the difference between a skateboard and a surfboard

[oldmansurfer]

First of all one obvious difference is that skateboards don't need waves and surfboards do. With a skateboard you can tac and gain speed on flat ground but not so for a surfboard. On a surfboard even if you already have speed tacking won't help you keep going without a wave. On a skateboard you can do an kind of perpetual motion machine where you pop up the front and turn in a tight radius. If you get it just right you will keep spinning around and around without any obvious effort because you are constantly turning the board under where you are constantly falling and the two cancel out and result in you keep spinning around. When I used to skateboard I could do maybe 7 or so continuous 360 pirouettes by the time I gave up skateboarding. On a surfboard no matter what you do you will stall without the wave. However the foil boards can generate speed by pumping up and down to keep going after getting up onto the foil. When surfers are generating speed tic tacking the amount of speed is minimal but what is required is besides going side to side the board needs to go up and down so you have to kick the nose up and slam it back down like a Huntington hop but going side to side. In surfing the higher you can get up the wave the more speed you can generate because it's gravity that is generating speed. Moving the board small distances in height makes small differences in speed. Big distances makes for big differences in speed. Gravity helps with skateboarding but it's not obvious. A hill is obvious but the tacking is gravity helping to generate speed and fortunately the skateboard doesn't sink into the cement when you quit skating if it did the additional drag would make it impossible to skate without a hill or a running start.