All surfers have fallen hard into water. When you impact water with speed, your body pauses on the water's surface for a second. Water resists displacement and will not immediately move out of your way, due to the speed you carry. Water does not compress, instead; your body compresses. You must absorb the impact with your body, which feels more like hitting the ground than liquid. After a hard numbing collision with water, your body penetrates and decelerates. The collision possibly compressed your neck and vertebrate, this will hurt later. Your tissues and organs also took a jolting blow, when the water's surface did not give in. You probably feel a bit dizzy from a numbing bump to yo
When a surfboard takes off it moves through three phases. Initially it pushes water in the displacement phase. Vessels must push water out of their path to move. Following the displacement phase it goes into transition. This is just before taking the drop. The surfboard starts to lift and pushes less water. In the final phase gravity takes over and the surfboard planes on its aft half with forward half above water. It is planning hydrodynamically and not pushing water with its nose. The flat bottom works well with gradual acceleration. In modern surfing with vertical maneuvers and flight, the surfboard skips the transition phase. The movement goes from displacement to flight, in lat
Nose rocker is an important aspect of a surfboard, it keeps the board from diving under. The down side of nose rocker is that it creates drag.The nose section is usually out of water, how can it possibly cause drag? The nose area usually enters the water at lower speeds. Water contact is made under the nose rocker bend, in an area called the bow in boating. The red arrow points to the bow area in the following illustration. The bow area pushes water out of the surfboard's path at lower speeds. When the bow is flat, as with most boards today, water is first pushed forward, then around the board. With a round or Vee bow, water is pushed directly out of the board's path. Drag is created wit
