my 6'8 "tugboat" was an all time board. Shpaed by Jay Novak under the Clairemont Surf Shop label. Very Wide nose. basically a small longboard. always rode it as a single fin and never had a bad session. freaking wave magnet. In to waves with a stroke or two... my 8' mini log has since replaced that board. im a fan of riding the nose but looking to swithc it up this summer
I think for me, the era I grew up in lbs were a big no no. Guys would get beat for showing up with one, Then when they made a comeback they clogged lineups with newbs. Based on that i never had more then a passing interest in them.
Big Ass Blacks...verrrry nice. I forgot you are a Novak fan. He was an obscure shaper for RC Surflines in IB back in the late 70's and early 80's, all the hottest locals were riding his boards. Really good shaper, just about any shape. I'm a big fan of his Fishes.
not trying to look cool but just that influence. I find the lb to be boring personally. if riding one means trying to walk around and glide id rather got back to the bodyboard as i get too old to sb. I personally don't give a sh@t what someone rides as long as they show proper etiquette.
I've had 4 of his boards. two high performance short boards & two mid lengths. Still the best boards I've ever owned (For CA Waves - probably too thick for ledgy NJ). Better than lost, better than merrick (IMHO). Im trying to unload a 6'1 baby buggy & a 6'6 Proton. I'll probably take that money right to CSS and get an off the rack Novak for 380-450
Don’t ever give it up Pump - it’s you guys that are motivating me to go down to the 6’ realm at 48 haha
The Arts Helps maintain fast twitch muscle fiber and that keeps muscle atrophy from age to a minimum. Good for the power bursts needed for paddle ins and outs
Never ridden a board shorter than 6. Never ridden a board longer than 7. Most of the time I'm on the 6'0 fish. But the 7'0 egg I got last year has gotten a lot of use in the smaller stuff. It reminds me of the boards I rode as a yout in the mid 70s. My 6'4 short doesn't get much use these days and I have a 6'8 hurricane "mini gun" that Brian Heritage shaped for use in the big stuff (Nor'easters and Hurry Canes) I rode a 7 mini log that I rented in PR a few years back and had a blast. But I find LBs to be a bit cumbersome; just not my thing. I have fun with what I have. I have no need to experiment. I'm gonna be 56 in a few months.
I tend to agree. My beef with barry was worth his attitude, not any type of board in particular. I enjoy them all. I have a 9'0 LB and had a 7'8 mini LB which was super thinned out and rockerd. They both are fun boards. The problem i have with them is they just don't suit my surfing. The 9'0 for small waves just doesn't fit the wave like i mentioned earlier. Smaller mini simmons work better in ther type of wave. BUT i will say, if you get a decent sized swell with a nice open wall. The LB is FUN. I remember one day in particular, looong lefts. Come off the bottom, big arching top turn, drop back down, repeat. It almost had this "pendulum" type feeling to it. Get the right waves for it and they suddenly don't feel "too big" or cumbersome. Majority of time though that's not the case on the east coast though. The 7'8 was great in bigger stuff. My issue was it was not one thing. Meaning it wasn't long enough to get that LB pendulum feeling or glide. Close but not the same. And it wasn't small enough to act like a SB. It was caught somewhere in the middle when id rather go full SB or LB. Great board though. Gave it to my buddy whos style it would fit better. Which actually leads me to this. Not to get into this all over again. That same buddy i have the 7'8 to. Im about to shape him a 5'10 single fin. He's more of a cruiser type guy and hates super short boards. Fuller outline and plenty float. It was his idea, the 7'8 is to clumsy for him and doesn't fit the curve of our steep waves in certain conditions. Diffrent boards, diffrent waves, diffrent styles and wants. They all have a place. One is not superior to the other
I started to longboard relatively late in my surfing life.... which, coincidentally, was at my peak in terms of ability. I played around with a bunch of different designs... traditional, big, heavy, 60's style logs, super rockered out performance thruster longboards, and everything in between. All that experimenting made it really interesting for me, and fueled my creative side for many years, as I pushed both my design and my performance limits. Had I just been looking for something that would just let me surf on really small days, I would have gotten bored with it, too. But it was noseriding that challenged me, and kept me searching for something that would noseride well in typical, local jetty/sandbar beachbreak waves. Most noseriders are designed to work best in point surf, that gives you time to set up for noserides, and do turns to link up a few noserides on the same wave. Your average NJ beachbreak wave is not conducive to noseriding, but I believed that with the right design, you could make the best of it - something that you can get locked into the face of a wave quickly, and that would provide more lift under the nose without creating too much drag... not an easy task. So that's the interesting thing about longboarding for me... noseriding. Doing it well is harder than it looks, especially around here. If it wasn't for that particular challenge, I'd have no interest in longboards either.
