Spitfire or Hellfire? HELP!

[Will.]

I got both the Spit and the hellfire, these guys are so right, go for the spit in 1-4ft everytime. Its the board I find myself with the majority of the time. Id only take the Hellfire out when its 3ft + (as in head high + ), shame I havnt had many occasions to try the Hellfire but I plan on taking it to france with me in september to see how it handles the beach breaks there, one thing I can say about it is that it is really really fast.Also what Prj said about the 5'8 is true, my 6'3 flexfire feels so long now! much prefer the shorter boards!

[rmd101]

So, i've only managed to use the board a couple of times so far due to my usual trick of turning conditions to absolute junk for at least a month every time I buy a new board haha. Either that or i've been stuck in work, dragged to a wedding, had it locked in a mates house etc whenever conditions looked marginally OK. It is August - can we please see some sun and perhaps a couple of foot of non-wind obliterated junk with a slightly OK period once a fortnight or so? ...... and rubbish summer rant over!

I knew the 5'8" was going to have enough volume from the website spec and from holding it in the shop, but there was a moment of doubt that a board the same thickness as my 6" longer thruster and which barely came up to my nose, would float me. Absolutely no problems on that score and it paddles really well. First couple of waves I caught were lefts (backside) and I got in nice and early, zipped down the line and tagged a few turns. My first wave going frontside, however, was a different story: I completely bogged and the section went past me as I failed to get any speed at all. A bit of foot placement/paddle position adjustment was required, as it to be expected with a new board, particularly one significantly shorter than anything i'd ridden before, and things started to feel a bit more natural. Although I could use a few more sessions before making a final judgement, initial thoughts are that the board is gonna be a good un' and ideal for the conditions I want it for. Excited to bust out a quad set up for my next surf to see how that goes.

Overall i'm really glad I opted for the 5'8 over the 5'10 as I think it would've been a bit too big. Multiple other threads have already validated this, but for what it's worth, anyone my sort of size (6ft-ish & 75kg-ish) who is reasonably competent should have no worries whatsoever on this board.

Cheers for all your useful comments, guys.