Description

Luke Young Shortboard Xenon

Luke Young Shortboards new small wave board for summer, introducing the Xenon!

SPECIFICATION: 

• Length: 5’8″
• Width: 19 1/4″
• Thickness: 2 7/8″
• Volume: 30.4L
• Futures 5 Fin Set-Up
• Super Sap Epoxy Construction

The nose-less surfboard has been cropping up in many of our beaches over the last couple of years, and with good reason. The idea was to keep the more functional elements and parts of the conventional surfboard. The benefits of this chop nosed model are: better wave catching ability, more speed and more responsiveness. These sound like the buzz words for the perfect surfboard, but the science behind it is quite interesting, and makes total sense. Not sure what we mean, here is a brief explanation.

The Benefits

By “chopping”, or reducing the nose and tail from the board, you’re effectively getting the planing width in the nose, of a much longer board. This is achieved by the wider nose and tail offering the same volume, whilst keeping as much of the rail in the water as a longer board.

The straighter rail line lets the leading edge of the surfboard align more parallel to the water reducing drag and giving you more speed. Great for paddling into waves and gaining down the line speed.

The reduction of extra weight from a pointy shortboard nose would give you a reduced “swing weight”. Just like on a pendulum, as it reaches it’s maximum swing, there is a delay as is changes direction. The same effect happens on sharp, precise shortboard manoeuvres. Less nose, you have a board that will swing around quicker giving you a quicker, effortless, snappier turn.

It’s believed that the top diamond part of the nose don’t really add much performance benefits, so the Xenon has been broken down, leaving you with the more ‘functional’ parts of the board.

The deck of the board has a standard roll into a standard ‘shortboard’ rail at mid point but then flattens out under the back foot giving the tail end a more aggressive, responsive feel.

This flatter deck at the tail creates more lateral volume and to combat this giving a big square blocky rail, there is a slight chine along the deck rail so that the thinner, lower rail is easily engaged for grip, control and drive.