What do you think about Displacement Hulls?
On a hull when you are on your knees, it’s okay to grab the rail and pull the sucker around. But when you are standing up and your center of gravity is higher, it’s harder to control a hull. If you watch Jimmy Gamboa in One California Day on a hull, the poor guy is struggling to make the waves and can barely keep up with the lip. This is because it is underpowered and gutless. I’ll put a slight rounded curve on some boards, but I will never use a hull design – they never work for a stand up surfer. The hull shape is a very slow shape – it isn’t crisp and they don’t plane very high. I’ve never really embraced the whole hull concept. I fooled around with it and never really got with it. My friends made straight copies of it – Ted Spencer, Russell Hughes, Chris Brock, Paul Witzig – they all just copied George’s hull and they put up with its problems.
Hulls are difficult to ride, but they do give you an occasional flash of brilliance because of their neutrality. At a certain point, after going through a series of arcs, you can lay it on that neutral rail and it won’t suck you under. Today’s modern surfboard rails and bottoms are so far advanced from the Greenough hull that it is just a retro dream. The hull worked when the surf was uncrowded and you could lock or thread a line down a long point break, by the sixth or eighth turn you could wind up bags of speed with this beautiful neutral rail. At that point you could put it into an extreme position upside down, briefly – that’s when they shine. After 1969, you needed a flat bottom and a pivotal back foot so you could maneuver around people and break your power line. By mid ‘69 I wanted nothing to do with hulls. I still don’t like them. Dreamy, but impractical.
Interesting read over on liquid salt mag.
