The Baron Project

This one's to a favourite design frst built in 2003. She's 12 feet by 27 inches wide by 2.5 inches thick, with a roundtail, an 8 inch tunnel and a bulb tipped flex fin.

The Baron was designed prior to the SUP craze, and as far as I know was one of the first longboard designs to take advantage of widths in the 27 inch range. The widest longboards at the time were no wider than 25 inches and the majority were 21 or 22 inches. Some might call it cheating to make such an incredible wave catcher, but we don't mind ! The board is a prone paddling surfboard which will roast the tail feathers of any SUP, and can reach speeds of over 30mph with ease.


Here the planshape has been marked on the paper scroll, and we are adding the lines inside and outside of the planshape, which show where the rail blocking must go


The first blocks and frames being cut and laid out, the wood grain in the blocks and the frames are set at 45 degrees to the centreline

Buoyant lift and planing lift

Low dynamic lift surfboards require higher buoyancy than high lift shapes, as they don't produce as much lift at paddle in to takeoff speed.

So, a wide board with lots of nose lift ( a high lift shape ) can get away with less buoyancy than a flat and narrow board, as the flat, narrow board needs to make up for its low planing lift with buoyant lift.

Shortboard thrusters are usually high lift shapes ( in spite of their low area ) .

Of course, a low buoyancy low dynamic lift board can still take off if he wave is steep enough, but the qualities needed for steep takeoffs are not compatible with flat rocker, narrow width, low volume, and lots of length. . . so low buoyancy AND low dynamic lift is a concept better suited to shortboards.

Alaia boards are interesting because they are extremely low in volume, and appear to be shapes which are low in dynamic lift until one realises that they gain dynamic lift by bending to increase rocker and sometimes by takeing off sideways which increases span efficiency for higher lift.

There's also fin based planing or dynamic lift which can be very significant at takeoff speed if there is enough area presented at suitable angles, so it's not just a hull issue


In the picture above we see a very successful high lift, medium to low buoyancy longboard. When this design is built with a flatter rocker ( as we have done) it needs more volume and buoyancy in order to keep the lift vs speed profile smooth and practical.

As mentioned above fin based lift can't be ignored even at paddling speed. Fin based lift is one of our favourite topics and we have been actively researching it for many years.

Fin based lift isn't always what one might think. For example, most people assume that a vertical singlefin does not produce vertical lift. This is not the case. With the FP 12 design shown below for example, we have very carefully designed the hull so that in a trim, downwards turning or sideways angled dropping in position, the massive fin is presented at an angle which produces large amounts of lift. . . . thus releasing the hull from much of the lift production burden. This effect can be visualised easily by looking at the picture below. . . there'a a huge amount of horizontal wing area and lift at the trim angle shown. In order to best present the fin at a suitable angle, a particular kind of tail planshape is required, also as shown.

This one is so alive that it shivers and vibrates when handled and in response to noise.

The design is all about ease of turning, it moves like a snake.