Kneeboard design

Often times during the week I stop into the stretch boards factory. It's so convienent having them in town and less than 5 min from my house. Stretch is a characer like no one else I've ever met. There are a number of things I love about his personality, but mainly that he is a very real person who says it like it is. When you put that together with talking surfboard design you come away learning things that you always thought you knew about but really had no idea. This morning a guy from Monterey came in right at the same time as me. I always come in, so I figured let this guy talk to stretch first as I can always come back tomorrow. I'm terrible with names and I can't remeber his name but he had to be barely 5'4" tall. A very fit older guy who stank of weed and was wearing beat old boardies and some pretty sick new nike running shoes(pretty odd combo). He later said he was 58. I'd have guessed him maybe late 40's. He then brought in from his car an old beat up Coletta board with an all blue bottom. It looked like a long board for him, but was actually only a bit taller than him. I think stretch measured it at 5'5" and a half. He cruised into stretchs bay and threw it on the rack as I have done many times with stretch. I let them talk for a while... I cruised into the bay to see what they we're talking about. I didnt want to be to nosey but I love meeting different surfers and hearing their perspectives on what they like in their boards. Not to metion hearing what stretches responses are to what they think they've liked for so many years. The guy walks back out to his truck and comes back in with three pictures. Two are of a secret spot in Big Sur and one of another in monterey. The first two are pics of solid ledging rights, maybe 15 ft faces and crystal clear water with a tiny spec of a knee boarder dropping in. The third is a empty wave shot of a perfect left that looked about 12ft, but hard to tell. The guy was a knee boarder. After listening for a while the guy says to stretch that he really likes a parralel template in the tail area and asked stretch if he was oppossed to that. I laughed out loud because that is something stretch and nathan fletcher have been really tinkering with and liking lately. Then stretch proceeds to ask this guy if he rides the board as a thruster. The guy says yeah because he surfs bigger waves and could never get a twin under control. Oh boy here we go I thought. For those of you who dont know stretch is known for being one of a few "QUAD" guys. Stretch then goes into a discussion of how if the tail is wider than the rear fin of a tri is high on either side at the position of the rear fin, that the fin will break free and you'll essentially be riding a twin. I've had this discussion before with stretch and it's actually something that many shapers do on their boards...makes me wonder about the knowledge of other shapers. So then Stretch mentions the quad design. Homie was weary, which I can totally understand. Thrusters are so solid feeling, and the control you get is amazing when compared to other designs. But knowing stretch and having had this conversation many times with him I knew he would push towards a quad with a wider tail template. I couldn't help myself from talking and I asked stretch ,"what about adding more tail rocker?" to remedy the loss of control without the middle fin. And this is where my lesson began this morning. My thought was that adding more tail rocker would help the quad design by adding more control. The more rocker a board has(especially int he tail) the easier and more control you have over the board because there is less board in the water at any given time. Stretch then ripped me a new one..."NO, NO, NO", he said. "Its a knee board Tim." He then proceeded to explaing to me that you cant pump on a knee board for speed. all of your weight is centered in the rear of the board and you can't move the board as easy as you can standing up to re position yourself on the wave for speed. Therefore you need a flat tail rocker that helps you plane being that your body is stuck in one riding position, usually near the tail of your board. This single conversation is what sold this guy on stretch. He immediatly knew stretch understood what he was looking for. He said, "Yeah! you know! thats exactly right!". I felt about one inch tall but was still stoked because I learned something new about riding waves. I hung out for a while longer while stretch convinced this guy that he should be riding a board about 2-3 inches shorter and drawing new nose templates on his old board with a sharpie, trying to prove to this guy that the nose area on his board was needless. Homie's head was spinning. Super entertaining. OK, take away was this. Super experienced water man almost in his 60's still learning and adapting to modern wavecraft theories, and Stretch knows wave riding of every kind... pretty rare and really cool. I love being in the ocean and riding waves whatever way you must. My passion is obviously high performance shortboards in good waves but it's so cool to see someone get all jacked up and describing the waves they surf and what they like to do. It's the reason we're all living a ocean lifestyle. It's just flat out fun to ride waves and get new feelings on new waves year after year after year.