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| 135204 | 4461 | Stoker V machine - Fowler or Anderson? | 50 | Bruce Fowler | Aug 5, 2018 | 2018-08-05T18:55:00-0400 | Planktom said: Good thread, and nice to hear your take on things Bruce. So, getting back to the popular diamond tail vee bottom design (plain Jane? The board formerly referred to as the SVM?), having never seen one in the foam nor ridden one, could you please tell me about the design? Pros, cons, how they surf etc? It seems there's plenty of happy owners, but which boxes are being ticked for them when they ride them? Cheers Click to expand... Oh, guess that means me.... lol. The design is an easy to ride go to surfboard for every day waves. In many ways, they appeal to surfers that ride or are looking into fish. Fish paddle well for their size, they are fast down the line, and for guys that ride longboards that want to get on something shorter & not experience quiver shock or difficulty transitioning, fish are pretty good for that. ..... the difference between the PJ/VM, whatever you prefer to call them, is that they have ALL the advantages of your typical Fish but not the limitations of most Fish.... which is that they surf flat & skatey. V Machines surf fully 3 dimensional while still paddling easy, getting into waves early, and having tons of straight line trim speed...... the tweaks I put into them over time allows them to carry their speed thru turns & cutbacks quite easily because the foil aka volume distribution upped the horsepower that much more. And..... this is important, the "rail rocker" created by the particular panel vee I put into the boards allow them to carve beautiful full curvy 3 dimensional roundhouse cutbacks..... even for an intermediate surfer. I've turned beginner to intermediate surfers onto the approach for improving their surfing at an accelerated rate riding these little high performance drivers. I tell them that they will be able to position themselves back farther on take offs because the boards get in early and have "speed right off the line" unlike how you have to build up to terminable speed riding a displacement hull.... after 2 or 3 turns hulls are flying along like a heavy Cadillac with momentum...... the machines are roadsters.... boom! up and blazing. I also explain to them with all the planing up on top of the water, even in gutless nothing, you can go way out on he shoulder, make what I call a little "quarter turn" up the face before punching it hard into your cutback. What that quarter turn does is free up your outside mid rail by lifting the nose slightly..... once that outside rail is released, and you spank her hard into the cutback, the thing just flies around into one gorgeous career roundhouse. It takes a few goes to get it down, but I had one college student who had been surfing for a bit over a year embrace this, and his friends were out with him saying "WHOA!!! What the hell is he on"??! I love helping people like that. The boards S turn great because it really is what I call a "Tale of Two Rockers"...... centerline rocker, and rail rocker..... well, plus what Alan Gibbons mentioned on Sways or somewhere, that I was doing "something different with the panel vee. Older surfers that thought they were relegated to a longboard, over 9 ft. for the rest of their lives also find a new lease on life. I have had so many 60+ guys with hip replacements, back issues, shouler challenges, etc. give these boards a go. Some of the 1st time guys talk it over with me and I recommend a 7'6"x23-23-1/4"x3-1/4"...... float well to 275 lbs. . But for a lot of those guys, the idea of a 7'6" is hard to grasp, so I tell them to try a 7'9"...... that the 8'0" is really gonna be a LOT of board. Well, a fair share of them end up going with the 8'0"...... so a little time goes by and I get a phone call, and it goes like this: "hey Bruce, it's Bill, well, first I wanna say I just LOVE the board! It works exactly the way you said it would BUT, I should have listened to you, about getting it 7'6", so I've got a buddy lined up already for my 8'0" I never dreamed I would be riding a board this short ever again in fact..... ......and at this point I fill in what he's about to say "in fact I think I could go EVEN SHORTER"..... and we both start laughing. One guy told me his wife of many years told him it was ok to sleep with his new board next to the bed..... I mean, I'm not making this stuff up..... people do get stoked, and it's like some ad in the old Surfer Magazines. So yeah, they paddle great, they surf FAST, they don't bog down, I have a clientele that ranges from beginners to pro or retired pro surfers...... from billionaires to guys living in their vans. Old Hawaiian guys that used to be bad ass in Da Hui that are now mellow grandpa's of their Ohana. Hawaii to NY, Oregon to OZ, Costa Rica to Japan, France, Frankfurt, Finland..... yeah a guy in Finland that found waves when all his friends told him he was nutz. It's a good trip..... I was always telling people: Get Ready For Stoke Feel the Stoke Share the Stoke. I guess I can still use that becuz Randall doesn't own the word "stoked"...... surfers have been getting stoked or chasing it forever. I have absolutely no issue with Scott Anderson or anyone else that might make Randall's boards now or in the future. I'm proud of bringing it to the forefront and stoking out a lot of people that now own quivers of my boards. I have stacks of thank you emails from people saying how glad they are to have discovered my boards, or they share a story, or just write to say job well done. That's my tip (although some customers do that too.....thanks). A thank you goes a long way, and in this day and age of disappearing customer service instead of tuck and cover..... it remains icing on the cake for me. |