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