I demo'd the 8'11" x 32" x 145L last week. Conditions where not great, waist to chest reef break with moderate to strong side/off winds. I would call this a budget friendly entry level board. The board itself is on the heavy side but not unmanageable, carry handle is adequate for short walks, deck pad is hard and lacks the grip of higher quality versions. In the water the board is very stable and paddles very well, very easy to catch waves and very predictable in its actions. By no means a speed demon. If you keep the board pocket it will ride very well, get it out in the flats and it can't get out of its own way. The board has a nice rocker line but the bottom contour is completely flat which is probably why the board becomes sluggish in the flats. Stiff thru the turns, quad option might help but unavailable. My search continues.
A friend of mine owns one and we swapped as the narrower Exocet fishes in carbon are ridden by some of the better riders here on Cape Cod.
The one that I rode was the 32" wide 8'11" in wood construction. My initial observations were that it was stable and very easy to paddle and catch waves with.
However, I also noticed a large flat spot in the middle of the board which did not lend itself to acceleration out of turns. It did seem to bog on the flats and did not accelerate when I stood hard on the tail.
All of my other shorter boards have more tail rocker and no flat spot in the center which suits my style as I am much more of a back foot surfer than a front foot surfer.
Had a chance to get one in carbon for short money and I passed..
I had the 8'11 x 32". I liked it for the stage as I was at. I'm 80kgs so its way to big for me but I was coming off 176 litres so it was my first real surf SUP and I couldn't fault it. Stable as, grip was great (you could store wet in its bag and the pad would not slime up, as my Starboard does now), comes with quality fins, AST construction worked pretty well (smae AST as other Cobra factory AST I think), has wood in the right places. I did crease the nose but was giving it death at the time.
Performance wise, surfing Lyall Bay most of the time, softer beach break, paddling out it yawed a bit (my new SB 8 2 WP yaws a little less to be fair) but punches through whitewater well. I haven't really noticed the flat spot others have referred to, I turned it in quite a pivoty fashion off its thrusters, likes to driven off tail.
Overall its an excellent transition board, performed great for a 143 litre board.
Would have liked to have tried the 30" version.
Hope this helps.
