by jaffa1949 » Sat Jan 22, 2011 10:05 am
I started surfing in Australia in 1958, two years after the great the great revelation of American Balsa long boards when American Lifeguards Greg Noll Tommy Zahn and some others I can't remember,changed the face of surfing.
We called the boards Malibus and the name Mal has stuck for all longboards in Australia.
Everything has become refined over the years rail lines and shape of rail where the bite goes in the rail, concaves vees double concave spiral concaves, fluid dynamics are better fins are better, weight and wetted surface lines have changed,
where the widest point on the board is and of course weight.
All this covers the areas where originally shapers worked by trial and error, and could surf their own productions.
Team riders helped tweak the shapes. OK so that's history. here have been a number of reviews based on hull designs for yachts and sailboats but because the working dynamics are in my opinion so different the cross over has not been effective. If you follow through the lines of thought of Tom Blake, Simmons, Steve Liss
Hot curl, fins on boards, planing hulls, fish, multi fins.
When you consider boats are based on either displacement hulls, wave piercing or planing none other the planing relate directly to surfing
Design and shape per se IMO give the speed , lightness allows some athletic enhancement.
What gives speed? the jury is still out and experiments continue, you can get faster boards but you can't turn them.
My recommendations: have a read of surfing history, I think it's fascinating, wade through the ego stuff and who did what first and there are great things to learn.
I've taken up troll hunting just for fun, instead of a rifle I'll just use a pun! 冲浪爷爷