I know in some of the SUS contests on your side of the world, some of you have talked about the 10 foot and over class. Can you please fill me in on this. Basically, are there age divisions within the 10ft class. Is it judged more along the lines of a longboard contest.
The reason I am asking is I was talking about it with a sponsor of some contests and I mentioned what I had read on here about the 10 ft and over division. I did not know a lot of the details so I figured I would go to the source to find out more.
Any other information that would be helpful in starting a division like this that I am missing, would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Ninja Tuna, We started this division basically because the level of shortboard surfing was accelerating so quickly (which is a great thing), but it was actually turning off a lot of our general more social club members from events (which is a bad thing). So we aimed to get a general size of board that most people already own (i.e. over 10'), there emphasis is on inclusion and fun. We normally just do Men's and Women's division, but if there was enough entrants we would definitely look into Master's Junior etc.
To keep the day fun and cruisey we do pre-registrations and pre-draw the heats. The scoring is not calculated on the day and it's basically two rounds so everyone surf's twice. The draws are done off an algorithm that mixes like riders in one round and seeded riders in another. the scores of all the judges are calculated to form a score out of 60 (30 per heat, 10 points per judge. 1st = 10pts, 2nd = 8pts, 3rd = 6pts and so on). From this we get a leaderboard. We put up the scores after the event that night or the next day, this way the beach is all about the riding and places.
It's a lot of fun and the beach atmosphere is awesome.
Definitely worth adding to your club comps.
Ride safe, Enjoy!
JB
Thanks for the info windgenuity. He was talking about because it seemed like it was kinda becoming a bigger shortboard contest over here. They have had "longboard " divisions where the size had to be 9'0. I guess the organizers were just taking that from regular surf contests. He was telling me guys were just getting boards that were 9'1, basically oversized shortboards. This was keeping the weekend warriors out of it which also kinda makes exclusionary and not as much fun for everyone.
The Longboard style of SUP has a ton of potential to be the mainstream application of fun and performance.
You will need some rail length to be able to ride in this style - but the bigger boards bring a ton of mobility and wave count to the show.
And you don't need to wait for an epic swell to run a comp.
This comp was one of the most fun I have ever covered - and everyone got a ton of water time.
This was possibly the perfect Stand Up Paddle day out
Here's the last comprehensive thread on the topic.
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=145683&SearchTerms=10
Please excuse my bad humour (Though hardly anyone else does including the El Presidente of a certain SUP Club!).
There was another more recent thread where I provided some serious input,
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=155670&SearchTerms=10,foot
Nice edit reflex!
Good times, great conditions and nice longboard action.... thanks
