Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Griffin 5-Fin Modfish Session at Orange Street, Newps

Do all my boards have 5 fin boxes?

Took the newly cleaned up, repaired, and rewaxed Griffin out today, not really knowing what to expect, swell-wise.  Either it was gonna be huge and gnarly, or not.  It was not, but it was fun, a lot of fun.  More fun I had expected.  The board was fun too.  Funner than I funning thought.

That damn Modfish is a really good board.  It's fast.  I don't think he makes anything that's not super fast.  Faster than five fins would suggest.  Faster than___  ok i'll stop with this.

Here are some pictures of it, and the repaired ding.  Don't judge me on my ding repair job please.  You can judge me on other things though, I give you permission.



I took this board out instead of the Infinity because I'm really dreading dinging it, and trying to prolong the time I have it to getting a ding ratio.  Anyway today's session renewed my stoke for this board.

I got some good lefts today, and maybe one that if I were a better surfer would've been able to get a little barrel.

More surf tomorrow, although the swell is dying down..

Monday, November 19, 2012

Infinity 5F in HB

Klaude inspired me to keep a surf blog, so here we go...

Surfed today, alone.  It was bigger than i anticipated, maybe 3-5 feet with the occasional 6+ monster.  Took out my 5'6" Infinity 5F today.  Setup was the fins it came with, Infinity-branded EA quads.  The board felt good on the rights I got.  Maybe the best I've ever felt on my backside, really nice and stable and easy to control.  I tried to get a good left, and tried to force a few, but I just couldn't find one.  Tomorrow...




Things I'm working on: try to keep my back foot farther back, and more weight.  I've fallen into the trap the English dude from Surf Simply talks about, where I just trim, and haven't properly learned to carve.

Recently picked up a Griffin twin as well.  Kinda going nuts on the boards, maybe out of a Third Life Crisis.  That's a thing right?  If there's such a thing as quarter and mid-life crisis, why not other fractions?  For my next board purchase rationalization, I shall use the 2/5 life crisis excuse.  Rolls off the tongue right?  Nice.

If I'm about to turn 32, times 3 would make me die at age 96.  Not bad!  I don't think I'll live that long though, so maybe my fractions are off.  Anyway, I figure I need to get this surfing thing going before my body decides to decompose into poo.  That's the gist of my crisis, if it wasn't already clear.

Back to the Griffin.  It's fast.  It's a twin.  It's unstable feeling to me.  I've read Griffins need to be surfed with a lot of weight on the rear.  Like I stated above, that's something I need to work on.  I also read that you shouldn't have to adjust to a board, but the board should suit how you surf.  Who to believe?  I'll default to the Initial D theory of, "it's not the car, it's the driver."  It's a far stretch to apply that here, to surfing, but I'll try:  "It's not the surfboard, it's the surfer."  Hmm... maybe that was too subtle...

I cleaned up and fixed all the dings on my other Griffin, the 5'9" modfish 5-fin.  It's super clean again.  Well as clean as it can be with all the ding repairs.  But I revitalized the stoke for that board.  So it's good to go.  Fresh wax job and all.

Also, I recently found out Firewires are not indestructible.  They are resistant to pressure dents though.  I managed to buckle the nose of my 5'8" Dominator.  That's what started this whole new board search.  It was a good board.

Surf tomorrow again, hope the swell hangs on and the conditions remain clean, and the crowd thin.  Maybe I can get some lefts and try some turns frontside on this new board.  Maybe I'll run it as a thruster?

Music tangent- heard some of the Crystal Castles (III) album today and was pretty blown away.  Are ALL the songs on youtube?