What has Kelly been up to this past week? He’s been busy. He revisited Todos Santos for the first time in 18 years and rode a brand new 5′6” in well overhead conditions. He scored a ten second barrel on a 5′6” MTF at Rincon.
The last few days he’s been in the CI Factory shaping room experimenting with concave decks with beveled rails on the underside– similar to what Gerr used to mess around with. Anyway, it seems like everything Kelly is thinking that could be worth a try or anything that’s been locked away in his vault pours out when he gets in the shaping room and collaborates.
Posted by Jason Miller.
Filed under Channel Islands Experiments, Kelly Slater, Team
Posted on Thu, 03 December 2009 at 3:48 pm
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Why don’t any designers use a Phazer bottom? Seems that in theory it would help. It would also look pretty sweet.
-Ben
Phazer
A type of surfboard design with golfball-like dimples on the bottom, introduced by the Willis brothers Milton and Michael Willis on the north shore of Oahu in the early ’80s.
The dimples are intended to create air pockets underneath the board, which lessen water drag to make the surfboard faster. The design went on to set speed records in the wind board world and influenced wake board and boogie board bottom designs.
03 Dec 09 at 6:50 pm #hey CI thanks again for the inside look. kelly as so much knowledge from years of surfing its pretty neat to see his brain at work with these outrageous surfboard designs now . And for letting us see it before even the mags get shots is rad too. wonder if this one will work?
03 Dec 09 at 8:51 pm #nice to see all these new boards wish that kelly makes a good result at pipe
04 Dec 09 at 12:21 pm #Can you pot some more pics/info on what he was riding at Todos Santos? Fins, dimensions, etc. Just curious since the board seems so small for that day.
Ryan
04 Dec 09 at 4:08 pm #I will get a picture up this week of kellys new quiver and the one he rode at todos which is basically his wizard sleeve model with a twinfinner style nose is in there . The narrowed up back half on this board really lets him hold on bigger waves and the wider foward aspect and volume allow him to get in early , but im sure it wasa still a bit small for those waves.
05 Dec 09 at 12:09 pm #Hey ben , ya I remember riding one of those when i was younger .Im sure over the years kelly has ridden one somewhere and the theory is stewing in his mind design vault.to be experimented with sometime soon. I will mention it to him and he may try it on one in the futer and you will know you had a hand in pointing him in another new direction . I should say an older one revisited. Thanks
05 Dec 09 at 12:25 pm #To Ben Little: Regarding your comment on Phazer Designs.
It’s simple physics. A phazer design would slow a board a down. The fastest way for water to get from one end of the board to the other is a straight line, along the bottom surface of the board. Creating dimples would not only break up the flow of water, but it creates a longer nose-tail run for the water to follow along the bottom of the board. Morey Boogie also tried this idea on their boogies in the 80’s. See Morey Mach 8tx and Mach SCS which both had dimpled bottoms. They ditched the idea in favor of a solid bottom after pros complained that the boards were actually slower.
06 Dec 09 at 10:35 am #Kelly was riding the board to the far right (5-11 deep six with a twinnfinner nose , in the photo ,this morning at pipe . We are remaking him one tomorrow as he broke it towards the end of the session , but he seemed very stoked on it. Also watched him rip that concave bottom double stringer 5-6 quad that julian rode in the slow moe surfline feature, at haliewa tonight, can u say “carving three sixty”
06 Dec 09 at 8:59 pm #Im tripping out on that deck of that board ,I guess the center being higher is for his arch and you can see where his back heel would be as well as the front part of his foot .Thats pretty cool probably took a long time to shape
06 Dec 09 at 9:05 pm #Asymmetrical boards kind of look like a half-paralyzed face, but I wager we’ll all have something like that in about 10 years…maybe?
07 Dec 09 at 4:13 pm #whats with the brownish foam?? is it just my computer or is it some new eps or something?
13 Dec 09 at 1:16 am #anyone know what fins setup Kelly is using on his quad?
14 Dec 09 at 11:24 am #I originally thought it was biofoam, but i think its just the lighting, look at the top photo, the boards look white.
02 Jan 10 at 1:31 pm #I love this great Kelly Slater a lot for his humility, and met him once when he visited taghazout in morocco,thanks for cool post.
18 Jan 10 at 2:39 am #I see his boards and think, the glasser has to hate him! Pretty different stuff but I bet he could ride a 2″ x 6″ better then the rest of us too.
21 Jan 10 at 10:44 am #I do own a 7′10″ Willis Bro.s Phazer thruster since 1991. It does ride very well and I do not find that the “dimples” slow it down compared to my other guns, single fins (70’s 7′4″ Diffenderfer, 8′2″ Brewer) or thrusters (early 00’s Brewers, 7′2″, 8′2″ and 9′0″ and several Xanadu from 7′2″ to 10′2″). This Phazer is a great board that has handled many different kinds of waves well.
25 Jan 10 at 5:41 pm #To Miguel regarding dimple bottoms:
01 Feb 10 at 1:03 am #You are right that dimples can slow a board down by increasing the length of laminar flow, but under certain conditions. The idea theory the Willis Bros hold stands true if the dimples join the hull at sharp edges and if the dimples are not too shallow or large in circumference. With a sharp edge lining the dimple, water will have a much harder time flowing over the curved dimple, just as a hard rail will release water, and at relatively high speeds for surf craft, water will be relatively unable to flow over the curve, decreasing the amount of water in contact with the surface of the hull. The circumference and depth come into play also in keeping the water from adhering to the dimple by keeping the angle of attack of the dimple high. I have not seen Morey’s designs but based on the feedback you said they received I’d be willing to bet that the edges of the dimples were rounded, as I have ridden relatively identical boards, one of which had the “Phazer” bottom, and it did in fact increase speed. In addition, Morey is still producing boards with dimple bottoms. I would be interested to hear back, as this bottom can be quite controversial, and I would like to gain more insight into others interactions with it.
Have anyone tried making a board whit a bottom similar to the sharkskin or the fastskin suits the Olympic swimmers us. This would not only reduce drag but could also help directing the water flow and thereby really change how surfboards are being shaped when it comes to concaves etc.
02 Feb 10 at 7:34 am #Hi All, I used to shape speed world record windsurfing boards back in the 90’s with similar ideas on the deck. The concave and heal dents really improve control and “foot feeling” at higher speeds. Nice one Kelly!
17 Feb 10 at 2:55 pm #