Please post your questions about how to pick a surfboard size, and @kazuma will answer them.
The most common question that I get is “what size board should I get?”
Well it is not as easy as taking your height and weight and designing something, every surfer has different needs, skill sets and expectations. I always answer that question with a question, “What do you ride now?”
It doesn’t matter if you like your current board or not, it is just better to work off a known starting point and take that feedback to come up with something that will offset your weakness and compliment your strengths. I generally find that people that copy what others ride will not surf their best as their boards are usually fighting them.
For example, you ride a 6’2"x 18.5"x2.3" and have trouble in slow mushy waves but do fine in fast hollow surf. You catch waves OK but dig rail on your first cutback and fall apart. Without knowing your weight, it is obvious that you are too heavy for the board and need to either add volume, increase planing area up front, make the bottom more efficient or a combination of 2 or 3 of these things.
From this point it will only take a few more questions to dial it in further to get you on the magic board on the first try. Surfing is much too precious to mess around with riding the wrong board for you.
1 Like
@kazuma The last board you made me has been total magic. Shorter, wider, and thicker, and based on the prior boards, feedback from me, as well as @doug (Doug Silva!). I can’t tell you how much more I enjoy surfing with the right gear. My percentage of being on skyrocketed after the changes we made. So, the next question. I’m hopefully going to get to Indo late this summer. What should I pack in terms of boards and how soon do we need to order them?
BTW, @kazuma, don’t hesitate to drop in some images in your posts!