Designing post modern olo boards which work.

With shapes like  the displacement tailed pintails for example, the area and volume is drawn out into a longer board with a finer tail. Because the tail can sink the board behaves like a shorter board when required and yet still has the length of rail when it is wanted.

Generally speaking boards which are designed purely as planing craft emphasise short wide tailed hulls, with the planing are packed into a shape which is as close to a 3:1rectangle as possible while still allowing control. Displacement hulls on the other hand try to distribute volume over as long a length as possible. My pintailed boards are hybrid planing/displacement hulls and thus they are based on a different set of principles. I try to get as much width and length as possible with the minimum of thickness and area.

Regarding very long boards, my designs allow great length while maintaining good control, other designs don't alllow this, so in a sense I'm doing it because I can... but there are well known advantages to a very long board  i.e. paddling wave catching and section making ability. The reason ( or one of them) why very long boards are not built often by other shapers is that they are stuck in the planing hull theory mode and such boards in long lengths become uncontrollable. Pure displacement hull boards like the ancient olo are also very difficult to control. as Tom Wegener and others  have found out, to their apparent delight

. I've developed a good perhaps even perfect formula and this allows greater freedom regarding length, as well as  greater joy in the water.