Surfladle

 

You asked for some feedback on the Firewave – it was a good day for testing it today!  I was on my new Tushingham 5.0, and a much older Naish 4.5 – probably slightly overpowered.

 

It’s clear to me that I am going to have to up my game a bit to get the best out of this board – it feels like a step up.

 

The first thing is that it feels small and manoeuvrable – the extra volume just isn’t noticeable to me anyway, it didn’t seem to be feel out of control when it was overpowered, and boy was it fast.  I was expecting it to be slower than what I am was used to but it wasn’t. The main thing that was different for me, and I think this is all about my poor sailing style, is that I needed to use my front foot much more to keep it on track.  I think I have got into a bad habit of sailing all my boards on the fin.

As expected, gybing was smooth and in fact very forgiving – I had the feeling that I could surf over a long/wide gybe and carve the turns when I wanted to.  Turning on the waves seemed easy too.  (Modest) jumping was no problem, although I need to control it a bit more in the air (see attached pic). It feels a little heavier to carry to the water than my previous board, but that seems to have no effect on getting planing. I also had no problem keeping up to windward, although I could feel the fins slipping a bit and then catching again – as I said before I think that was because I was sailing it on the back foot too much, or perhaps just too close to the wind.  This stopped when I used my front foot more.

 

So all in all, I am really pleased with the Firewave and looking forward to upping my game with it.  Thanks for introducing me to it.

 

Cheers

 

Miles

 

p.s. The other one was making it’s debut today, I think he* was pleased as well.

* He is Mick Smith..will post his thoughts as soon as I have them!