Blue Planet Surf Potato Chip SUP Board Review
This is written by Darin Leong (http://www.hawaiiguitar.com/), my brother and a local attorney in Hawaii.
I recently had the opportunity to demo the Potato Chip SUP board from Blue Planet Surf. It’s a fun board with a beautiful design.
About the Board
As a novice/intermediate stand-up-paddle surfer, I was looking for stability, but also something with a little more performance in the water than the big board I’m currently riding. The Potato Chip was just the trick. It measures 8′6″ long, 32″ wide and 3.75″ thick. It comes in at 123 liters. At 8′6″ it fits in cars and spaces where bigger SUP boards won’t. The first thing you notice about this board is its shape. The Potato Chip has a wide tail. This gives it remarkable stability despite its short 8′6″ length for a SUP board. The nose is also relatively wide, adding to the stability. Something about the shape of the Potato Chip makes it easy to paddle into smaller surf. The board can be set-up as a tri-fin or a quad-fin. I got the opportunity to try it as a quad.
In the Water
The first day in the water was typical Oahu south shore day of surf with waist to shoulder high waves. These are the conditions in which this board excels. The Potato Chip was stable, allowing me to focus on getting where I needed to be to catch some waves without thinking about falling in the water every 30 seconds. When paddling into waves, it almost felt like the Potato Chip could catch up to waves if I was late on the paddle. Once on the wave, the board showed its performance potential (although that potential was limited by my novice turning abilities). Just a slight lean on the rail made the board turn sharply and it became clear that if I actually knew what I was doing, this board would be capable of making sharp turns and spinning some 360s. I caught lots of fun waves with the Potato Chip, making it a really fun ride.
The second day in the water was an unusual south shore swell in the middle of December. It looked like it was double-overhead on the outside and folks were catching some bombs out there. I stayed on the inside, catching some head-high reform waves. Again, the Potato Chip was a lot of fun. While it was a little harder getting into the waves than the day prior, I was still able to catch a bunch of waves. Since these waves had more speed, it took even less pressure on the rails to make the board turn. The loose tail made it easy to cut back and maneuver the board on the wave.
(click thumbnail to launch video)
Final Thoughts
The Potato Chip is a great performance surfing board with benefits for all levels of SUP surfers. For beginners, it provides stability and you can set it up as a tri-fin for even greater stability. For advanced SUP surfers, the Potato Chip is capable of high performance, ripping turns and spinning out.
Thank you for the review Darin. For anyone looking for more information on this model, here is the link to the board on our website:
http://blueplanetsurf.com/products/2014-86-x-32-potato-chip