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learn to strap your surfboard

Part 5

A miracle is just exactly what has transpired. I am now staring dumbfounded at the surf racks on the roof of my car. In complete and utter astonishment I stand. Once again, it plays out in my mind; develop the habit and strap your surfboard or else the consequences could be absolutely disastrous! This is just not right? I am literally standing and starring eye level and looking at the luscious curves of my lovely surfboard with not even one single strap secured safely around my precious. The very same surfboard that my pessimistic mind had already dismissed as a great and tragic loss. It’s funny what a negative mind can do to you, because when I initially got out of the car to look for my board, the first place I looked was at the roof of my car. My mind was so convinced that there was no plausible way in the world that my surfboard could survive ridding on the roof of my car, without one single strap holding her down, going at the high levels of speeds we were going at (45-63mph), passing lengthy amounts of cars with the excessive pedal to the metal mentality, and last but not least, whipping high velocity U-turns in quest to commute back to the near 7 miles strip of road way where we had just driven from. Thus making the high speed, round trip journey with an unstrapped projectile of a surfboard barely clinging to the roof of a car at roughly around 14 miles total. The other extremely interesting tidbit worth noting, is that there wasn’t a lick of wax on the board. Not one smudge or steak. I had stripped the board down of all its funk in anticipation of giving it back to my shaper, so he didn’t have to bother cleaning it before re-sale. The only wax remotely present, was the light build up on the racks that had minimally accumulated from prior trips and stacks.

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For quite some time, this moment really baffled me. So if you could imagine, I really analyzed the heck out of this incident and its’ miraculous outcome. I came to a conclusion that positioning is everything. As I rehearsed over and over in my head what had just transpired, it had finally dawned on me that the one thing that was remarkably different from any other time I had placed my surfboards on the roof of an automobile (other then not having a single strap fastened obviously), was the positioning of having the nose of my surfboard pointing forward, and having its deck facing down. Prior to this experience, I had only placed my surfboards with fins facing first and the deck facing down. I had always thought it safer that way, for the sure fact that when you strap your board down with your fins facing the hood of your vehicle, you in return have the peace of mind that the straps generally lock your board down better by being able to lock down in-between your fin cluster. When you learn to strap your surfboard the original way I learned, you know very well that if you go screeching on your breaks your boards are extremely locked in and you can assure yourself that, they ain’t going no where. I still use this original technique in certain circumstances to this day. Especially if I have a stack of longboards or SUP’s to deal with. When you have multiple boards stacked in this size range, no matter how you place them, when you are placing multiple boards of this magnitude on the roof of your car, you’re gonna lose the arrow dynamics, and for some reason, long boards and SUP’s just fit better tail first on your automobile. This means having your tails and fins facing towards the hood of your vehicle. Keep in mind that in both techniques, you always have the decks of your surfboards facing down. Now as far as regular shaped short boards and guns are concerned, I am quite convinced now, that it is both safer and more arrow dynamic and in return, more cost efficient, to stack your surf boards with the noses facing forward.

(to be continued)….
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