Surf: 4.6 ft at 13.8 s from WNW at 292°. Winds 9.7 kn – 11.7 kn from the NW.
I’m pretty sure if anyone, anywhere in the world says “Let’s go surfing for my birthday” the ocean immediately switches to suck. The surf was lousy. I splashed around. It was meh, but I got a couple waves so that’s something. Yay.
Surf: 6.6 ft at 16.0 s from the W at 273°
It was raining like crazy this morning, but now that I had the right fins, very little was going to stop me from taking the fish out.
I checked the buoys and saw 6.6@16. I checked the beach and saw maybe waist high waves and plenty of flatness. Hmm.
Thankfully there was just enough going on to try out this board.
Paddling: It paddles! It’s not as easy as my bigger boards, sure, but it’s not crazy hard! Yay.
Catching waves: It does this too! It was so small today I was worried I wouldn’t get much, but I got some. Nice.
Duck diving: WAY easier than all my other boards. 6@16 managed to roll on by and I made it under easy peasy.
Turning: I need to learn this! There wasn’t a ton of wave action to really try this, but I can already tell it’s gonna be fun. 😀
Stylin: Oh yeah, it’s styling:
Surf: 4.6 ft at 12.9 s from the NW at 322°. Low tide.
Wow. It’s been a couple rough weeks being injured and unable to surf. And also really walk around. Ow.
Went back and forth as to if I should take it easy my first day back and log it, or go all out and take the fish out. Around midnight I decided FISH! I waxed it. I went to put the fins on…and the fin set I had wasn’t quite right. Oops. It was a front right fin, two back fins, and one center fin? It probably would have surfed kinda okay, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to take em back used…or something. It was 1am, whatever.
So I took my longboard out. Waves were kinda crummy, but catchable. I got some fast fast rides before everything closed out. Just happy to be back in the water.
Crazy out of shape, but hopefully I’ll be back into the swing of things in no time.
YAAAAY My board is ready YAAAAY.
YAAAAAY.
I’ve spent the last few weeks e-stalking my board through the process (and trying not to bug James with OMG ISIT DONE YET!!!)
Here’s a little of the process with photos from Sunset Shaper’s instagram feed.
Step 1- Give your block of foam over to your glasser. Watch foam get put in a pile, loaded in a truck, and moved to the glassing shop.
Step 2- When the glasser posts a workshop picture, assume every board that’s even remotely the color you asked for is yours. Freak out when you see even a hint of it in the background.
Step 3- Shamelessly talk about step 2 on twitter as a passive aggressive hint that you’d really like to see photos. Freak out when you get one. OMG OMG OMG OMG.
Step 4- Wait for glasser to post finished pics. Adjust expectations along with instagram filters. Freak out that it’s done and not be able to sleep wanting to go pick it up.
Step 5- Go get it!!! But maybe make sure they don’t close early that day cause you’ll show up to a locked door after racing across town after work and completely freak out (in the bad way, not the good way you’ve been freaking out all along.) Thankfully someone’s waiting for you to pick it up so it all works out. YAY.
Step 6- Take several thousand pictures and post them to the internet. Eventually stop before you drive everyone crazy, but have fun. (This step is optional and is based on how much freaking out you’ve done. OMG YAY)
Step 7- Surf! 😀
Thanks everyone at Sunset Shapers. This has been an absolutely blast.
If anyone is looking to learn more about shaping, or just wants a new board and can’t make up their mind, I highly recommended their shaping class. You get a sweet new board and you’ll have a lot of fun making it.
Surf: 8.2 ft at 13.8 s from the NW at 314° Low Tide
Super super foggy morning.
Walked the dogs in the dark and headed to the beach at sunup. Man, loading a car is way easier with a garage.
Didn’t get much in the way of waves. I’m still struggling with that closeout-block. I’ve tried paddling longer. I’ve tried kicking. I’ve tried sitting further inside. The one thing I haven’t tried is falling on my face. I kinda thing if I set out to fall on my face, I might just _not_ fall on my face.
That’s some kooky zen for you right there.
One wave in. One long trafficky drive back.
Surf: 8.9 ft at 10.0 s from the NW at 311° High Tide
Jon was in town from Colorado and, with a limited surf window, we headed down to Santa Cruz to make the best of a high tide, smaller wave session.
While the tide made everything pretty soft, there was next to now crowd for the first hour or so. I got plenty of fun long waves on the hull. I didn’t really get it up to full hull action, but I did get a few really nice bottom and top turns out of it. 😀 yeeeeee.
Super nice weather.
