Friday, June 08, 2007

New Board New Spot


Wednesday's session was started out pretty bleak:

1. Drove to the beach and hiked down the trail, waxed up the new board, only to find that the screw to attach my fin was missing.

2. Looked for a longboarder to borrow a screw from. No dice.

3. Waves seemed to be improving.

4. Turned around and found out that two crows had eaten half my sandwich.

5. Realizing I was literally screwed, hiked 20 minutes back up the trail, and burned rubber back to Cannon Beach before the surf shop closed.

6. As I'm screwing in the fin at the surfshop, the owner looks at my finbox and says, "I don't like the way your shaper did this. The fin won't slide all the way back in the box because of the knot from the leash being in there - it's going to create some kind of vortex, being that far forward." Manny warned me that people would look at the board funny, though.

7. Jumped back in the car and headed south.

And this is where I have to edit the story to protect the spot where I surfed (I'm no pimp). It was a new place. Let's leave it at that. I did want to review my new Manny 2+1, which I'm very happy to pimp.

The first thing I noticed about the board is that it got into waves really easy. The thing is greased lightening. I think the entry speed is as good as my quad. It was slightly harder to duckdive because it's 3 inches longer than the quad, but that's to be expected. I could still get it through some big whitewater. Finally, the board turned in a completely different way than the quad. It really did seem to "swivel" more off the back foot - which is exactly what I expected it to do. On the bottom turns, it seemed to be more stable, with more smooth flow. So that's really about it. I caught maybe 10 or so waves and was really impressed. I didn't notice anything weird about the fins dragging or interfering with water flow, but I'm no George Greenough either...

I'm really looking forward to riding it again tomorrow.

Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End
(If you haven't seen the Devil in Daniel Johnston, rent it now! Anyone with any sort of creative compulsion will relate).

12 comments:

Patch said...

Stoked on the post Chum, hang on to that new board smell! Salud!

pushingtide said...

Nothin' betta than a sneaky seshy.

ras said...

"but I'm no George Greenough either..."

respect. your time soon come.

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the new winged diamond!
I’m really excited for you. Mostly because I had started reading your blog just about the time you ordered it.
I have been waiting right along with you.

By the way I ended up buying the Rick off C's List that you had posted up months ago.
Took me two months to clean her up but she is a very fun and easy single fin to ride, well worth the time I put in.
So thank you for the heads up on the board.

Peace and have fun on that new Mandala,
Ian

Anonymous said...

ha, funny how the new board stoke makes things fall off the radar. i forgot a leash loop the first go on my 6'6.

Chum said...

Yeah! The leash loop thing must happen to everybody once. Not being well versed on longboard style fins, I wasn't prepared for the inevitable misplacement of the screw. I did, however, bring a screwdriver!

Patch said...

Chum, with a wonder bolt you won't need a screw driver.

jchack said...

What is a leash and why would you need a screwdriver to surf?

Wave Farmer said...

Them looks like some grumpy Oregon waves...
Tuesday was alright and Thursday was worse...
Wednesday was no go on the cent co...
Hoping this Wed lights up a little

Chum said...

The waves weren't as grumpy as the two fleas that were on 'em!

G said...

Glad to hear the board abided. Very glad to hear Jas went out with you guys. Just saw LCD last night and heading to Menomena tonight, and possibly Hot Chip tomorrow...damn, I gotta say it was a good week.

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