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NOVAAN
Joined: 28 Sep 1994
Posts: 1551
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 Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| Second the 3S. As smooth as anything in chop. Turns great and as fast as most. Its a real back saver for me. Great all around board. Mines the 2014 96 liter in standard construction. The LTD might be to stiff for that butter smooth ride.... |
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kmf
Joined: 02 Apr 2001
Posts: 503
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| Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:16 am Post subject: |
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"I'm having a hard time describing what I like about that 257VR. It's more than comfort. It seems to plane early. It really sticks to the water through jibes. Jumps nice."
You might consider an Open Ocean tri-fin. It has all of the attributes that you describe above and since they are custom made to your needs, you can have Brian make them any weight or volumn that you care to have. His traditional boards are a bit old school in shape but they work real well in choppy powered up conditions.
I recently aquired an Open Ocean free from a friend, and after I got over my initial reaction about it being old school, I rode it on a choppy gusty Rowena day. It turns out to be one of the smoothest best riding boards that I have been on in quite some time. Planes early, gybes great, sticks to the water in the carve and totally planes out of it. On a 70 litre board.
He can also make you a modern shape if you want to go that way, and they are still smoother than most production boards.
http://www.openocean.com/
KMF |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:39 am Post subject: Re: Tiga 257VR |
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| konajoe wrote: | | I've been on boards that were more responsive. Or should I say twitchy. That Tiga seems to track better than any other board when bouncing through irregular chop. |
That's a general feature of older boards. They generally tracked more accurately than the modern potato chips, yet remain very loose even in gusts and chop that overpower many of the potato chips. My Evo was a lot of fun and highly maneuverable powered modestly even in modest chop, but powered way up in big gusts and chop it was a pearl-prone jackham-m-m-m-mer. My slightly narrower -- and especially my older-yet and much narrower -- wave boards remain very loose, smooth, fast, and controllable in those conditions despite stiff construction; plastic helps, but shape is vital, too. I picked and bought many such boards based on reviews that emphasized smooth rides, bought others based more on my evaluation of their hull shape (lots of vee and rocker or pronounced concaves help) and have not been disappointed other than the Evo.
What did I do about that? Enjoyed the heck out of it when powered lightly to moderately, then sold it in perfect condition to a guy who sails only that way and surfs the swell. He will love it and I made a 25% profit (I bought it new in its current year for $400); we both won.
"Twitchy" and "responsive" are not inherently synonymous. When the ill-fated, PR-driven no-nose craze hit in the early '90s, I began wondering whether my buttery-smooth, totally predictable, relatively parallel-railed late '80s Bailey was short on maneuverability. These new no- (actually very long and prominent-) nosed boards had no parallel planforms; their outline was curved from nose to tail and their wide point was well aft of the norm, all to increase the "twitch" factor. I borrowed a bud's ProTech no-nose because I had never met a ProTech I didn't like, and sure enough it was twitchy. It just wouldn't settle down, always seeming to "hunt" and dither around any straight line I wanted to pursue. I thought, "Wow! This thing is just ITCHING to slash", and I told it to slash.
Waste of time. It just kept twitching around a straight line. It would jibe wide, but sharp high-speed turns were not to be had with normal inputs. I asked the board's owner, a much better sailor than I, about that, and he said, "I just love the ILLUSION that it is loose, even though it's really all twitch and nerves, not turning or tracking."
I went back to my Bailey (and, later, my plastic HiFly), and ignored the no-nose revolution, at least until I got paid to test them. "Twitch" is not necessary for looseness; it's often just a lack of good tracking, or the reaction some slalom board riders have when trying loose sinkers for the first time. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 10:52 am Post subject: |
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| I agree that Open Oceans, at least in their standard old-school configuration, are smooth-riding, user-friendly, easy-to-sail comfort food, which explains their popularity. They have a lot in common with the plastic Tiga/HiFly genre and look a thousand times better. |
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