Once you start making surfboards the ideas in your head pretty quickly begin to outrun the time and energy required to bring them to fruition. This board, my second as a true adult, expanded on the original assymetric design I had made a year prior. That board, with it's "Burch Tail"—a round pin quad on the heelside, swallow tail twin fin on the toe side, had a spark, a new feeling that electrified my desire to go surfing for a long time. But it also had it's quirks: a touch of unruly looseness on the heel side, a slight initial drag on the toe side. The next iteration could to improve on this—it had to.
So this board was born. And from birth, it was the runt of the litter. See, I decided to mow two boards in the same day, a daunting task. This was the second. My tired brain measured the width on one side wrong, shaving off a quarter or half inch or so. I narrowed the tail significantly from the first iteration, a split second decision to hopefully provide more hold. The board was supposed to be a 6'0", but after shaping a long and pointy nose, I cut it off, and it became a 5'7". Some of these changes were good: the long nose would have been unneeded; others detrimental: the narrow tail didn't mesh with the outline in practice.
Glassing was a bear, as always, but the swirl came out nice, and the extra 2oz deck inlay, the orange color up top, made it basically bulletproof. A couple patches and a bit of sanding though, and it'd surely be rideable.
And rideable it was, I guess. The first two waves at Rincon in the video above are on the first solid day on this board, potentially the first day I rode it. It was fast, but it was squirreley. I had my Stretch Quad fins in it, and the board would track in a straight line, hesitant to leave that linear path. But then, once on rail, halfway through the turn, the fins or rail would bite, and it would accelerate to the flats off of the front foot. The quickness was nice, but it never felt predictable.
I think some of this looseness is the disconnect between the middle of the board and the tail. It's wide, 19", with a tail width reserved for a step up. In a straight line, you're planing off of the front foot, and with your weight up there, it's hard for the fins and tail to engage. Then, once on rail, those fins bite, and the extra curve required from going from wide to narrow, paired with a double concave to vee underfoot, springs the board aggressively on rail.
I changed the fins to a more standard quad setup, AM2 front fins with small neutral quad rears, and it tamed the board down somewhat. It actually became fun in small surf, planing well and allowing me to flick the tail. On a whim I brought it to Fiji, and had it in some pumping surf—it was too loose, I felt out of control on most waves this session, but looking back at the footage the flickiness sort of suited this wave and my surfing. Still though, I felt maxed out and unpredictable.
What's next? Is this concept worth pursuing? The outline needs to carry more width to the back foot and through the tail. The fins might need tweaking—but which way? Rescuing it might be beyond me. But dang did this squirrely beast keep me entertained for a minute.
