Okay boys and girls, I'll try to answer all your questions.
I took her out to curly, not because it was any good, but because no one I know goes there and I hate the place. I just didn't want anyone talking to me while I'm trying to learn how to ride my first poly board in 5 years.
First up, she catches waves better than any poly board I can remember, but she's still not as good as the Munoz, but then, the Munoz is a freak.
SSD always have their newest logos off centre, but I asked for the top one to be in the centre as a reference point, and I asked for it to be 40 inched back from the nose, because that's about where my nose would be on the Munoz.
The surf was as full as a fat chicks undies and the banks were typical curly, there one second and gone the next, so it took almost 15 minutes for me to score a wave, but then, few others were getting any. It turned out to be one of only 3 half decent waves I got but the ride was short and I had to decide quickly what I was going to do.
The first decission was made for me, I had to generate some speed to make a section, so I shimmied forward, got some height and she accelerated, that went real well.
Because I already had the height, and a gutter was looming, I stuck it as far under the break as I could and ran up to the snoty bit. I probably had only half a second up there before the wave fell into the gutter, but it was enough to tel me that there was a bit of potential for the occasional bit of tip work.
Because I was missing so many, I got the chance to refine my paddling and found that I was able to move forward much further than I could on the Munoz. The Munoz is notorious for pearling, but I could not get this board to pearl on the day and I ended up with the SSD logo around my chest area as I paddled. That's probably a 12 inched further forward than I would normally paddle.
The next wave I was determined to try a few turns, no matter what it was like, and fortunately it had a bit wall to work off. I reached back a long way with my right foot, just like I always do, and rather than the slow gracefully arch, she snaps around like a cat that just had its tail trod on. I was able to recover in time and did a few more fun zigity zags off the tail, that made me quite happy.
The remaining few wave were just testing how far it would carry to the beach ( turned out to be all the way) and how it was at paddling across the face. In this regard it did not seem happy and continually pushed the rear towards the front, but I put a lot of that down to the really crap waves and possibly the big arsed fin I had on. It's a 10 inch dion dolphin.
All up, I'm happy so I'll now try my hardest to stay off the Munoz and only surf the yellow peril.
I think the shaper gave in to me on a few points, he made the tail harder and thinner than he would have liked and possibly made the majority of the rails lower than he wanted, but the rest of it was all his ideas. SSD can't machine shape a board this big, few people can, so it's kinda nice knowing it was all done by hand and I was able to talk direct to the man who did it.