Difficulty catchiing with a concave nose

[Brian.James]

Well this is very interesting and I believe Ben will have some good insights here as he rides the slasher low pro right now.

What is the length of both your boards?

[Kailani]

9 ft 9 each

[BenConsidine]

Hey!!! Yeah definitely understand the frustration here but with regards to the concave and tail rocker it makes sense – I have a low pro as well and know what you’re talking about!

So essentially anything that deviates from a flat bottom on the longboard will create drag – with the larger concave it’s role is to slow the board down in the pocket whilst noseriding but as that area hulls water into it from the paddle in it can have a big effect. Even more so with this board is the significant tail rocker (flip in the tail) coupled with the extra wide tail belly (wide point back) which if you think of stopping your skateboard by kicking the tail to make contact with and drag along the ground – it’s effectively doing the same thing creating drag in the water – which can be super helpful to create our lock and lift in noseriding but has adverse effects here.

So the solution!!! First thing I would recommend trying – is the silver lining with a board like this is paddling into waves you can do what I called the longboard wriggle – which is as you’re paddling and recognising you’re unlikely to catch the wave, simultaneously move your chest a touch further up the board using your thighs and hips to bit by but move you up as you paddle (kind of looks like a worm wriggling) – this will get more weight into the planing centre/flat part of the board helping to deload the tail and get you moving with the wave better. We can do this better with the board with more rocker vs a flat board which is easier to nosedive – but we don’t want to be too far up still for obvious reasons – we just use this when we feel like we’re losing the wave or really having to fight for it.

The other part to this is really honing in on our takeoff position and best utilising the correct takeoffs. Often we avoid critical takeoffs because of the nosedive risk, and so we focus on catching waves on the shoulder which provides the current issue having difficulty getting onto waves. So if we can learn to use the angled takeoff in more critical takeoff sections that can be another work around here too.

Sorry I know that’s an essay haha, little bit to this one but I hope that’s somewhat helpful 🙏👏🤙