All photos from Pete Frieden of a session North of Estagnots on a shore
break bank in the afternoon prior to the Quik Pro around 6pm.
The surf was glassy with beautiful peaks left but primarily rights, in
the line up was Taylor Knox, Jordy Smith, Taj and Dan Ross.
Earlier the boys from Globe CJ and Damo Hobgood along with Gabe Kling
and Patrick Gudauskas were throwing themselves along with their boards
through the air in a mind numbing display of speed, power and new age
innovative surfing.
Kierin Perrow was also out laying down his brand of deep rail gashes and
high line floating air drops.
It was a real pleasure surfing with Taylor and the other boys, the spot
was uncrowded and not yet really discovered by the masses as the best
alternative for 3-4 feet plus during high tide on the Hossegor stretch.
Taylor and the others graciously allowed me to catch a couple of waves
and Pete kindly activated the camera coming up with some nice shots of
the old boy.
I'm riding a 7'0 20 1/8 2 13/16 Rounded Pin DSC model with slight single
to double running through a vee in the back half of the board.
The double concave ends at the forward fins so the vee running out the
tail in the last 12 inches is flat sided vee.
I'm really enjoying the wider dimension board in this for me step-up board.
It paddles well catching waves efficiently but still surfs well and
doesn't have the twitchy feel of a narrower just concave bottom board.
This is a nice compliment to riding fish style boards in smaller surf.
When you ride a wider fish board the effect is slower rail to rail
transition, this becomes a smooth feel through turns that you become
familiar with and going back to normal width step-up boards can be
unsettling because they are twitchy and want to initiate the turn too
quickly.
So maintaining a wider step up is generally a good thing especially for
the older, average, unfit or weekend warrior type surfer.
This board also has a foil thickness which essentially is a 70's early
80's style thickness distribution, thicker nose and thinnish tail.
I have incorporated quite a thin tail with flat deck and blocky rails
through the back 2 feet of this board.
This rail makes the 7'0 feel a little slidey at times, which is good for
smaller waves, but can be problematic particularly here in the Atlantic
ocean of France with it's power and tidal influence causing the wave
surface to develop numerous little lumps and currents within the wave
that can make the board slide or drift every now and then in turns.
So I think for here and for step-up boards the normal rail and thickness
distribution is the go, but I do like the vee component in the bottom I
think you can see from the photos that the board gets up on a rail nicely.
You should be able to catch up with all Pete's shots of this good
afternoon of surfing in France through Pete Frieden Surf Photography
somewhere on the world wide web.
Cheers Simon
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