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A Masterpiece of Compromise

© Nathan Myers

Understanding your surfboard is part of being a surfer. Like anything else, this understanding takes time and patience. For all the time and frustration spent with your very first board, you learn the way it works. Each time you borrow someone else's board, and each time you buy yourself a new one, the relationship between all those boards increases your understanding of surfboards themselves. And ultimately, after many boards, many waves, many dings, many magazine scourings, many frustrations, many liberations... you just know. The way a surfboard feels in your hands... the way it feels beneath you... it feels natural. It's organic, like the leaf of a tree, like they actually grow surfboards on trees (well, the first ones did). Well, the fact is, the shape IS organic. As with evolution in nature, the surfboard evolved into what we know today naturally over time. As with the different leaves of a tree, and the leaves of different species, and the species of different regions, the modern shortboard exists in many possible variables to account for many possible sets of conditions.

When a surfboard is made, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every design feature of a surfboard has a positive and a negative effect on that surfboard. If you want to turn better, you can not go as fast. If you want forgiveness, you sacrifice precision. Harmony is achieved through balance, and balance is acquired through compromise. The modern shortboard is a masterpiece of compromise, combining the positive aspects of many extremes to achieve the most versatile and capable surfboard to date.

The following terms refer to some of the major design features that go into, and effect the performance of, a shortboard. By beginning to recognize, refer to, and understand these design features, you can begin to differentiate one shortboard from another, and better asses how it will perform simply by looking at it. (Of course, you never really know until you ride it. Three times.)

VOLUME is the total amount of foam in your board. More foam provides more buoyancy and stability. Big surfers, as well as beginning surfers, require greater volume, while light surfers, as well as very skilled ones, prefer less. A good shaper considers volume in terms of the board's rider before he considers anything else.

LENGTH is the distance from the very tip of the nose to the end of the tail, referred to in terms of feet and inches (ex: A 6'6" is six feet and six inches long). Longer boards paddle faster (thus, catch waves more easily) and hold speed better. Shorter boards are distinctly better at turning, and are much easier to duck dive.

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