Its funny Smitty....i can ride the 4'11" just fine in the right conditions and so could you...bet!...but when i swap out boards with buddy riding a standard shortboard - a shape that half the lineup is riding...lets say 5'10" x 19"...i find that way harder. I think a big part of that is the 4'11" is super wide, full railed and flat rockered...feels like more board than the reg. shortboard. The little stubby board is for a certain conditions...little waist-stomach high and under nugs...waves that are pretty easy to catch to begin with. And yeah like Scobeyvillle said, you really cant do a proper turn on it...but you can glide fast and smooth on 2 footers and do little funky turns. its just fun, for me anyway.
I ride a LB 50% of the time, the other 50% is split between my SB’s. I let the conditions and my mood dictate what I ride. I don’t consider myself a longboarter and I don’t consider myself a shortboarter, I simply consider myself a surfer. When I first started surfing all I had was a 6’4” BAT, which is a rockered out mid-late 90’s HPSB, which only hindered my progression and made for a frustrating time most days. I eventually stopped surfing for a while. Then I picked it back up several years later and got a 6’10” WRV Funfish, still a SB but lots of foam. This got me going in the right direction and I began to progress more. Then my GF, now wife, buys me a 8’1” McTavish 8 Ball, a mini LB that came as a 3 fin, but I changed it to a larger single fin and liked it better. This boart was a game changer for me. I caught more waves than I ever had before and was having FUN, and that led to more progression. Then I invested in custom shaped LB and SB’s. Each one have helped me progress. The single fin 9’ HPLB / Nose Rider changed my life, like no other boart. It has made my SB game much better as a result. Now I’m not ripping by any means, I mostly suck, BUT, I suck a lot less then I use to. It almost feels like my last session was my best session each time out. That keeps me going. My point I guess is that I recommend to all you one boart type guys is that you should embrace them all and use them all when they make sense. The variety of equipment will enhance your surfing, that, I can guarantee you.
80's baby, dayglo, short boards, big loud graphics. Boards went way short in that era, and longboards were for kooks. Now we have SUPs... On a nice swell, shortboarding is like snowboarding a foot of untracked powder in a steep bowl in Colorado. Longboarding is like skiing a groomed green run in NH. I'll take my longboard out on small days, but then it's usually more about just being in the ocean and relaxing, then it is about the actual surfing.
I have a very limited opinion here, purely based on experience, but what Ive found is by switching around between my 9’ plus boards and down to my 8’ fish and even to my 6’11 Roberts, I get better all around. And as BMon stated, I had to really jockey on that tail to get the bort to fit that short steep face, where a shorter board would have put me in the pocket easily... BUT, I am a cruiser/trimmer guy right now and it’s what makes me happy. So once I rode the tail down into the pocket and got turned, I was able to play around and use the borts performance aspects a bit. Definitely a bigger wave bort but it works for me. But as someone here said, if you wanna ride an LB like a short board, get a shortboard hahaha Irony is, I think my two go to boards are becoming that green one for bigger cruisey stuff with some trimming and once I have a good dinner date weekend with my Roberts, the RBBT for some actual turns and maybe even a shady day or two. Point is, I’m super glad I have all of them, because it keeps me from limiting myself and my surfing life.
