Velzy Rehab

Nice 10-foot Velzy found for a good price on CL. I pointed it out to my dad to see if he was interested because I was kinda 50/50 on it. (I would like to try it, but not store it.) He mentioned that a family friend has a need and this would be a good one. I arranged to look at it and unfortunately it hadn't been well taken care of. There are a few repairs that weren't perfect but probably better than I could do so I'll leave those. There are also a handful of open dings. So I figured how much I thought it would cost to have professional repair, cut that number in half, and took it off the asking price. The seller was happy with the negotiation, and I took it home to fix it myself.
The board has an off-white pigment in the laminating layer and clear gloss over the top. I bought some "bone white" pigment because some of the repairs will go into the lamination layer. The pigment makes it look like it, but it's not an epoxy SurfTek. Those pin-lines are only on the deck and are beneath the gloss coat, which is a nice touch. I started working on the repairs but will have to wait for the pigment to arrive before I can continue much further.

The shape is a nice middle-ground log. Gentle continuous rocker throughout, gentle belly flattening towards the middle, but roll/belly out the tail. It seems like an excellent board for our family friend who surfs 38th and sometimes 2nd Peak.

And as an edit to the other post I made earlier today, the 10' Velzy fin off this board will be added to the list of fins I'll be testing out. It'll be the first one I play with because I want to get the board repaired and handed off to it's new owner. To help with the fin experimentation I ordered 6 wonderbolts! I've lost the other two I had, and I figured since I found a deal online, I'd buy a bunch. So now I can shift the fin forward and back while in the water, and swap out a fin on the beach without needing to pack in a screwdriver.

Hoping for small waves

I've had a few days this summer surfing solo anywhere between an hour to a full session. I've been riding my yellow longboard at 4-mile on days when it was very small. It's been great! This last Saturday morning the cdip buoy reported the swell as slightly larger (1/2 foot bigger) than on the other days when the crowd was minimal. This time, the crowd was on it. I got far fewer waves and didn't have as much opportunity to snag the best ones. I did get a few good rides, so it wasn't a bad day, just... So I'm hoping it's small next weekend, and the crowd is small to.

The other thing, I took out my GeeBee on Saturday. I was surprised by the lack of response when I pushed on a bottom turn to get speed. I'm not sure if I was expecting the acceleration because the yellow longboard does, or because I was on a shortboard (the GB is 6'2"). Whatever the reason, it wasn't there and I had to adjust. One adjustment was to engage more rail on the turns, the other was to just not expect as much drive. I've already been thinking about fins, and so my mind went to the fin on the GB and how it may be contributing.

I've always used what the GB came with, what looks like a TA L-Flex at about 8 or 9". The Fineline website recommends running a L-Flex 9B in Volan, or a Greenough 4a 9", both of which have similar shape but wider base than the fin that I'm riding in there now. So, my first move should be to poach the 4a out of the yellow longboard and try it in the GB. (Side-note, PG recommends adding 14 layers of 6oz to the 4a to get the proper fin thickness. Maybe someday I'll find the bravery to give that a try.) But the yellow board isn't the only source of other fins available to me. I raided my dad's dusty box of fins and struck gold! Here's the list of what I borrowed: Velzy V-fin, 10" cutaway, 8-9" Johnny Rice "hatchet", Horan Star Fin, and Cooper plastic flex fin. I've tried the Cooper flex in the GB and it stalls on hard turns. I've tried the hatchet in a transition era single fin min-gun and don't have any memories of how well it worked, good or bad. So, if I also try these fins on the longboard, I have 10-fin combinations to play with! Surfing only once a week, that will take me a long time. And, I might run out of small waves before I finish. So, that's another reason to hope the waves stay small for a little longer.

9/3/19 Edit:
After a surf on the longboard in small waves, I've decided my problem on the GB described above was due to my mind not being in the right place. I was trying to pump the GB like a hard railed quad fish, which isn't the proper approach. The adjustment I made (engaging more rail in the bottom turn) was a step in in the right direction. Next weekend is forecast to be more of the same, so I might choose to try the GB with one of the other fins to see if I can find more "small wave drive" with a longer and/or wider based fin. The new 10" Greg Liddle flex fin in Volan will be my first try. It has a similarly narrow base but an extra few inches of length to the L-Flex I've been using for years.