Future Projects
I have recently taken up windsurfing and I`m really enjoying it. I`m using my father's 360mm board and 5.8m sail, and I hope to go to my local beach soon to try small wave riding.
Hovever the board is too big (and much too heavy!) for wave riding, so I might build a Wave Sailboard sometime this summer. So now I`m getting as much windsurfing practice in as possible between skates and surfs as I have to learn to beach start and waterstart before going the waves.
I would also like to make a Sailboard that will hydroplane by having a stepped hull to increase straight line speed. This would be great fun when theres no surf and its blowing a gale!
Also I`m thinking about experimenting with my fish surfboard, making it directionally less stable, by lightly tacking a very small fin (probably no more that 2 cm high) near the nose to make it turn and slide more easily.
During my latest surf trip to Cornwall (Treyarnon Bay) I took up longboarding as the guy in the Youth Hostel is a keen longboarder, and the currents were very strong so I needed a board that I could paddle fast. I borrowed a battered old 7`11" Mini Mal whhich had almost a centimeter of concave in the nose, heaps of nose rocker and a very wide front and took it out in overhead waves. To my surprise the big board with its single fin was easy to manage and I soon found the joys of riding a bigger board. The main difference between this and the Mini Mal Board 002 I shaped is that this was great for traditional style riding and I soon had five little piggies over the nose! I learn`t to walk the board and as this was the first board I`d ridden in traditional style I really wanted to make a copy of it. So halfway through the holiday when I was feeling really ill (sunstroke, combined with sore throat, ear infection, cold etc, etc!) I took all the dimentions from the board so that I could make a copy when I returned home. Now I`ve made this board (005) and it is great for times when I want a chilled out surf (much to the disgust of my shortboarding mates!)
For this websie, I'm going to add a how to paint and glass a surfboard section. Also I recieve quite a few emails asking for help with certain parts of boardshaping, so I think I'll add a "questions and answers" page. Those will probably be done during summer time, when I`m back from University.