Yeah, you know I can barely ride on this huge board, but I understand what you are saying based on RJ. We did the polar bear event and that is a great event when you hand out so MANY types of boards and hear people's feedback. And several liked the soulcraft. And Jeff Wahlers had been asking us to try them. So we take home the 4.6 Jetty and then get a chance to play and we go out to do our LONGWAKE podcast. We blew a pump on the goofy side and dropped our extra tsunami in the water, bad day. But RJ was riding the Jetty backside. He said, "Dad, this board is too small for me, but I love it. There is something about it." So we decided we would try another some other time.
This year we finally made our way out to CMS (3 hours away) and we took one off the rack. (Jeff said we could, I swear) it was LIGHT, I mean Flyboy light which really surprised me. I thought, this is going to be fun, but its going to break, but we took it anyway. RJ loved it, he was smiling his entire run, and I could tell it was very fast down the line. On like the second day, the board buckled. Also, we thought it could use a bit more nose rocker to keep from shoveling. So we call Jeff and tell him. Tell him we are sorry and we probably won't get to ride this at the NWOpen. He says, "ship it to me and I will fix it and make it a demo board, what color do you want for the NWOpen board". RJ was stoked, Jeff said that he is getting used to the fact that wake surfers hammer their boards much more than ocean surfers. So he adjusts the rocker for us, and gets a board to us for the NWOpen. RJ didn't do too well, had no time to practice, but we are going out today to rip it up. Jeff is a great guy, we support several board companies, and Soulcraft is def in that list.
Now the new board, just as light, maybe a tad heavier, but felt just as light to my touch. Jeff put carbon fiber stringers in it, and did some other voodoo magic shaper sh*t. ;-) Jeff should tell you what he did, he told me, but I have no clue. If it was about computers or software, I would have been on that, but it went right over my head. RJ said the board felt much stronger, very solid. The nose rocker also very much helped.
Looking at your pics, I notice the fins, RJ got 415s with the Jetty, and we noticed it was a bit slow on his bottom turns. We swapped out to the 3-2-1s and it made a big difference. I could tell the difference from my POV in the boat. So you may want to give that a shot, it may just be RJs style.
RJ is going to also be riding a Shredstixx Custom Elevation that is coming his way. He tried one at the West Coast Open, and loved it. He has tried them before without much fan fair, but I think they were too short for him. This time he tried Alec Wood's SS and took off. I wasn't on the boat, but everyone came off and told me how great he did. I looked at the pics and agreed.
Here is a pic of RJ on the Jetty and HT traction:
And him on Alec's board:
There are 2 other boards we have seen and want to get RJ on to check them out.
1. The new updated Walker Project Signature Model. The new version is supposed to be a big update. I think RJ is going to try to ride a 4.9. We already love the WSM, so that should be fun.
2. Inland was showing us their new sweet spot pro model, it has this cool layer/channel on the bottom that Mark was explaining to me. He would probably need to explain, because I don't want to botch the details, but it looked and sounded really cool.