An Evolutionary Snapshot

Posted in: Out Of The Box

I have been pulling out the Baby Bat when the points have been almost not worth surfing. The Mini Bat evolved from the Mini Simmons which was a very flat, wide arsed, rolled bottom, high railed ancient twin fin. Some guys loved them but to be honest I thought they were limiting. My prime argument was the tail width and the lack of drive through turns. I morphed this board into the Baby Bat but kept a few key design features. The s deck was big in the earlier years because there was not much tail rocker so if you wanted a tapered profile into the tail the deck line had to come down rather than the bottom curve coming up as it does these days. Another feature deserving was the rolled bottom and high forgiving rails which were a necessity in the day because the rockers were so flat and prone to catch on the rail through some types of turns. I have always said that super wide boards lack rail to rail control if concaved too much, and the forgiving nature of the Baby Bat was testament to that.
I surfed this board and really got to like for a short board, how easy it paddled in and how fast it would go because of its flatter rocker. Nonetheless I still struggled with the super width of 22 inches even though it had heaps of roll in the deck and with the bottom rolled as well the rails were quite thin and easy to immerse. I did not want to give up an ounce of paddle but needed to reduce the width so I opted to use the new fused pellet polystyrene as a core rather than PU in the hope to buy back some float. The next thing I did was replace the bat tail with my favoured round tail template effectively reducing the surface area on the very tail of the board hoping that would deliver me more drive and vert. The quad set up with an option for a centre keel was the fin choice I went for and a wee more flexibility was achieved also with the Power Base boxes.
Since this board retained the very flat rocker of the Mini Simmons I thought a stringer less blank with some subtle carbon reinforcement might add a little more life to such a flat curve. The bottom has a nose to tail carbon strip and the deck has two diagonal strips meeting just forward of centre. In addition the board is glassed with the diagonal BDX weave adding even more life and tensile strength to a board without a backbone.

I have so far surfed it in small beach breaks but have not yet got a sense of how it really goes but I did not lose any paddle so that is one prediction I got right. I can feel the similarities I kept from the Baby Bat but immediately felt that I could hold the tail down longer and drive this thing. Cannot wait until I can launch it on the points. Will keep you posted.