God Save The Carving 360!

Question: why have we ignored the carving 360, relegated it as a novelty maneuver, just a hair above the chop-hop?

At a running point or rippable beach break, we’re 95% more likely to see a deep bottom turn followed by a line-setting lipper, perhaps the occasional blessed hail Mary air from an Italo or a Griff, than a carve straight up the face and lip-smacking fin-blow 360. 

Kelly’s one of the only tour guys who seems to pull the card out of his sleeve when left with a weak hand, the huckster even giving a tutorial for Surfline a few years back… 

Andy’s were some of the sickest. (See: Campaign 2*.) 

Why? Certainly most would prefer them to another safety turn or score-hungry backside chop-hop veiled as an air reverse. I submit at the top of the page a few of Dane’s more exemplary specimens, from his Intersection part so very long ago…

I was reminded of all this last week in Mexico, when I paddled over a set wave at a lumpy, running right point, and Dane got a chip shot into a startling wedge. He came at the section head-on and tail-high, his fins snapping through the lip with a sound like a tough broad’s backhand smack after an inappropriate gesture, stomping the 360 right into a bottom turn before nailing several more finners down the line. 

After the session, all parties present remarked separately how “rad carving 360s are”, and yet how rare.

Like you, I often surprise myself with a proper stab at the lip, through a combination randomness and luck and a sense of what a proper turn looks and feels like. But I have never, ever quite figured out a properly gutted carving 360. For the fucking life of me…

I asked our resident hi-fi authority, Mikey C., if they’re as underrated (and difficult) as we all felt. 

“Depends what you mean by ‘underrated’, because I think a lot of pros rate them really highly,” Mikey posited. “But maybe general public perception is what you’re getting at, in which case I guess so. It’s one of the hardest maneuvers to do correctly, but it’s so fucking sick when you do. It’s weird because it totally depends on how you execute. Bad carving threes are worth nothing. Good ones would be worth a lot.”

Amen.