Fundamentally I like boards low on the water like the Vapor or dugout. Each time I got up an All Star I simply hated the volume and high position over the water.

In that case I don't think you'll  like the Bayonet nor the Downtown for that matter.
I'm like you in that regard, I like to be close to the water. I like the Bayonet simply because
of its explosive nature, other than that I don't like the feel of the board but it's just
so capable that it is hard to see beyond that.

when conditions becomes light all of a sudden it looks a lot more appealing. I would not buy it though.

As for the unlimited boards, I found that in lighter conditions on rivers and bays I usually ride,
these boards deliver the most amount of fun. You'll still have to paddle your heart out every now
and again, but once these board are up to speed, I found it's just a lot easier to keep the glide
going and catch and link way more bumps.

I don't think it's the volume that plays the dominant role but rather the length, my 16'
board is only 251 Liter and I have a lot of fun with it in these conditions.
I think ocean conditions the volume will play a bigger role as my low volume become a lot
more sticky and requires perfect timing and skills to make the board sing, much easier
to control though. But that is just my experience, I'm sure some here have different
one than mine 

Then it looks like I should try to replace my Whiplash with a RS and have both a fast flat water board and the best flatwinding, ripple-riding board.....
It looks like that would be the way to improve even more on the Vapor.

I wish we will start to see some around here and I can try one.

I wish we will start to see some around here and I can try one.

Aren't we all

Quote from: Luc Benac on June 25, 2018, 02:13:32 PM

I wish we will start to see some around here and I can try one.

Aren't we all

The clever thing that Mark Raaphorst has done with the SIC RS as far as ripple-riding or flatwinding is concerned is that the underside of the nose of the RS is flat. In other words it is a proper planing surface. Anyone who has tried ripple-riding downwind on a displacement bow board will know that the round surfaces up front really suck in terms of getting on a plane. The flat underside/rounded rails combination also occurs to a degree on the Ace too, which is why the Ace is pretty good for flat-winding too. But the narrow tail of the Ace means that as the bump creeps up behind you, the tail doesn’t get quite as lifted as on a board like the RS (or Vapor), so it’s a little bit more reluctant to jump on a plane when conditions are truly tiny. Take a look at the nose of the RS in detail. It’s quite an unusual combination of surfaces for a SUP. But when you think it through it makes perfect sense, and the board handles pretty much exactly like you’d expect it to, when you also consider the hard rails at the tail and the high volume tail as well. Big tail to get the board tipping forward early, flat surface on the nose to help it plane at the earliest possible opportunity = take-off on the lightest of DW conditions.

But, as I say, that big butt becomes its Achilles heel when conditions get bigger because in combination with the fairly flat rocker it means a lot of footwork is required to prevent pearling and also to be in the right spot for take-off. So for proper downwinding there are easier boards available.

One upside of that big volume butt/hard rails at tail though is that it surfs quite nicely from the tail. So if you are coming into shore on your DWer and there are waves inshore, you’ll be fine - just get your back foot over the finbox and away you go, easy-peasy lemon squeezy.

I suspect that one reason (in addition to the flex, and the lack of hard rails for water release) why inflatables tend to suck for early planing downwinding is because the dimpled material they are made of does not provide a *really* flat surface for planing. It kinda sticks to the water. If you want to plane (or semi-plane or surge or whatever it is called when a board gets carried along with a bump - please let’s not resurrect that “is-it-or-isn’t-it-planing” interminable argument) you kinda need the JL M14 type approach of flat planing bottom and hard edges up front (hard rails on the nose were first seen on a SUP on the Mk1 Naish Glide 12)  but as my custom 16 shows (and the Bullet, to a degree) actually you don’t have to go quite so crazy with the hardness of the rails at the nose of the board - as long as the bottom is fairly flat there you can have fairly rounded rails up front and still get early planing - and so we are back to the RS again.

For these reasons, if you started to design from scratch a board specifically for the very lightest of downbreezing conditions, I think you’d probably end up with something that looks pretty much like the RS.

Yeah, that’s a very good point, Burchas.

After Seychelle’s post-race comments in Bilbao, where she said that although she had an advantage over Olivia Piana in the rough sections (when Olivia actually fell and lost quite a lot of ground), who was on a 21, she felt the disadvantage of having a 23” wide board at the end in the flats, I expect we will see a 21” wide RS soon.

My local retailer said that the 26” wide one is still the biggest seller, though. It just shows how the elite racers and the general public are diverging, I guess.

Perhaps the extra rocker also helps maintain the waterline with a reduced volume? If you keep everything the same for a given weight but reduce width and therefore volume, the board is going to sit differently in the water, and not all the elites are complete flyweights.

get a clog Luc Benac anything around 25" & 26"