Has anyone seen/heard of/ or ridden the new Austin Mini Sim boards? They look interesting. http://www.austinsurfboards.com/images/instock/10168.JPG
Man that's a huge "mini" Simmons. That thing needs to be at most 6' to be a true "Mini" . I have ridden Mini Simmons style boards for years but really don't like the outlines of those longer ones. I am 6' 1" and used to weigh 205 + and rode a 5'5" simmons, I can't imagine the need for the bigger ones. Looks more like a fun shape with a square tail. I have seen a few of Austins boards and thought the craftsmanship looked excellant, but that I don't like. Does he have any shorter ones right now, or do you have to special order them?
He does a demo day now and then. I have been meaning to attend one and try out some of his little eggy fishy simmy boards like that. I believe they meet up at the north end somewhere, maybe 45th st?
I'll bet that board is at least 6'8" x 22" x 3" thick. Unless your XXL there is no way you need that kind of volume. I'm 5'9" 165 pounds and have ridden a 5'6" that was 2 1/2" thick and it had more than enough volume. My experience on the ride was that it made tons of speed dropping down a mushy wave, the wide square tail gave it kind of a hard-to-control looseness doing turns. The complete lack of rocker made paddling challenging - there was a really small sweet spot for balancing your weight while paddling...no doubt you'd get used to that in no time. Overall it seemed like a board that would make a lot of sense if you spend time riding flat faced mushy lined up waves and get bored longboarding which all applied to me so i'm planning to shape myself one for this summer.
I have a 6'0" x 23" x 3". It's got a good amount of belly that runs back past the midpoint and transitions to a very deep single concave coming out the back. He put a tad over an inch of tail rocker & the deep single concave accentuates it down the center, giving it about 2" at the stringer. We went with a 3-tab FCS FK-1 keel set up and a canard quad option. I originally got it to use for groveling here in VA, but after taking it out on several thigh-high days (some with strong off-shores), questioned it's ability in those conditions. To be fair, however, I asked for a board for somebody weighing in at 210 lbs and when I'm in a soaked wetsuit I'm nearly 240 lbs! I was considering selling it, but then I took it to Ecuador (just got back yesterday). This board was amazing in waist to overhead waves! I wish I had the fins for the quad setup, because FK-1s did let the board slide during hard bottom turns, but it wasn't like a bar of soap. Very controllable. With the right quad setup, I believe it would've controlled the slide even more. Definately fun. I'm considering asking Austin to make another one with some different design details. Having ridden a mini-sim from another shaper, I feel that zero tail rocker is a neccessity if you're a older/bigger guy planning to use it in small, gutless waves. I'll also ask to lose the concave and limit the belly to the first 24". I believe the straighter tail rocker really increased the board's ability to catch small, weak waves. My opinion is that the board I currently have would suit a bigger guy that wants to shortboard or a dedicated longboarder that wants to mix it up on bigger VB waves. I also believe my current design would suit a shortboarder as his groveler board, since moving to it from a chippy design will be like catching waves on a longboard. If you're paddle-challenged and/or bigger, however, I would suggest zero tail rocker and a flat bottom in this area. Just my 2 cents....
I was down at Austin's shop about 10 days ago - yes, the boards come in a range of sizes. He did a rather nice job with them and kept mostly true to the Simmons concept. Call him up and talk about how you'd want your board modified for your particular needs. Just remember the Simmons models are optimized for speed -- there are probably a few things you'd want to do to make them more versatile but then you are starting to venture into fish land. Definitely are speed runners.
