Yesterday, i finally had the chance to finally try the Style. The Style XL to be more precise. 10' x 30 1/2" @139l.
Really thin nose and tail, not a lot of nose rocker, plenty of kick tail. The rails are pretty nice, not too thick, not too thin.
While i was (and still am) pretty excited about this shape, it is the 9'6 x 28" that i'm really looking forward to demo, as I like smaller boards.
The wave where I tried it is a kind of difficult to read wave. A righthand point break, with a kind of steep take off on a bubbling portion of the reef, followed by a fat although fast section that usually closes out on a white water mush. Except for the first 20m of wave, not really the kind of wave I like. Being the fist time I was surfing it, it was way trickier than i looked from afar.
While the fat section looked like it would provide a perfect spot to ride on the nose, the wave was actually too fat, being that the first section was too steep for a board I had never tried (with the reef lurking underneath). Not only the shape was different from my normal ride, as the size of the board was a completely different world from what I'm used to (my everyday board is a Brushed Carbon Starboard 8'0 x 28" Pro).
This being said, let me tell you what I think about this specific board:
My stats:
- Height - 1,92m
- Weight - 104,5kg
- Age - 36yo
Construction, Weight, look:
Just look around and read any feedback for the Sunova SUP boards construction. Amazing!
I'd rate them 5 out of 5.
Fins:
The board comes with a 2+1 fin set up. The side fins are pretty big and the center fin almost looks like a sword - it is big. I got one of my favorite fins on the box (an RFC Rake 7'0) and went surfing.
Stability:
Coming from my 8'0, when I climbed on the board, it felt stupid stable. So stable I could paddle while standing on one foot. I felt the stability should be close to a starboard whopper, which I own but haven't surfed for almost 8 months. I think this is due to the board having such low nose rocker.
Punching through white water waves is pretty easy, as is finding the sweet spot for paddling.
Paddling:
All of the boards I usually surf are way smaller than this one, so it felt really fast. So fast I would sometimes find myself paddling almost as if I were on my race boards.
With such big fins tracking is phenomenal.
Catching waves:
While paddling was really easy and fast, I struggled to get into my first couple of waves. At the time, i couldn't really understand why, but it got better during the session. Now, one day later, i think it was a mix of having a much bigger board under my feet, which doesn't have a lot of rocker, on a spot with a trick take off zone which I had never surfed.
Surfing:
Once I got my first wave, first thing i did was the bottom turn. Actually it was a bit more of a mid face turn. Felt that trademark Sunova magic carpet ride, and then went straight into a full on rail carve... SPLASH!!!
Tried it again with the same result and started realizing that this board is not an high performance short SUP board. Instead, i started using the kick tail a bit more to turn and tried to surf it more like a log.
That's when I started to make sense of it.
It is indeed a noserider.
Turn gently of the tail, cross step to get yourself on the tip of the nose and then back to the tail. Carve smoothly, and a bit more of tip time. I must confess I didn't spent enough time on the board to become used to such a long and wide board, but on one of my last waves I managed to get a proper hang five-to-ten-then-five-again right on to the critical section while keeping the things under control.
On my last wave, i got an hang five to a close out reentry and decided to go in and get my board to try that wave with a board i'm familiar with.
Some people had told me that this board was slow. Not being fast either, the board has the kind of speed one would expect from a good noserider: just enough to engage the board on the wave and then walk to the nose. Actually, it was the first SUP board i tried that felt like that. Really nice.
I think that those who are looking for a SUP with a real log/longboard kind of feel, can stop looking around - here it is. I think it should be a brilliant board on points like Noosa, Malibu and all those epic longboard spots we know off. Here in Portugal I know a couple of spots where it would be a lot of fun.
I heard a friend is getting a 9'6" in the next container that is due to arrive in Europe. Really looking forward to see it up close and personal.
Does anyone has a similar feedback to mine?
Johnny
SurfFX
> 9 months ago, 11 Dec 2014