Totally beat. Naptime:
Surf: 5.9 ft at 13.8 s from the NW at 308°
With the winds all over the place lately, I don’t really know what to expect anymore.
I’d expected pretty terrible conditions, but today was actually kinda fun. I got a few waves on the hull (which is so hard to duck dive after ducking the fish the last few times out) and plenty of sunshine.
😀
Back when Sunset Shapers opened, I recalled reading on their site about shaping lessons. I filed that bit of info away in the “Oh man, I’d love to do that” archives.
Just before Christmas, they had a coupon for lessons via Facebook. I got one, hoping it would finally get me to move shaping lessons from the “I want to do that” column to the “I’m totally doing that” column.
It did!
I had a little chat with James about what I wanted to make. The options came down to a proper noseriding longboard and a fish. Feeling like I’d get more use out of the fish in local waters (or on trips) I went fish.
The classes are divided up into two 3 hour sessions.
The first session is about the blank, the tools, the shaping room, the process of removing the outer “bark” from the blank, using the surform to smooth everything down, deciding on templates, measuring, measuring again, trimming the extra foam off.
Gordon was great. He answered all my questions. He walked through everything and was happy to share info.
We started here
A 6’5 blank. Nice and wide for fish.
We measured here:
Overall board length: 6’4
Width 1ft from the nose: 15 3/4″
Wide point: 21″
Width 1ft from the tail: 16″
We round a combination of templates that made a smooth transition between all the points of measurement.
The act of shaping is all about creating a craft with smooth flowing, lines through smooth, flowing strokes. The template needs to flow so the water can flow, right?
Tim reminded me of this scene:
At the end of the day, we had a square railed, fish shaped block of foam:
Day 2 was all about the finesse. Bottom contours, rail shape, tail details, nose details, basically everything that gives this board it’s character.
We started with lots and lots of passes with the surform to trim the board down to the thickness we wanted (2 3/4″) I got to do a lot of this work (since it was harder to mess up, ha) and was getting the hang of using the surfom correctly.
Here’s Gordon trimming down the stringer so I can do more surform passes on the bottom:
Next we worked on the bottom concave. Single to double concave. This took lots of very small movements, checking and rechecking the depth, and plenty of eyeballing.
So much of this is by feel or by sight that Gordon had me look at things in progress so I could see what it looked like if one side was less concave than the other, then showed me how to fix it. We did this with the stringer too, I’d look to see where the stringer was too flat, then Gordon would get it nicely into a smooth shape again.
It was really interesting to see how everything evolves. The board isn’t ruined if there’s a little more foam here, it is still in progress and can be brought back into check (within reason, you obviously can’t add foam back in.) The point being, every stroke or step doesn’t have to be perfect, but the change has to be slow and symmetrical so that the finished board is perfect.
I had so many questions answered. So many thing I thought maybe were aesthetics, actually had real reasons behind them. Like the swallow tail, there rails on the tail are very square on one side and rounded on the top, allowing the water to release under the board for speed and turns, but hold over the top to keep the board in the face nice and snug for more control.
Rail work was super delicate. Gordon did all of that work. I mostly said “yup, that’s even” or “looks a little rounder on this side”
The finished board:
Next steps: cutting fin boxes, cutting the leash plug, and glassing!
This part’s really exciting. I don’t get to sit in on it, but I’ve done a ton of sketching, holding boards, and talking to James about options. I sketched so many MANY options, dozens at least, before settling on this guy:
Now to wait for James to do his magic.
I highly recommend this class to anyone who wants to know more about what goes in to hand shaping a board or anyone who wants to be able to better read how a board will perform. It’s a great class.
I’d love to shape another board. Gordon said the best way to do it is to find a board I want to copy, bring it in, and book some time with him of James to help. They’d leave me to do more of the work myself and help guide in the hard parts.
Very stoked. 😀
Surf: 10.5 ft at 19.0 s from the NW at 312°
Oh sure, I bring the fish expecting bad waves and find fun waves once, but do it twice and nothing cooperates. Sigh.
It was all big closeouts the morning. I got into a few waves, but did a lot of kooky falling all over the place. Not so successful.
I was hoping to get some practice on on a smaller, quadier board before my shaping lesson this week. No luck!
Surf: 7.9 ft at 16.0 s from the NW at 308°
After Wednesday’s success, I figured Linda Mar would be junky (it’s almost always junky after I go to Santa Curz) so I brought out the fish.
I managed to get waves! I would up having to swallow my pride and catch a few slightly broken waves on the inside, but I got up, I turned. Success! It’s a pretty fun board once I’m up, but I’m still working on the getting up part.
Also, arms. Oww. So sore after Wednesday.
