7'7 Vaquero Update
Couple more sessions, and I'm understanding this board better. Paddles better than I first reported. Certainly not a dog in this department, but not what you might expect from a board with such generous dims. Once it picks up some wave energy, it planes very well and catches waves easily.
Got it out at an offshore, high-tide beach break about shoulder high. Nice almondy pocket to the wave and a long running wall. The board loves to sit high up in the pocket, race, and make sections. Feels like you can high-line forever. Big banking cutbacks work best if you don't go too deep off the bottom. I find it difficult to hold the rail and push hard on a bottom turn, projecting up into the lip line. It wants to tip, pivot around that fin and then flatten out again, so I find myself cutting back a little lower in the wave than I would like if my angle of attack is too steep.
Next session was at Steamer Lane's middle peak on a somewhat choppy, mushy day. Harder to operate in these conditions, where you get a crumbly lip and short, slopey shoulder requiring one to keep cutting back at slow speed to stay in what little pocket the wave has. Still, it worked fine, and the frictionless glide allowed me some 15-20 second rides.
Overall, feels like a trim-oriented board that wants a long wall to come alive, but it has an impressive bottom range. Great low-performance jazz hands platform.
Here's some grainy cam footage to seal my kook status: