Heath Joske @ J-Bay

gorgeous lines he draws...and what an epic canvas to do it on. wowsers.

That is great surfing.

Holy crap.

zzzz. If he was on a quad he would actually carry speed through the turns. Imagine that! Speed through turns rather than flat pivot bog repeat. Good surfing, but study up a little before you gush.

So we need to study to decide whether we like how someone surfs? Go back to sleep.

Imagine saying that same crap about, say a snowboarder...'decent carves but he really needs to ride a Burton Whogivesashit, if he had a Burton Whogivesashit he'd be killing it.

If you don't know about the Burton Whogivesashit, you should really study up.

Hey Barn, eat a dick.

Damn that's nice.

I too noticed the "bog" and that was prior to reading the comments. As a quad guy myself I buy into barnswarms observation.

Yeah I'm with KOK and barnswarm. This guy looks uncomfortable and tentative on that board. Obviously he's ripping nonetheless, but I don't think whatever he's riding is doing him any favors.

While I won't be so arrogant as to claim what kind of board he SHOULD be riding, I kind of see @BarnS point. Some of the turn recoveries do seem a little stiff...usually a telltale sign of a retro style board with a deeper center fin. Since we can't see the fin setup we'll never know. Definitely some great surfing but for my money the star of this vid is the wave..as @goingleft stated, "an epic canvas".

barnworm- do you surf?

This web site has really bottomed-out when "eat a dick" gets thumbed-up to best comment. What's next, "your mother wears combat boots?". Sheesh, cmon peeps.

he picks good lines.def old school new school well blended. id rather watch that than some hyper-kinetic shredder kicking and thrashing all over the wave. oh yeah almost forgot, youre all a bunch a bitches.

>So we need to study to decide whether we like how someone surfs?

This is really just about the weirdest thing I've ever read on this blog. Of *course* we care about how people surf. It's a surfing website. I mean, what's the point of posting the video in the first place if we don't care? Surf style is interesting. The performance of different surfboards is interesting.

There's tons of stuff to talk about in this video. So many awkward but kind of cool single-finny turns, the way his bottom turn goes wonky at :32, the way he can't really commit to the carve at 2:28, and so on. It immediately makes me think of the way my frustrating-but-kinda-awesome bonzer board rides, and it makes me wonder what's up with the board he's riding. Why do his top turns look like MP in 1977, as seen here? (Edit: and is that good or bad? In a way, it's pretty killer, but it sort of sacrifices performance for a certain idea of style.)

I wish I was good enough to notice a flat pivot bog.

I haven't studied much, but it looks pretty nice to me. Serious question: what would he get out of the quad set up that people aren't seeing here?

ive ridden boards that were too thin, and it resembled that 'bog' all you bro's are talking about.
If you just ride Channel Islands, these problems don't exist ;)

btw, today....###### of the beach, top 'o' the Cliff House, by the "Giant Camera", there will be a pissing contest. Judges will be rating your distance, spray to width , over-all 'rainbow' arch, and length of time. All this, simultaneously from the height of 250 feet above sea level.
Please show up, check in, sign the waiver, and have fun. May the best dick win.

I'm going quad balls on it, @Unfocused. It really helps with the propulsion to arc ratio.

don't get bogged.

Funny, I was thinking how smoothly he was connecting all his turns. Mostly s-turn carves, not whitewater rebounds. A quad may have helped with drive out of the turns but I think the main problem (if one even exists) was that the board was so short. Super short means hyper mobile but less drive unless it has a really wide tail like a mini-simmons. Pretty nice surfing though no matter how you look at it.

I watched a few highlight reels of the contest, and I was thinking the entire time that most guys were on boards that looked a little short on foam for those waves. Heath brought some great style for a contest though.

If you pause at :41 & at :59 you can clearly see the outer fin of what I would fathom to be a good old thruster configuration. Personally I think it is his squash tail that's the source of his "bogging" j/k ;-) Blame the tools, that's what I say...

probably just too fat for that board!

perhaps his style is a bit awkward. hi-speed means less control no matter what you ride, generally. his lines are mostly clean and do look back in time. best in slow-mo. feral, mate. rides to a feeling.

Honestly I think the only problem here is that we are not getting waves like this heh :)

I think I saw the heat during which a few of these waves were shot. Did he advance? I'm pretty sure that he got bumped. That's the part of the story that gets lost: here's a guy with some distinctive style, beautiful lines... who gets bumped-off... Where's the ride that beat his? Oh yeah... it was parko.

++Piss- we need somma dat.

++Barny- Your negativity is tedious to me, but I learned something from what you pointed out there. There's a moment of stall or pivot with some of those turns. Might be what I like about it.

My goodness Stokers! Who would have thought my late night ramblings would have started such a fire! My point is this: Quads tend to carry a lot more speed all the way through a turn. They also surf on rail, as opposed to flat on the wave face. 99% of the touring pros ride thrusters because they are very predictable, and forgiving. With a background in snowboarding (carving, not skidding from jump to jump) and a few decades of surfing all types of boards behind me, I find quads incredibly fast and fun to carve turns on. Joske rips! That is a given, but next time you watch guys on thrusters, notice how thee board tends to stay flat through a turn as opposed to up on rail. They tend to pivot and bog. (Notable exception, Dane Reynolds, but he rides pretty wide tails on his boards that generate a lot of speed.) Oh, and the 1% of touring pros who don't exclusively ride quads? Kelly Slater. He might know a little about surfing and has been riding quads a lot lately. Check out his waves from the Fiji contest this year for a great example of quad carve and speed.

I know some of you hate me, but that's just cause I joke around to take the piss out of you guys a little bit. In reality, I am just interested in boards and surfing, and like full speed, on rail surfing.

KookReport!!!! Ha ha, if you can't laugh at yourself then you are bound to be miserable.

Cheers!

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1063/1046604679_87e3e0198b_z.jpg?zz=1

I don't hate you Barns. Laughing is good. plus, i like a little contro. Stokes these fires up around here. Plus, it's not like the surf is good. We all going a little shit crazy if you ask me-

Prost

And to agree with Barns- Slater, Reynolds....they ride Channel Islands.
Like i said, if you just ride these boards, there won't be these problems ;)
There's a reason why the best pro's in the world ride em.

One big reason the pros ride thrusters in contests is that they throw way more spray, and lots of spray looks good from the judge's tower.

KS demonstrated the speed of quads during the FiJi contest. the control, length of line and snap showed, i thought, that the right board for those conditions was the KS quad. not all quads are created equal. pros have much at stake and will not move much beyond the pack - KS is able to move outside of it all and will risk a quad in comp. i think his quad was supreme. thrusters looked old fashioned by comparison. KS not withstanding.

Barn, I particularly like this point: "next time you watch guys on thrusters, notice how thee board tends to stay flat through a turn as opposed to up on rail. They tend to pivot and bog. (Notable exception, Dane Reynolds)." Now, go watch video of Occy, Curren, AI, Parko, Slater, Bobby Martinez, or any top level rail surfer and tell me the board is not on a rail through turns.

Frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. Or if you do, you have a hell of a time trying to articulate it.