Breaking news: longboards are faster than shortboards, according to an authoritative new velocity study. Remember you read it here first.
Well, maybe second, since your columnist pilfered it from Tracksmag.com.au, the on-line version of Australia’s most popular surf magazine, which gave him his start almost 50 years ago. From which it is therefore okay to occasionally nick stuff, as long as he seeks permission from the authors, or in this case, from their dad, since Jonah and Lily Johnson are kids, more or less.
But very smart ones, as it turns out, who have at last delved deeply enough into the dark sciences of physics and statistics to come up with the incontrovertible evidence of what we mal riders have known forever: that longboards travel faster across the wave face than any other self-powered surfcraft.
In my studying days (such as they were) I avoided physics like the plague, as I did anything involving numbers except for simple arithmetic, which I needed to calculate that I could get eight standard drinks for a dollar on a Friday night at the Bellambi Pub. But I digress. Jonah, 18, with a lot of help from big sister Lily and inspiration from dad Sid, has not only come up with the right answer but has written one of the most entertaining and thoughtful surf blogs I’ve read in years. And it all started out as an attempt to take the mickey out of dad.
Jonah explains:“Every Saturday a fairly predictable pattern unfolds at our house. It begins when Dad wakes up, gazes out through his spotting scope, assesses the waves, and then proclaims which board is best suited to the day… according to him.” And so the family pulls out the appropriate quiver, according to dad, and off they go. But what if, Jonah and Lily pondered, dad was making the wrong call? Prove it, Sid said.
What followed was a very long and involved comparative analysis of a high performance longboard, a 7ft 6 Huevo hybrid (a design of our very own Josh Constable) and a couple of 6ft 1 shortboards, all from Sid’s quiver, with him riding them and the kids recording and analysing the data. And if you want to read that in its entirety you’ll have to go to Tracksmag.com, but here we’ll cut to the findings and the conclusions.
Writes Jonah: “Overall, as dad predicted, the longer the board, the faster the ride (he’s more of a theoretical physicist than an actual numbers or detail guy). The FCD HP Longboard came in with an average top speed of 5.08 metres/second, the Huevo at 4.85 m/s, and the short boards at 4.60 m/s. Again, in terms of the average speed on the wave, the longboards came out on top. The FCD Longboard had an average speed of 4.38 m/s, the Huevo 4.17 m/s, and the short boards 3.96 m/s.”
He concludes: “After statistical analysis it’s super clear that the longboards win for speed, no questions asked … The overall physics are basically indisputable. Longer boards are faster. End of debate. So, a point for dad… if that is what you think you want out of surfing … Does this mean longboards are superior? Yeah, no. There are obviously other reasons thoughtful people think shortboards ride faster.“With a year (plus!) of high school physics under my belt, I think I’ve solved the mystery: The rush of speed we feel is not entirely due to our speed, but rather the feeling of acceleration. Because shortboards are lighter and used to catch steeper waves, their instantaneous acceleration is higher during the initial drop. However, after that first burst of acceleration, you likely won’t be going much faster without adding more energy from pumping.“Alternatively, a longboard accelerates more slowly over a longer period of time, and for the same reason it paddles faster, it will eventually rack up speed down the line. Basically, the speed I feel on a shortboard is the perception of acceleration rather than overall speed, which is far less than his actual Huevo speed relative to the reef below. Of course, my thinking could be totally wrong since I’m just an 18-year-old punk, but it seems to make sense.”
And here’s the kicker: “In the end, surfing is about the perceived experience. We like shortboards because they are manoeuvrable. Disregarding the overall values (because they are so close anyway), what matters is what we feel when surfing.”Well, he’s a teenaged shortboarder, so he would say that, wouldn’t he? But old guys on mals won, right?
Read the full Study of Surfboard Velocity at Tracksmag.com.au
North Shore madness
I gave Pete Mel a shout out in this column a couple of weeks ago for his huge and death-defying barrel at Mavericks at age 51. Hard to top that, but has anyone been following what happened during last week’s mega-swell of the season on the Hawaiian north shores of Oahu and Maui? Next level.
Ross Phillips from Tropicsurf flipped me this one of the world’s top extreme waterman Kai Lenny going through the testosterone ceiling on this absurd air drop at Jaws. Oh, and my favourite female big wave crazy, the inimitable Keala Kennelly, also made some unbelievable drops, and followed up with the paddle session of the season next day at Waimea.
