Nestor responds to Facebook Post on Surfboard Design characteristics and Geoff’s comments.
“In my many years of experience I have found that just because someone is great at one thing, does not mean that they know about anything else at all.” Slater (Best contest Surfer of all time)
This recent post on Facebook is a Prime example of this and Nestor explains perfectly why.
I was shocked when I first saw a recent video on the McCoy rider’s group on facebook, by firewire or tomo or sci-fi boards about how an Italian race car aero dynamics engineer proved that less concave and less hard edge and more soft rail holds more water. You have been saying this, especially about your Nugget designs and your other designs for decades. But, then he said that the hard edged board is not worse or better just looser. What??! None of this occurred in water tanks, just computer simulations. Hard rail edges make boards loose control, want to slide out and go straight to the beach, can’t hold nor stay high and tight on steep barreling tubes, and repel water.
Then he showed how different outlines were affected, but it was water coming straight on flat, not going down the line in spiraling water. They did prove that lower tail rocker was better and that small changes made big differences. But then said that a round smooth tail outline had more turbulence instead of channels, but again, this was going straight on flat water, with flat concaved bottomed boards, not the Loaded Dome. Then they said, that the round tailed board was better at certain speeds and the sci-fi was better at other speeds, but with out being very specific and without definite conclusions.
I saw the blended in smooth and rounded bevel under the rail on my McCoy Nuggets, and on my 6’2″ it’s narrower than it is on my 7’2″, meaning it has a broader planning area in the middle planing area right in front of the mid point. That means, I will get the lifting up out of the water effect with less wave power, size, speed, and surface tension or water hardness on the 6’2″ then on the 7’2″ although the 7’2″ will handle and paddle into bigger waves easier. I still haven’t gotten waves since the new Extended Tip fin has come in, But looking at it, I intuitively know that it will shoot me forward like a cannon even faster than before and work perfectly. Can’t wait till a shoulder high or more wave comes into the Sebastian Inlet area, because It will lift up and fly, and If I get another epic or even just decent swell in South Florida, forget about it, I will be beyond stoked!
I found old pictures of your surf objects galore until I found things that were interesting. Like one picture showed the old Dome, but it was like a tear drop shape bulge like a torpedo in outline, and where it ended it became flat underneath the rails. But now you’ve blended it with the rail and the rail now is rolled underneath like a blended bevel. Like a plank bottom or clinker boat. The blended smooth and round low angled bevel starts at the nose where they meet and then it goes on until it is the same angle and indistinguishable from the tail area low points.
I saw an old old picture of the tail of an old Zap from behind and it has an almost scooped out area on either side of the stringer, with a widow’s peak edge going downward on the back rail, like a sort of Vee only at the back end.
Then remembering because I watch them almost everyday, your videos, that one might start at the tail following the energy shape or plane shape at first and then coming up into the middle planing area like the tip of a tear drop and letting the pressure off of the sanding block. And you do that over and over again until that old Dome appears. Then at the end of the tail edge on the stringer you smooth the widow’s peak down on the stringer. And you do the same in the nose area but not as long of a tear drop. Then you cut a low angled bevel starting at the nose that reduces in angle as it gets near the tail and then it’s the same angle as the tail low points. Then, all is blended smooth and the middle is rounded a little. The the rails are done. You might draw lines on the flat edge, before the rails are made, highest from the bottom at the nose, shallower in the planning area, and higher again at the tail, but I don’t know.
Many months ago I had another shaping dream with you shaping and it was very very short but it didn’t make sense because you had what appeared to be blue strips of masking tape in stripes from nose to tail parallel to the stringer, but then you started cutting curves lengthwise with a planer making parts of them dissapear and then they looked like they were painted on stripes and not tape. Maybe that was an erroneous dream.
Before all that you do the outline and the rocker. But maybe the tail rocker is formed a little by making the dome and smoothing all of it out on the widows peak.
I also found an old picture of you holding a freshly made old white long slender narrow tail single fin while you’re crouched and holding it by the bottom with your finger tips and you can see the rocker perfectly. It seems like your rockers now of wide thick tailed objects are roughly those of your long more slender tailed boards with the tail chopped off. Then I started looking at surfboard foam blank pictures available these days and it seems like if you cut some of that useless tail off of them you get a similar or at least better rocker.
Then I looked at pictures of the power boats on pause when lifted up, and the rocker looks similar to your Nuggets.
I can keep going on and on, but if that Italian engineer did those tests comparing your designs and those other boards with diagonally entering swirling spiral water flow, your’s would blow them into the most shameful oblivion and utter annihilation. And even more so if they actually used real liquid water in real, state of the art, water testing tanks.
I also don’t get why the power boats have those plank looking channels. Maybe it’s because they’re going straight, or maybe particular needs for that type of craft with empirical trial and error or maybe they are lacking knowledge on pure natural energy as the “surf industry” is. But water running diagonally around your surf objects would be disrupted by straight nose to tail channels because it puts in detrimental reaction just to control the board and it adds drag. Those power boats would be better off by making the water flow smooth with a smooth hull as there would be no staging in lift as speed goes up and maybe they won’t rock up and down, as it did, even though almost unnoticeable.