I did a south side downwinder this morning, from near the canoe beach (Suda’s store) to the Four Season’s beach on Bill Foote’s “Gumby” board. What a wild and weird ride that is. The board is moderately fast paddling it–probably similar to a Starboard 12’6″ for glide. But get some swells and it’s suddenly transformed. I was just doing this run to condition myself for the Malko race tomorrow, but it turned into a sprint with heavy winds blowing somewhat offshore. In fact i screwed up and got a little far out and was kind of headed off to Japan. But I realized it soon enough and didn’t have to battle headwinds, just drew a bead on the Kehei boat launch and with typical cross-wind griping I hit the bay in front of the four seasons–two miles further down the coast.
Give the off angle I had to take to the wind, the times were fairly good. You can see very clearly in the GPS graph–fell three times, caught a zillion short runners. This board won’t catch a runner and stay planted in it easily, as the Penetrator does. Instead it catches four short runs in the same period. the result is not quite as fast, but pretty close. I think this shows off the difference in a planing vs displacement hull in a primitive and inconclusive way. I hope we’ll be able to be a little more conclusive in the showcase, which is coming up fast.
