Starting to understand why boards are shaped the way they are and what makes them perform the way they do. I have a board that I feel quite confident on steep takeoffs with as it picks up a lot of speed while still being stable and it has really good speed out of a bottom turn and is quite manoeverable.

Have been told that is because it has some rocker in the tail, when I checked it out, bugger me there is a bit of rocker. It made sense.

This morning I took out the bargain board I mentioned on a previous thread. This board has a flat tail and quite rolled rails. What a pain in the ass! I have surfed it in fat waves before and it felt okay but it is definately no beach break board. I had very little speed on the turns, it was actually difficult to turn on the steeper ones I took. As I have been told my board was designed for mushy point break type of surf now I now for sure!

I guess you can read everything you want on shaping a board but feeling the difference under your feet is unbelievable and you never forget that.

No it has a thruster set up, I should have mentioned that the F/B also has a bit more nose rocker as well but basically learnt that this other board does not perform anywhere near as well on steep waves as the F/B.

Really starting to understand why the F/B design is such a good one.

Horses for courses I guess but I like flatter boards or a long entry rocker better because they get up and go without pushing water and noseride better too. I nice bit of tail kick livens a board up though and thin rails.
I had a mate come down last weekend who only rides shortboards but it was pretty small so I gave him my 7'6 funboard to ride. He was a bit skeptical about how it would go and bought his own board so he could get out and swap over if he wanted to and I'd been telling him that I thought he would like it. He might as well have left his shortboard at home because he had a ball on it and said he probably caught double the amount of waves than he would have on his shortie. It was this one.

The McTavish Original is a great beast for the hollower beach breaks.