WEAPONS | HURLEY PRO TRESTLES 2010
[13.09.2010]Surfers
Image: www.FMKPhoto.com
WEAPONS OF CHOICE | HURLEY PRO 2010
LOWER TRESTLES, California/USA - Stop No. 6 of 10 on the 2010 ASP World Tour, the Hurley Pro Trestles has just kicked off. It’s an exiting time for competitors and spectators alike as the venue offers undoubtable the most high-performance wave on tour and maybe even the planet. It’s a break that allows surfers to showcase their full bag of tricks. With this in mind, what type of boards are the various pros riding to ensure they blow-up to their best ability? Presenting: Weapons of Choice - Hurley Pro Trestles 2010.
Again, it’s not just the fans that are excited by the prospect of the newly-formed Top 32 unleashing their respective repertoires on this high-performance break. Reigning world champ Mick Fanning, had this to say in the lead-up to the event: “I love surfing Trestles as it is such a high performance wave,” Fanning said. “It allows you to really mix up your surfing. I had a really good session there during the US Open (click here to watch the session) so hopefully I can hit that form again.
Current World number 3 and excitement machine, Taj Burrow, revealed the following when quizzed about Trestles: “Very excited about the events ahead, it’s a strong leg of the tour for me and I’m planning on doing the best surfing of my year. I don’t want to leave close heats in the hands of the judges. I want to win convincingly. Trestles is absolutely the high-performance wave on tour. Everyone surfs their best out there. It’s the perfect canvas to unleash your whole repertoire on.”
Given Trestles forces the pros to really put their skills out there, they need to give themselves the best opportunity to ensure they’re surfing at their progressive peak. For this reason board-selection is paramount. Before we hear from guys such as Fanning, Taj, Machado and Slater, I though we’d get the opinion of one of Australia’s premier shapers, Hayden Cox of Haydenshapes, in regards to the boards he’d recommend for riding at Trestles, given the nature of the wave and it’s current conditions. With guys like Craig Anderson on his books, Cox knows all about boards for high-performance surfing. Cox: Trestles is a flatter face wave with a super-fun lip to hit. So as for boards, you want something with a fast flat rocker, the bigger the waves the narrower you would go, but in 2-3ft trestles you would normally ride something a little wider that your shortboard. As for the volume, just a good balance between stability and sensitivity is good for that wave.
Many of the pros have followed this notion and adjusted their boards to have a lower rocker. US Open champ and Californian native, Brett Simpson, says of his Trestles weapon of choice: “We lowered the entry rocker because Lowers has kinda got a slope-ier face but a nice crumbly lip at top. We adjusted the tail rocker and worked extra foam inside the board towards the nose to carry speed and momentum through some of the flatter bits.”
While Trestles is a high-performance break, if small it can be quite weak in certain sections and often requires a board catered to small-waves surfing. To combat this, Hawaiian Freddy Patacchia has his board with a lower rocker and a single concave throughout the middle, with a little bit of double concave through the fins: “I feel like this is faster and it goes through sections a little better especially when you get to slow spots”
CJ Hobgood, Mick Fanning, Dusty Payne, Tiago Pires and Taylor Knox have all gone for a rounded or rounded-pin tail for their Trestles board. Knox explains: “I think rounded pins work pretty at Trestles…they seem to be pretty smooth. When I think I Trestles, I think of doing good carves and getting straight up into the lip. For me that wave really exposes technique and that’s a strong point I can use.”
Frenchman, Jeremy Flores plans to use his fin selection to best utilise the user-friendly Trestles’ walls. He’s got a PC5 FCS system with a smaller fin in the back, creating a looseness thus making it “easier to release to tail.”
Taj Burrow is using the same board he used when he won the Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast earlier this year. Interestingly, unlike others, Taj makes no board adjustments for different size conditions: “I ride this board from one-foot to six-foot no matter where I am; J-Bay, Lowers or The Gold Coast – I’ve ridden it everywhere so I’m lucky it works everywhere. Oddly, Taj has Nev from Firewire Surfboards deliberately shape-in indentations or compressions in his board where his front foot is located: “I love that feeling of having your front foot indented in your board – you know exactly where the sweet spot is … so they (Firewire) find the sweet spot of every board for me – I don’t have to do it.
Kelly Slater has got quite a vast array of tail and board variations at his disposal for the event (as seen in images at the base of article). However, I'm not sure why his shaper goes to so much trouble; you could put the man on an ironing board and he'd still carve it up out there.
- micholas
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-via Channel Islands
KELLY SLATER'S HURLEY PRO QUIVER
Above, Left to right:
1. 5'9" x 18 1/4" x 2 5/16" Semi Pro Squash tail 5 fin FCS
2. 5'9" x 18 3/8" x 2 5/16" Semi Pro Rounded Pin tail FCS 5 fin
3. 5'9" x 18 1/2" x 2 1/4" Whip Swallow Tri fin FCS
4. 5'8" x 18 1/2" x 2 1/4" Whip Black Flag Edition 5 fin FCS options ( tri or quad )
Half Moon tail concave deck
*All boards have slight concave decks
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