Hartichoke

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The Hartichoke is a board that deals with the priorities of intermediate surfing in less than perfect waves whilst maintaining the performance aspects for those wanting to be a better surfer. We all want to rip and shred like the pros but some of us need to paddle in quicker, go faster through flat sections and have stability under foot before we can try slamming the fins out the back or busting out a man hack. We instantly ran the 5 fin set up on this board purely for the fun and variation in different conditions, my personal favourite was with the thruster but the team really liked the quad for crumbly waves… the choice is yours! enjoy.

First off, this board has plenty of volume running from nose to tail. The length can therefore be reduced dramatically to put you above the balance point and allow easier control of the whole board (something that all surfers have found helps their progressive surfing at any level), with the single running through the nose and the double through the centre and out through the fins this boards sits nice and high in the water which gives you great float and lift (and therefore speed) in all waves.

The outline is full in the nose running to a straighter rail and slightly pulled in tail with a small bumped hip, which then falls round into a wide round tail, this combination in plan shape gives you stability up front which means pumping for sections becomes a lot easier as do floaters and airs on landings.

The straight rail means you have drive off the front foot and the slight bump hip pulls in that tail just enough to give you some pivot and hold in the tail to push your turns on rail. The rockers are quite flat, bit of kick in the tail but nothing dramatic, just enough to offer the best balance between hold, speed and control which means you can really work on where your limits are in a variety of different surf.

The deck line is very full with a fairly flat deck which comes down into a very boxy shortboard rail. This keeps the volume packed in there and you sitting right on top of the water until you whack it on rail and let the rail carve through the face of the wave. such a sick feeling on this board as it is so smooth!