My favorite shortboard - the Sharpeye Inferno 72
On the topic of favorite surfboards, I thought I would talk through my favorite shortboard of the moment - the Sharpeye Inferno 72. I guess I’ve bought into the hype train as this board has been getting a ton of press, but thought I’d add my own observations about this board. The most noticeable thing about this board is the incredible amount of projection I get during my bottom turns. As you set your rail it just catapults you with a ton of speed up into the lip and sets everything up for a good turn.
What’s interesting is that I was really torn between getting the Inferno 72 which is primarily a thruster and the Inferno FT which is a quad. The FT quad also has a ton of hype around it given that it’s the board the Felipe won his world tour title on and I was extremely close to buying it. However, a little bit of research on the board revealed something very interesting.
I would have thought given how the FT is an evolution over the 72 that the shaper Marcio Zouvi would prefer his latest evolution of the board. However in a podcast with Dave Prodan, he actually said that he prefers the 72 over the FT. Given that Marcio is probably more of an everyday surfer vs an insanely talented pro like Felipe Toledo, this made me think that the 72 would be more suitable for the everyday surfer. In the podcast he mentioned how the thruster provides a level of projection from the bottom turn that the quad can’t emulate, and that is specifically why they chose to use the flex characteristics of the Dark Arts construction to emulate that projection. I didn’t want to drop an obscene amount of money on the board so that made me think that if I was going to go with a traditional PU construction that the 72 was the way to go. Talking to the guys directly at Sharpeye also confirmed that unless you’re like Felipe and/or mainly using it in bigger waves than the 72 is the way to go.
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