surf shoes

[RossC]

Following the advice given in the recent "suggestions for a surf kayak" thread, I've just bought on old surf shoe type thing for £30 out of the paper. From speaking to someone in the know it appears to be a "Trilon weaver" circa late seventies.

Does anyone know anything about this design or how it paddles. Looking at the surf forecast for this weekend it may be a while before I get in the surf with it.

[Whitey4567]

I currently paddle a Mega Prowler (surf shoe type design)
and a liquid logic session.

Do you have any photos of the Trilon?

as most surf shoes are similar (ish) you can expect the following :-

Compared to the playboat you should find a surf shoe will be much quicker to pick up the wave, the prowler certainly has very hard rails which then cut back towards the cockpit. This makes carving a dream (especially with the fins in although they are by no means essential to get serious carving ability) but this does mean it's rather 'spanky' if you drop your edges even a mite to soon :)

It also has a large amount of nose rocker allowing for almost suicidal take offs.

hope this helps, let us know how you got on with it.

[RossC]

I don't have any photos yet. It is a bit over 3m long, the cockpit is more towards the stern than the bow, it has a definite planing hull with limited rocker, no fins, the stern has a swallow tail effect - a sharp 6" V cut out, and finally it has a very small cockpit so I haven't managed to get hold of a deck that fits it :(

I'll try to get some photos and let you know more when I finally get it out in the surf.

[dusty]

Paddled one a bit back in the 70s.

The Weaver is quite a competent shoe, does most things well, quite quick to paddle out and no bad habits.
I sometimes found the rail released on very fast bottom turns, but that's just a case of keeping it edged properly. They perform well on small waves and take off a lot earlier than a playboat.
You're going to have great fun, especially in summer surf.

Times have changed as have surfing manoeuvers, styles were more flowing and carving when the boat was designed. It'll be interesting to hear how it handles playboat moves.

Shoes always were and always will be good, it's just not cool to call them shoes now.

[Jim]

Don't know if it was the same thing but a friend used to have a shoe that fitted your description well. Never surfed it much but it was interesting on the river - used to backloop very easily and then fill with water and sit on the stern forever!

The swallowtail on the shoe is instead of fins, the few times I surfed it it did seem to grip pretty well so the swallowtail probably works. OTOH the boat I was comparing against was a Corsica S - one of the best surfing general purpose boats of it's time on account of it almost having rails - so it was bound to feel pretty good!

JIM

[dusty]

I never found the swallowtail made any difference.
The shape came from surfboards where the idea was that it gave you the rail grip of a pintail with the wider stern needed on a short board.
In practice the tail profile is not that important and swallows have disappeared from the board world.