Gong sup 9'3 moblog SP

Colas is definitely the man on anything GONG related!

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normster said..
sorry, not me - looks good gong seems to have a good range of performance long-board style- what is the final price landed in oz/nz

According to the website 58 euro. But that does not include VAT. Has a disclaimer saying delivery to non-eu countries may be subject to additional charge.

I have emailed them, with regards to this, just waiting to hear back. Hoping someone who has ordered from them to oz/NZ might have a better idea of final price.

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Mbyr018 said..

normster said..
sorry, not me - looks good gong seems to have a good range of performance long-board style- what is the final price landed in oz/nz

According to the website 58 euro. But that does not include VAT. Has a disclaimer saying delivery to non-eu countries may be subject to additional charge.

I have emailed them, with regards to this, just waiting to hear back. Hoping someone who has ordered from them to oz/NZ might have a better idea of final price.

Well, I think you might be paying a bit more to ship to NZ.....lol!

Good luck with that one.

Mmm, I don't think so. The cheapest is shipping to France, and is already 70 euros (and Gong says they lose some money at this price). Shipping a board to sweden was around 200 euros at some time...
Offical info is here: www.gong-galaxy.com/magazine/news/shop-shipping-information/ but as you did, you must email them to get a quotation

About the board, in my opinion, they are very high quality for production boards. From the quality of materials (French Chomarat carbon fiber, French biosourced epoxy from the innovative "Sicomin" factory, super-high quality tough and light EPS blanks made also in the factory, ...) to the workmanship. But of course, due to time constraints, may be a bit heavier than a custom board at a competent shaper/glasser, who can take the time to as little resin as possible, and wrap the PVC sandwich around the rails (Gong boards have the top & bottom carbon layers widely overlapping on the rails, but not the PVC foam). Also the "Pro" line is made for high performance surfing, so they will stand a lot of abuse on the water, but you should not drop them on the road from the roof of your car. The "Woodckfusion" (cork+bamboo) construction for instance is designed to stand more abuse (kevlar rails), at the expense of 1.5 / 2kg more weight. Note that the weights on the web pages are to be trusted, but are given for the board without a pad (add 500g for the pad)

The shaper, Patrice Guenole, is a longboarder at heart, so he tends to have an unreasonable amount of long board SUP shapes (seven), as you saw, all with very distinctive handling and different sizes and widths

The Moblog is a special board, in that it is a longboard made with the rear section of a shortboard, so it turns like one. The fins are more aft than a normal longboard for supporting turns with the rear foot on the kick pad, and the powerful tail & center channel helps get acceleration in turns, and glide on weak waves.

It is the longboard SUP for shortboarders. I have one, and love it. It has insane glide to enter weak waves (the soft front concave is not a spoon, it is designed to accelerate the board), and once on the wave you can camp on the tail and hotdog to your heart content, just as a shortboard with a slower reaction time, the lightness of the construction keeps the swing weight down. It has a more energetic ride than anything 9'+ I tried, due to the lightness, stiffness (no wobbles!), and fast rocker. A nice touch is that there is no PVC sandwich on the bottom, simply carbon, to soften somewhat the ride.

The drawbacks are that:
- you must get to the tail to turn, it will not turn from the center
- it does not automatically adapt its speed to the speed of the curl, like a more traditional noserider
- although the wide tail hooks properly under the lip, you must keep some speed in noserides otherwise the tail will slide
- there is no US box, so you cannot put a huge 10" fin for low speed noserides. However, the 5 boxes are FCSII, which makes experimenting with fins a joy. I love to ride it with twin fins + trailer, but I guess a thruster setup is the safest bet.

The pad is now excellent (since 2016), by its grip and with strategically placed holes/arch so you feel precisely where your rear foot is on a quite large area. But since the pad is glued just before shipping, you should be able to order it with the pad not glued, if you want to use wax instead.

For repairs, Gong also sells the spray cans of the exact chemical composition and colors, so you may want to buy also at least the red, which is a custom Gong color that is not an exact RAL spec. The grey is just white on the carbon that has been sanded. But if not, the closest RAL color of the red is 3028. Note that Portuguese Gong paints are glycerophtalic but acrylic for the chinese ones, you should use the proper type for painting after repairs.

They are now 12 employees at the Gong headquarters, so you should have a timely response to emails. They all speak english, and there is even one native speaker. The good thing is that the brand is 100% internet-based (no resellers), so email/phone is their natural way of doing business.

They also have a very active forum where everything can be discussed, very useful to choose between models.

As for all brands, in case of issues, it is best to directly contact them rather than posting on the forum or the internet first. But Gong is quite unique as it tries to not censor people expressing disappointment or disagreement on their forum. For instance on this thread (French only), a disgruntled customer criticizes the tuttle box reinforcement of a kite board. Patrice Guenole does not agree, the discussion goes on for 3 pages, heated at times, but the aggressive messages were not deleted. Being an internet company, they know it is no use censoring people, as they can just post their dissatisfaction anywhere else.
www.gong-galaxy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=8411

Also, issues tend to be solved MUCH faster than traditional brands, as you do not have to wait for the shop to get an answer from the distributor, who will contact the importer, who will contact the headquaters...

When dealing with problems (transport dings, ...) in countries far from France, returning the board is not realistic, so you should expect some kind of partial refund to cover a local repair + loss of resale value.

Thanks for all the advice Colas, helps alot with consideration of buying the board. Still keen on it haha