the old man and the sea

Took the Banana Boat out today, had a red letter session,which for me means three good set waves and didn't get snaked on one, ha!  I changed the inserts to 6 degrees on the quad fronts, hard to say for sure that it was an improvement, but I can say that it felt good on the wave face anyway.  I need to try my high dollar FCS quads on this board, but so far the cheapie composites are doing a good job.

Hope to get some pics, saw my photog buddy when I got out, and he said he got shots of the last wave, so hoping for the best.  Would have taken the Gordita out, but had some crap in the back of my truck, wanted to put the board up on my rack, and it barely spans my lumber rack which is 7', so I grabbed the BB instead.  So fun!  Hope the Hulk and the Widget are providing good rides through this el nino winter, love to see more pics or hear ride reports. 

Also love to hear from anybody else building boards for older guys / gals, or folks with special needs, and what they are finding works for them.  Still meditating on whether to try a 6-10 or not, and if so, what fin setup to go with. Thinking I might like to try a 5 finner. 

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Here's a Christian Fletcher video, showing his new shapes, outside the box stuff, step-rails and concave decks but no rail channels.  And another one, a step-deck video GG posted, both of these are from the Surfermag forum

​Yeah, the video makes that point, no one claiming its anything new, its a retro thing that was requested by a customer, also shows the customer having fun with it in small surf.  The thing that I find interesting in the light of this thread topic is the fun factor associated with the extra foam.

Good point, the aesthetics generally don't appeal to me, but that particular board looked pretty good, I think because that step-deck profile is normally seen on longboards and that was a transition era midlength planshape, not unlike the Bruce Fowler planshapes. 

I wondered if anyone would notice I put the two videos together, because the other video showed a very different approach to the same thing (increased foam management via stepped up deck volume), and had C. Fletcher saying 'if you're not catching waves you're not surfing so you gotta have something that paddles, and we're not getting any younger', haha.  He looked like he was having fun too.  His rail bump / concave deck combo looked a lot like Stretch's skate-deck boards without the rail channels. 

Had the 8-8 out in some really small stuff the other day before the swell hit, lots of fun when I could find a little pocket with push.

Thanks- I've made a few, just shaped wood then several layers of glass, probably stick with the same m.o. Kinda crude (you have a nice setup there), but gets the job done.

Still pondering which fin setup to go with.