Starboard 7'8 Hypernut

My son had an Hyper Nut carbon 2018 7.8x30 x 115 lt. Great board for beginner, very comfortable for storage and hadling, light and sturdy, great pad. These are the advantages. The price you pay for this is the sloweness. I think is better a little bigger traditional shape board for stability than a short, stable, stubby shape. After two years my son can't stand it anymore because on the bigger waves he had a lot of false starts. So I sold it at a very good price to enthusiat beginner. In the Mediterranean Sea the waves are very irregular and a faster board expands the starting point on the wave reducing the risk of close out. It's the same thing I felt when switching from Shroom 8.3 to Superfrank 8.6. We use the ours boards in sandy beaches. But I liked very much the Hyper Nut.

a friend of me has one and I used his 7.8 a lot before I bought a 7.10 myself (tried the 7.4 as well a lot).I mainly in the Netherlands surf at the north sea where the waves are always confused choppy, steep but slow and short, often with wind and a wave period you can better measure in meters as seconds while space between sets is a very rare thing.In such conditions Hypernuts are imo awesome shapes because the offer the balance to get started anyway and being short enough to turn tight and nimble on the mess we deal with. The wide tail doesnt sink as fast as a more traditional shaped board allows you to surf on the tail instead of the middle.I,m 96kg and with a full wintersuit+boots (that we need like 5-6 months a year)on closer to 100kg. 7.4: undoable in anything else as clean ocean swell. Funny enough even when I was in the right spot at the wave I had a hard time getting it up to speed.7.8: an awesome nimble board that can turn really tight and aggressive but harder to stay on in the chop we often have.7.10 is more stable but as soon as you are on a faster wave it is slower to accelerate compared to the 7.8 and the extra volume is really noticeable once on a wave.
My theory is that they are way more size sensitive as most other shapes and when you go approx +20l max above weight you get max performance/balance.

I keep my 7.10 because it really suits the mess we deal with and I have a several other boards for better conditions. I did bring it once to Wales and Cornwall-UK for a Surftrip and that was a mistake because the fatter faster waves it simply bounces out due its thick rails (The 7.8 did do okay there). In such conditions I want a more traditional smaller, thinner and faster rockered shaped board.

Right now we are in Bretagne-France for Holiday and enjoy the better Ocean swells and I tried from a pal of me his Smik Hipster 8.0x30.5x118l It was definitely more wobbly as the Hypernut7.8 but on a wave it smokes it. It does everything I liked about the Hypernut but better.
It works really well at the slower wavessections, nice tight turns, accelerates well. loose when you want too.
So the food for thought the rest of the holiday will be keep the Hypernut7.10 and save some money or get me an Hipster twin.

I owned the hypernut 7'8 x 30 for a long time around 5 years (actually sold it a month ago) and it is a great board for the conditions we get here in the Netherlands, like Jeroen described. We SUP often BTW :-) The hypernut makes you SUP so much better than any other board in my opinion. It's super easy, fast and super stable for it's length. I am 83 KG and I even brought the hypernut to the good swell spots on holidays. It never let me down with a bit of a change on the fins. But the last 2 years I have the GONG Fatal 7'4 as main board and kept the hypernut as big more stable board option but never used it anymore and when I use it, it was just not that reactive or fast and loose as the fatal. The Hypernut was 100% always fun and a really good board to learn wave SUP fast. But that board really turns with the fins and not that much with the rail. While the Fatal makes more use of the rail and rocker. It is just different not good or bad. It is just what you like and in my case what I now experienced what I like more. The fatal is a bit more complex but worth it.
So all en all I would say for an beginning/intermediate surfer in choppy slow waves, the hypernut is a no brainer and 100 % fun machine. But it's a total different surf style. As always, if you could try it somewhere, go for it.