ive been told the walden goes well but not read much on the forums. is it as good as ive been told, does it paddle and glide well and can you realy turn this board as they say.can it handle fast down the line peelers and slow fat high tide waves.please tell

Good board to start out on - Stable, easy to paddle, good glide, too easy to nose ride and you can take your kid or dog out too.

Step deck seems to work well as the rails still hold and bite in some fairly decent sized juice. Surfed it in waves ranging up to double overhead.

Downside is they are very heavy/hard to turn. You can get them working well but it takes a lot of effort. Other boards of similar length don't appear as bad in comparison. IMO the outline shape is too square/straight.

Rails are prone to chipping badly

Centre fin is terrible. Replace it with a more cut away style 9" fin like an FCS Soulflex and it will turn with half the effort needed.

In my opinion the 10'10 is a good paddler and extremely stable. The 9.11 Walden is twice the board though I reckon. It is lighter, nearly as quick to paddle, just as stable and surfs 5 times better. Both boards are ok in fun size waves and handle the fat, slow waves with little effort. I personally wouldn't recommend either board for bigger suckier waves cos they just aren't quick enough for super fast down the line surfing and they are both kinda big in overall shape and they can get a bit bouncy and easily caught up in very critical waves. I am certainly not putting either board down because the 9.11 is one of my all time favourite sups - but you gotta know its limitations.

THANKS.could a fat pomie ay 105kg get away with a 9.11, nice idea but it could be a expensive idea.im enjoying the mana 10 apart from the lack of glide and trim.perhaps i should make the walden 9.11 my short sup and grin and bear it.

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billboard said...

In my opinion the 10'10 is a good paddler and extremely stable. The 9.11 Walden is twice the board though I reckon. It is lighter, nearly as quick to paddle, just as stable and surfs 5 times better. Both boards are ok in fun size waves and handle the fat, slow waves with little effort. I personally wouldn't recommend either board for bigger suckier waves cos they just aren't quick enough for super fast down the line surfing and they are both kinda big in overall shape and they can get a bit bouncy and easily caught up in very critical waves. I am certainly not putting either board down because the 9.11 is one of my all time favourite sups - but you gotta know its limitations.

Agree with billboard on the 10'10 Walden 100%

I have wanted to try the 9'11 for ages too. Heard really good things about it as a great longboard feel board.

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spencer said...

THANKS.could a fat pomie ay 105kg get away with a 9.11, nice idea but it could be a expensive idea.im enjoying the mana 10 apart from the lack of glide and trim.perhaps i should make the walden 9.11 my short sup and grin and bear it.

You would get away with it if you are an intermediate surfer/paddler at your weight. The mana is an insane surfing board in all its lengths but as you say they do lack a bit of glide due to the pronounced rocker but without that insane rocker the board just wouldnt surf as well as it does. The mana does trim ok though if you get up the board a bit and they also nose-ride suprisingly well.

Hi Spencer,

I would agree with all that has been said so far about the 9'11" walden.

If you are going ok on the 10' Mana, then you will love the 9'11" walden.

I reckon the walden is a little more stable, has way more speed & glide on the flat, has a more 'grippy' deck grip (right to the nose so the dog can ride up front) & after beating mine up for 18 months, and also putting lots of novices on it, the rails are still really quite good.

We took a friend out on it the other day: he was 6'1" tall and about 110-115kg and he paddled it just fine!

Good luck with the decision-making: there are just so many boards on the market now that it is actually really quite difficult to make the choice!

Cheers
Mel

Hi Spencer

All above are spot on with the advice on the 10-10, but there's one thing I would do....and that's take the fin size down even further with a 7 or an 8" cutaway and compensate with slightly larger side fins. I've got a 7
' and my old G2 FCSs in mine and it goes much better, though i could go smaller on the sides. But it's still a pig compared with other larger boards that i've ridden! and it loves to dig a rail at speed, so look out.

cheers
tang