Narrow tail on unlimited downwind boards

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AndyR said..

magillamelb said...

Nozza said..
Hate to doubt you Stu, but I think you're doing that on assumption rather than evidence.
Spent 30 years odd on the Bay sailing 14' Skiffs against 19' (?) Sharpies.
Downwind, I don't think they were ever thinking "I wish we were shorter"
Nosedived a 14 so hard I left my wetsuit boots in the footloops, landed forward of the boat and first thought was "why are my feet cold?"
Came up under spinnaker, stuck to the water, had to dive down 3 times to try and clear the sails before I came up.
Got on the 'plate and wondered "Where is Helmy?'
He had fallen off early in the exercise and was way behind.
We did not consider wave period, length, or height, but a longer boat would have been better.
There has been too little downwinding of 16' or 17' boards on the Bay to draw any conclusions, and the waves I have seen out there won't differentiate by a foot.
Fully support what you are doing, but no evidence 14', 16' or 17' is any different.
Apart from as far as I have got, the bigger, and longer the board is, the more stable it is.
Rocker will also be more determinate than length if you are trying to fit in waves.
But the ongoing discussion is vital!

Nozza

Nice to hear Helmy left you to your own devices just before the **** hit the fan! I bet it was more than once too...

There is some evidence my theory is based on.

A couple of DJ's video's show people on 17'+ boards (of different brands) doing just what I've said. They get on a bump and almost straight away, they're headbutting the next one. DJ's video of PT on this Ace GT is a case in point. Check them out and see what you think?

I think DJ has echoed a similar view...

To avoid headbutting the bump in front and slowing down isn't it the idea to be getting that nose running up over it or to the side buy getting back enough on the board to lift, and the length and volume of the unlimited should be giving you enough speed to easily rider over it at speed and drop down onto the next bump in short bay stuff.
Also shouldn't be going straight down once picked up on the bump should be turning and aiming that nose/board on an angle that is going to keep you on that bump or group of bumps for longer aiming for the V in front.
I could be wrong but thats what i am doing on the 14 so the 17 should be the same theory and it works for me.

Exactly, use the bumps...don't let the bumps use you.

To elaborate on AndyR's first point it's about staying on the bump without ramming the wave in front until the one in front starts to die, then accelerate your board on it's runner and sprint over the bump in front - and repeat. There are times when your board will get away on you but if you are trimming right you normally can negotiate the board by crouching and doing a controlled pearl rather than walk backwards and risk overcompensating (offshore usually necessitates some footwork tho). It's all about you controlling the boards speed and not the swell.

This should be achievable without having to regularly dance all over the board in lake/bay DWers. If you have to dance too much, you are not reading the bumps properly.

A key note is that to maintain this mythical fixed foot position it is important to keep your glide speed to optimum, it makes it so much easier.

The big unlimiteds do travel faster the further back you stand through reduced wetted surface area etc. but this not necessarily the most efficient way to use them in small, short interval lake/bay DWers. The straighter swell lines of these dwers are also helpful.Get the big girls offshore with mixed larger swell and wind lines, and you will find they surf remarkably well from the rear of the board and you can link different swell lines without using the rudder.

And in keeping with the topic, narrower tails are less subject to rocking forward and aft allowing you to maintain your glide easier and hence manage the bumps better.

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Area10 said..
Yeah, I can confirm that my speeds on Charlie's board was at least as fast as on my Bullet 14v1, and I felt more in control on his board, and less likely to fall. If I had had to pick one of them for a third run I'd have chosen his board over my Bullet. The remarkable thing about this is that Charlie's board is 26" wide compared with the Bullet's 27.25". And I'm a wobbly old git. So I expected to feel more unstable on the borrowed board. But in fact it was the narrower board that felt easier for me. I think one of the issues I have with the boards tuned for eg. Maui conditions is that they might be on occasion unnecessarily thick for our very short period, peaky, choppy, confused, blown-out high-wind conditions. The big thick rails just catch everything in cross-wind and cross-chop, and you are standing so high that you feel like a cork bouncing around. Also, the bigger tail volume makes it harder to surf the board on bumps and to sink the tail to get yourself out of a critical potential pearling situation. Charlie's board was quite a bit more svelte and thinned-out than the Bullet and it seemed to work well in those particular conditions. Maybe in more lined-up, longer period stuff high volume is king.

I'm guessing that in time we as a community will work out what design features in a DW board work best in which conditions (and perhaps where), but at the moment I suspect we are all just feeling around, seeing what works.

I agree with the thinner board being more stable in crossed up waves. We noticed this as well. We get a lot of wave bounce-back from shores where we DW so we deal with a lot of cross waves.

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charlieuk said..




Thanks for all the pics with all this talk of unlimiteds I think I may have to do a little 16'er for myself to play with for when out summer dw season kicks in.
Area10 and myself did a back to back the other day with the bullet14 v1 and I was presently surprised to see how well mine measured up against it so I think im going to just go a little longer a little narrower and tweak the rocker a tinny bit. The frustrating bit is Im not going to be able to start it till I get back from holiday.

So i finally got this board built and rode it for the first time yesterday, it was basically my 14' stretched out with a few tweaks to volume and rocker and came out at 12kg. Yesterday it was about 25knots and showing about .8m swell. The wind was on our back but the swell was at 45deg so there was a lot of cross chop and bumps from every angle. i thought the pin tail maybe to thin but with the extra length it works great and its very responsive without being too tippy and gives a very survey feel. There is definitely no need for a rudder as it turns super well.It basically just feels like the 14 but with a load of extra glide once its on a bump you can really keep the speed up a hole lot easier and longer. You can really power over or through the flatter sections to link bumps you wouldn't make on a 14'. I want to play around with different fins a bit to see how it effects the performance in the confused cross chop we get here a lot, the plan is to drop a thruster or quad set in i think to stop the yawing a little in the messy stuff.

That will be a touch easier soon enough, as SIC has two Bullet 17's due next season (or Oct in Aus) - the V1 and the V2 - both with the FAST steering that allows use of a fixed fin. Brilliant, and about time. It's been a long wait..

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Area10 said..
That board looks really great. Hopefully this will be the start of a discussion about designs for fixed-fin UL boards. I've ridden both fixed fin and ruddered UL boards in very messy short period conditions and the extra control you get with a fixed fin makes them much more fun IMO. It's simply not true that a UL board has to have a rudder. Most people have never tried a fixie UL, so they are just describing what they see and have been told, instead of speaking from experience, especially in seriously messy conditions.

Very impressive....

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Area10 said..
That board looks really great. Hopefully this will be the start of a discussion about designs for fixed-fin UL boards. I've ridden both fixed fin and ruddered UL boards in very messy short period conditions and the extra control you get with a fixed fin makes them much more fun IMO. It's simply not true that a UL board has to have a rudder. Most people have never tried a fixie UL, so they are just describing what they see and have been told, instead of speaking from experience, especially in seriously messy conditions.

Say No More

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Area10 said..
How many fixed fin UL boards have you taken out, and in what conditions? Maliko doesn't count. I'm not talking Hawaii.

No I've never paddle an Unlimited board without a rudder, I've never even paddled a 14fter.

But It has been proven Area10 year in and year out by other paddlers, an Unlimited board without a rudder in the Ocean (NOT Flat Water) doesn't work unless the paddler loves to punish oneself.