Surfing Waves

just bought my first board second hand, she’s a modern highline 6’4. and after my first surf i noticed these cracks along the stringer and was wondering if they need fixing.

It looks like it needs fixing to me. Make sure you check out the rest of the board.

No harm in fixing or being cautious. The deck has sunk quite a bit (old board?) and the stringer is now pushing through the glassing. It will only get worse.

Best option is to just sand back the area around the crack/s, even sanding the stringer down a little. Then patch with a couple of layers of glass.

If you have experience and tools you can possibly fill in the depressions to even up the deck, but you will need to remove the existing glass, fill in the depression, sand a big area smooth and reglass. Big job for perhaps no better outcome

Anyway - my suggestion.

Serious questions:
1) Did you buy the used board with wax on the deck ?
2) If deck was free of wax, the cracks weren't there before you waxed it up ?
3) How much did you pay for it ? If it was cheap enough, It'sl not worth it to put in another $50+ for repairs. Just surf it, as other points on the board will start to pop or delam.
4) Have you done fiberglass laminating repairs before ?

Just an anecdote, a buddy of mine bought a Modern board brand new, surfed it a handful (6-7?) times, and the board has this spider cracking in the rails, tail and deck. I think they churn out some lemons occasionally!

Tom

If it is a Global Surf Industries Modern , there has been about 1% complaints about this in newly purchased boards after a few weeks!

Many older than that you can expect compression and some foam shrinkage as boards age.
Moot point check under the wax and see what you are going to pay for!
Answer , if not worth fixing cost factor , becomes a surf it to death board.
Pull into situations that you wouldn't put a good board in, learn what your surfing can survive .
Beater boards = tube learning tools! Summon your gonads!

Keen, this occurred with my favorite board of all times. It will require repair. My advice? Use 2 ounce glass (very light), possibly in two layers. Okay to use 4 ounce, but don't use two layers of this and don't use 6 ounce or heavier. The reason I say this is too much glass along the stringer makes the board too stiff. If the indentation areas are too great, then you'll want to use balloon (glass bead filler like Q Cell) mixed into some resin. You want this added material to be light weight and not any stiffer than it has to be. It's better to fix this problem in a less than totally bullet proof manner (knowing it may crack some more) because if you make it as strong as iron you'll lose board flexibility. Following this advice, I've had to fix my board two times.