With beaches world wide going crazy over the new ‘Vanguard’ Inspired shapes in the shortboard industry, it was only a matter of time before stand up paddling took on the design. This week JP have added one to their board lineup to join the countless other manufactures with a stubby nosed surf models, but will it stand the test of time, or fade away into the ‘fad’ pile?

Endorsed by Keahi De Aboitiz, who had a hand in designing the shape, JP’s new offering called the ‘Surf Slate’ promised to deliver ‘unbelievable performance in a super compact shape’. Super compact is right, it’s only coming in 7’2 and 7’6” sizes!

Ok, we know the short lengths are due to the nose being chopped off, but the likes of JP, Starboard, Naish, and Fanatic are all scrambling to release a shape inspired by the now infamous Daniel Thomson's Vanguard. Smaller companies like Gulliver and Custom shapers only took a few weeks to start glassing scaled up versions of the funny lookin’ shortboard, and paddlers began raving about them not long after. But why are they so good?

Swing weight.

One of the biggest problems in stand up paddling is that huge nose sticking another 7 feet in front of the paddlers front foot. During turns this weight has to build up momentum, slowing the turn initially, and delaying (or at least slowing down) the following turn in any new direction. What’s a great way of removing weight from the nose? By removing the nose! This concept holds true in the shortboard world too, where competitive surfboards are robbed of every gram in the interest of performance.

But will it stick around? Funny looking surfboards, and even stand up paddleboards have faded into obscurity more than once in the past. Do you remember the Holmsey Sidewinder? That surfboard was going to change the world…

Only time will tell whether stubby nosed stand up paddle boards are (as JP say) going to wipe the slate clean of traditional knowledge in surfboard design...

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