creating a bumo or worse still a gouge....

The best comparison i can make would be trying to carve sonmething out of florists oasis with a dremel tool! Steady hands and a good eye are the bare minimum.

Hope everyone got some fun fathers day waves over the weekend. There certainly were a lot of people in the water. In the end a bit of patience was rewarded with a slightly smaller but quieter session. I rode my pointy squire log which hasn't been in the water for a while. It's pretty different to a proper log and a nice alternative to a three fin longboard in bigger waves. Despite having the wide point back of center, the roll in the bottom and the flexy fin give it an almost hully feel to the bottom turn. Especially if you get low and crank it over. There's a nice pivoty drive to it's cutbacks and the 17 nose really makes you work for your tip time. It's an unusual but satisfying board to surf.

Monday was a beautifully fun logging wave, small glassy and perfect for the if6was9 log i've been favoring recently. Boots off too!

The rain may be back today but it's my birthday and i'm going surfing!!!!

sock it to 'em boy

MITCH ABSHERE PUNKS & POETS from Stance on Vimeo.

I've always liked Mitch Abshere, both his style in and out of the water, and for his honesty.  I've never spoken to him although i know he's friends with people i know.

A long time ago i read a interview with him in the long defuct Longboard Magazine. Mitch was just on the up after a pretty deep dive through partying too hard to a DUI and a stint in jail. While i'm not religious at all, it's clear that discovering a faith really helped Mitch get his life back on track. While i'm sure Mitch has been a jerk to some one cant help but respect someone who has put his life back together like he has.

Since then seems like he's in a good place and his captain fin co stuff is always interesting. Cool shops too, kinda like the original revolver but in California.

It might be a little middle aged to get excited about socks (least it's not slippers) but Stnce make some comfy, hard wearing pairs in a massive selection of quirky styles. Worth treating your feet to!

Mitch Abshere -What We Ride from Moose Huerta on Vimeo.

the sea pea

 

So i finally managed to get over to Gulfstream to finish shaping my first board under Jools watchful eye. It's come out really well and i am super stoked. It's not a straight copy of the Bing i borrowed although it does use that as a reference point. It also takes some influence from the TW bar of soap i own. Theres not much rocker, with a subtle bellied entry into a single concave from about a third back that deepens as it goes off through the fins. The rails are very soft 50/50, almost an up rail in the nose, quickly blending into a shortboard style rail with a nice edge to the back third. It looks "right" and hopefully will surf right too! Next up is glassing!

 

I want to say a massive thank you to Jools at Gulfstream for his patience in teaching me and correcting my cock ups before they got too bad. There's no way it would look like such a nice shape if i had been left to my own devices! 

I'd like to think that he enjoyed it  as much as i did, it's the first time he's shaped anything like this so there was a certain amount of head scratching and designing to get it to blend together well. Hopefully this is going to be the first prototype for a proper Gulfstream Mini simmons model! You heard it here first!

Obligatory cheesy shot..........hand shaping (well) is hard and my appreciation of it as a skill is even greater than it was!!

made in california

dust busting....

 

So i already had a pretty large amount of respect for skilled shapers but my level of admiration for people like Jools has increased yet again after my morning "shaping"

 

Notice i'm using inverted comma's since if i had been left to my own devices i'm not sure things would have turned out quite so well as they are going to and that is mostly due to Jools patience in walking me through in baby steps and stepping in to smooth out the bumps before my hamfistedness did too much damage!

 

Something that i hadn't fully grasped is how fragile the foam is when you are wielding the planer. It's incredibly easy to slip or lose concentration and cause a dent or bump. It's also difficult to keep an eye on the overall shape as you concentrate on each area in turn. So far it's been fascinating, fun and seeing the blank take shape is really exciting.

 

It's a 5'2 mini simmons. We took some measurements from the Bing mini sim i borrowed but thats now gone back so this isn't an exact copy. We measured out the points on the blank and then templated it using curves from Jools archive of shapes. What is really interesting is the combination of curves. It's got the nose from a log, the tail of a 6'8 squash tail shortboard and the curve that joins them comes from the template of a 7'6 mini mal. Bottom shape is belly to flat to a decent single concave and we are going to keep the rails pretty foiled as per the bing and the bar of soap i have.

 

Only half way so far and i'm going back to finish it off soon.......

 

 

Geppy's on parade

there in black and white

A slightly more illuminating picture of the bing mini-sim. Shows the fin template well which is a normal Geppy fish keel rather than a more classic simmons half moon shape. These are set canting inwards towards the stringer by a few degrees though i'm pretty sure thats builder error and not how they are supposed to be. Legendary californian build quality not always spot on then!

 Going to have to give it back soon....

handmade

So if you're anywhere near Hayle / Gwithian on the 8th or 9th sept, James Pary's second annual Hip wiggler single fin invitational is happening along with schmoozing oppurtunities with the Bing people. It's kindof the low key Brit eccentric version of Joel's duct tape contests and is bound to be a fun time. Hopefully the weather will be kinder for spectating this year!

Bing, Matt Calvani, Elliot Dudley and Mick Rodgers will be demo ing boards at Saunton from 8 on the 15th sept then hanging in the Nineplus shop in braunton from 12 and at a special film screening at the surf museum that evening. The museum is also hosting a bbq / old board meet with them at saunton from 11 on the 16th september.

Finally, Rich Mcgonical and friends are organising the european fish fry at Crackington on the weekend after (22nd sept) Should be fun and great to catch up with Rob Royal!

Today's reccomended is sound track...... Handwritten by The Gaslight Anthem, shades of springsteen only cooler....

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!