Sessions 6002-6003

Session 6002: Santa Cruz East Side Saturday 7
Session 6003: HMB Jetty, Sunday 8
Conditions: Good winter W swells. Sunny and no wind.

Great many of you might think that I have gone to the deeper ends when I write about surfing on a foam board. Not only I surf it, I actually own one among a bunch of short boards and also a Takayama shaped long board too. So this log is all about my long boarding experience this past weekend.

For Saturday, I called a "Board Meeting" in Santa Cruz East Side, with five of my friends. Thinking that this can be fairly "big" and also very crowded, I have taken my 6'6 and also the 9'0 Doyle Foamy. I know a lot of you will probably cringe when I talk about this board, but this is the thing with me. On numerous occasions, I have seen many great surfers surfing with it, especially in Santa Cruz. And on Sunday I switched to 9'0 Takayama DT4 so on this report I am going to write about these two boards that I own.

So on Saturday, the condition was a bit challenging than, say a summer day, but it was just perfect for me because the waves were just strong and big enough and I could really take advantage of the situation with the condition and the board. One of the things that I am really starting to realize is, definitely, the performance of the board. It is really true when someone says that the foamy sucks in terms of the performance. One major drawback of this setup is that everything takes an extra effort outside of paddling. But even paddling isn't all that easy, and in fact my DT4 actually glides much better. The whole point of this is that I am now at the point that I understand better about the performance of something.

So what exactly are wrong with this setup? The first one is the sheer weight of the thing. It is much heavier than any surf boards that I know of at this size and length. While it floats fine, this seems to cause a lot of problem in take offs. The second issue with this is that turning takes a lot more effort. This is good and bad. It is good that the board won't slip away underneath you as easily, and you have to make an extra effort to make the board respond. This is also good in a sense that it really teach you what you should really do to the board to make the turn happen. The next day when I got on to the DT4, turning was so crisp, but I would not say it is easy, but definitely a board like DT4 the response and sensitivity to what you do on the board is like a night and a day. The DT4 also gets into the glide significantly better than the foamy board.
Another significant change in these two sessions is that I have not been riding longer boards for a while mainly because I have been just too lazy to load a long board. Two short boards fit between the driver and the passenger seat but when fitting a long board inside, that will take up the whole passenger side.

But I have made re-discoveries in long boarding. I can take off on a lot more different kinds of waves with it, than trying to position right with a short board. And when I take off, with the power and the speed, I can ride longer extracting every bit of the power the waves have to offer, and also with an added speed connecting among sections is much more possible.
The take home message from these two days is that I still deserve to learn a lot from both foam and hard boards, and I will continue to be practicing on both and that kind of things are really fun!