by Big H » Mon Mar 07, 2016 11:51 am
Had the red out the last three days....love it! So I sold a board that wasn't making the cut, a 6'0" CI biscuit copy....thick foiled, 20 1/2 in wide but 38L so you can imagine how thick...rode like a thick slab of foam too; really didn't like it....so I do what I do with boards that are experiments and sold it for 20 bucks more than I paid....oddly 1 hour after I sold that one off a board came up on the buy and sell that I'd been wanting to try for awhile....a Dominator that was a little beat up but watertight and still very light, measures were stock, 6'0" x 20 1/2" x 2 1/2" 34.8L....anyway, got it for a good price (under $150 usd) and picked it up this morning, had it out in the water this afternoon. Waves were really small; if it wasn't for wanting to try the new board I would have found something else to do...one wave was maybe shoulder high, the rest waist high at best.....anyway, this board is not a magic board like I've seen people write it up to be....it is super light, a little extra buoyancy due to it's lightness and epoxy/eps construction, but not magic. It does paddle well, really well, and I got into waves earlier than I thought that I would be able to....I will say it is really easy to catch waves with this board, but no easier than the red rocket (that board has real magic).....not much of a review, one time out in small waves only but after the first three waves I was able to ride this board as well as I am able to ride, do the things I can do on other boards and it felt really comfortable if that is a good descriptor....not easy, but it felt like a good fit....one thing that was different was how it felt under the back foot....the tail is really wide, and it is more forgiving when you put weight on your back foot which meant that I didn't have to be as careful with balance when catching the wave and coming through the first turn, weight back a little or a little more than a little and the board didn't slow down and was under control.....a little extra margin for error where other boards would have stalled a bit....good for learners like me or for smaller waves where you're milking them I guess.....anyway, stoked; seems a good board and that tail is going to help me smooth out my takeoffs and get into more waves I think....anyway, its the red rocket for my go to all arounder and bigger days, this dominator for smaller waves for now & riding as a thruster...will try it as a quad but to date on the waves I ride I'm not convinced quads are the way to go....anyhow FWIW I've never seen an Indo use a quad set up and they rock these waves better than anyone so I'm going to follow them.................things change in my quiver but these two boards seem to be money. I have a couple more boards to unload now; starting to find out what it is that I like............ I'll post a picture tomorrow after I take one.
Note to Benji: Thinking about your efforts, I also tried to pearl it but just wound up snowplowing on takeoff becoz my weight was so far forward, burying the nose in the wave and creating a blinding spray of water right into my eyes....credit to the board, I arched up hard to get the nose planing and not spraying water like it was and still managed to catch the wave. That biscuit that I got rid of used to do that a lot, it was so flat rockered and if I set up further back I'd keep the nose up but miss a few waves....I didn't often recover (ever?) after catching the nose on take off before getting up doing that spraying thing....dominator has a narrower and more foiled nose and more rocker than that biscuit board did....makes a positive difference in the waves I ride.
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- This is the website image of the board. Mine is like this but chewed up a little.... :)
- thedominatorrapidfire.jpg (43.39 KiB) Viewed 594 times