They did some great paipo research. Here are some words from Mickey Munoz and some pictures from the blog. Enjoy!
Excerpt from Hydrodynamica interview with RK on 3/9/08:
Munoz:
"Shaping and designing has always been a balancing act between creating
speed and controlling it. Long and narrow is not necessarily faster, its just a
way to control speed, somewhat...short and wide is very fast, but very difficult
to control. I remember watching paipo guys at Waimea years ago...the paipo
board was basically a triangular piece of plywood with the corners turned
down in the tail which gave you a fin like appendage...they had a big wide
planing area...the guys just hung on prone, low center of gravity.
Buzzy Trent would take off on a 25 foot Waimea bomb, rocketing down the
face on an 11'6" elephant gun, a radical, drawn in gun...and these guys on paipos
would take off behind him and just rocket past him like he was standing still...
....So, you had Simmons on the one hand with this sort of paipo board, if you will,
only extended so he could paddle into waves, but if you were to cut it off three
feet from the tail it'd be a paipo board...and then on the other hand you've got
someone like Matt Kivlin who was this graceful, powerful surfer on a more
drawn out board, more like a gun, like Buzzy's elephant gun...
So as those opposite designs evolved, y'know, the modern thruster, fish,
quads, five fins...all of these combinations are basically just trying
to get that original paipo board under control."
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