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North Pro Session Surf chop

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vitoshop
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North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby vitoshop » Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:35 am

I'm wanting to transition to a strapless surfboard and someone recommended a 2017 North Pro Session.
Our conditions are more chop than waves. Will a Pro Session be good for chop or does anyone
have other suggestions? I've been playing with a old 5'6" fish style surfboard which is fine in flat
conditions but pretty rough in chop. I'm female 5'5" 120 lbs/54kg, I don't have access to try different
boards and there areso many choices I don't even know where to begin. Would appreciate any input on the North
and/or other suggestions geared for chop.

Thanks in advance.

sarc
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Re: North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby sarc » Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:37 am

Why would you want to go strapless in choppy water?

NorCalNomad
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Re: North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby NorCalNomad » Thu Apr 19, 2018 3:25 am

vitoshop wrote:
Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:35 am
I'm wanting to transition to a strapless surfboard and someone recommended a 2017 North Pro Session.
Our conditions are more chop than waves. Will a Pro Session be good for chop or does anyone
have other suggestions? I've been playing with a old 5'6" fish style surfboard which is fine in flat
conditions but pretty rough in chop. I'm female 5'5" 120 lbs/54kg, I don't have access to try different
boards and there areso many choices I don't even know where to begin. Would appreciate any input on the North
and/or other suggestions geared for chop.

Thanks in advance.
1. Good choice, strapless is the way to go on surfboards, even in chop.

2. Holy crap, no wonder it was rough, you could have almost paddle surfed that chop if you're 5'5"/120lbs on a 5'6" fish. Having all the extra float under your feet made the board just want to ride on top of all the chop and not cut through it. Also because you have a narrower stance you had way more foam (unweighted) in front of your front foot making it want to lever up more as you went over chop.

The 2017 Pro Session doesn't get small enough for you (for it to be a good choice). If you look at volume calculators (for kiting) you should be in the 20L or less range. For volume calcs for ability level/ fitness level have it as high as you can go since you have the kite pulling you. Honestly at your weight range you could probably even get away with normal surfboard glassing on a grom sized model until you start strapless jumping. Which might be a good option since you're going to have a much harder time finding a good kite surfboard for your weight. Or work with a local shaper to help build you a custom small board.

The smallest sized tomos (vanguard, vader, evo) would be good (4'10" I think is the smallest for the Evo, and Vader). And even at that size you could still regularly surf them (I paddle surf a 5'1" Evo and I'm 155ish). There are a few women around your size at some of the spots who use one of the Tomo's and dig them.

Or just find the smallest short board you can on craigslist and use that until you break it.

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Re: North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby Matteo V » Sat Apr 21, 2018 7:58 pm

vitoshop wrote:
Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:35 am
Will a Pro Session be good for chop or does anyone have other suggestions?
This is a very complicated issue, and I am just going to complicate it more for you. Best bet is to buy a board and just work with it until you make it work. So you may want to stop reading here.

I do not like thrusters strapped in chop. They can be made to work but have a a different focus from a quad. On a thruster, the direction of travel is, at any point in time, along the center line of the board. This may be a seemingly simple statement, but when the nose (direction the board is pointing) is bouncing around everywhere, so will you. To control and minimize a "zig-zag" course induced by chop, you focus on guiding your nose in a straight line in the chop. When you get good at this with a thruster, you almost don't use the straps anymore for straight line riding. They are there when you jump, or if you hit some nasty chop that you have no hope of controlling the nose of the board in, but you are much more gentle on the board when under control in chop than straps allow you to be. And yanking a board around by the straps on a thruster at this point is not beneficial to you. So your choice of a Pro Session strapless may be a good one - unless you are coming from a quad. In which case, you will need to do some serious learning on how a thruster rides differently than a quad.

A quad's direction of travel is not tied to the center-line of the board. In fact, going in the same direction as the center line of the board is the most unstable direction a quad can be forced to go. A quad "naturally" crabs a bit to the side. Usually the nose points a little upwind of the line you are traveling on. The benefit of a quad is that you have a wide range of how far OFF of the line of travel you can point the board. This means that the nose can bounce around lots WITHOUT you bouncing around with it. So when you get into chop with a quad, you let it bounce around, but try to keep (average) pressure on the fins or rail (if you have an actual hard rail or are going fast enough to combine edging with fin pressure) and you go in a straight line. That is the main difference in focus/skill set, and this is where straps make sense and give much more performance than strapless.

This realization took me lots of time and testing - riding similar or the same board, quad and thruster, back to back inside of multiple sessions. Thus there is a chance my academic explanation may be of no help to you. Pretty much all of kiting is "feel" and you can't get "feel" from words without thinking about these concepts while riding. Even then, you may be applying "suggestion" inside of that instinctual development.

vitoshop wrote:
Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:35 am
I've been playing with a old 5'6" fish style surfboard which is fine in flat
conditions but pretty rough in chop.
Again, if the fish is a quad (likely is), your problem in chop may be due to sheer size of the board. Try a similar shape (hard to find a narrow fish) in a smaller tail width/overall width.


And lastly, if you did read all of that, just buy a board and work through the challenges it presents you at first. You need time on any board to build a skill set for that board, and then eventually you will be able to see if that board is working for you. In your specific case where you lack access to demo boards, that fact may actually be of benefit to you. Disliking a board at first ride is usually only an indication it CAN operate outside of your current skill set.

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Re: North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby TomW » Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:20 pm

I'm 5-8 and 75-80 kg. I ride in chop and windwaves, and make my own boards after riding slingshot celeritas and space pickle for 3 years.
My favourite board is a Tomo Evo typ shape 4-10 x 18 3/4" with 13 liters volume. It has concave deck and is thin in the middle with quad concave bottom.
Quads work good for me in chop. Pointy nose boards are not as good in chop.
If I made a board for you it would be Evo outline, 4-6 and 18 wide. Probably 11 liters.
Kite Surfboards are made too large for us that don't have waves like Hawaii.
It's going to be difficult to get a decent board for your size without going custom.

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Re: North Pro Session Surf chop

Postby TomW » Sat Apr 21, 2018 10:45 pm



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