How to: buy the perfect summer surfboard!

Because it ain't just as simple as short, wide, fat… 

Who doesn’t love summer? Y’gotta be a schmuck not to fall apart at the long days spent under sailboat skies, in vivid blue water, nailing deadly air after deadly air.

(Yeah, I know it’s a memory in the northern hem, but it’s lighting up south of the zero-degree border…)

But if there’s anything that might ruin these salad days, it’s a surfboard that just doesn’t… work. Maybe it’s too long, too narrow or, maybe it’s built a little thicker to handle you in a thick wetsuit.

How do you choose a summer board? And what’s the difference to the board you’ve been jamming all winter, autumn and spring? Let’s examine the five fundamental differences.

1. Thickness isn’t necessarily your pal in small waves

This is a misconception driven by the whole literage concept. Now that we order boards according to volume rather than specific dimensions, you lose control over the variables of length, width and thickness. For instance, a thicker board is harder to get moving in the lil wind-waves we surf in summer. And you’re either in trunks or a light wetsuit so you don’t need the float. If you’re a 28-litre kinda guy, dump the thickness and go width. Because…

2. Width is almost everything 

Wide boards plane over weak dead sections. Who doesn’t love a narrow board when it’s a jamming reef somewhere in Indonesia and all y’gotta do is grab a rail and watch the lip curl over your head? We all do! But, in summer, in those onshore two-footers, you want a board that has an inbuilt engine. Wide boards have got it. But you’ll also need…

3. A flat rocker

This is the other half of the summer board power-train. Curved boards fit into curvy waves. Into tubes. Maybe you get ’em in summer, maybe you don’t. I’m guessing you’re taking off, racing down the line trying to find some kinda section to hit and throw yourself into the sky. Curves? Forget ’em. Straighten that rocker.

4. Slim down

A heavy board generates momentum. And this is a good thing, a very good thing, in waves with push. In summer, you want a board that is so light you gotta tie the damn thing down so it doesn’t float away. One layer, four ounce, all over. It won’t last a lifetime, but what does?

5. Colour

Winter is a palette of greys and whites, at least in the game of surf. But summer! A white board isn’t going to cut it. I drew my inspiration from a Christian Hosoi eighties skateboard re-issue on my lil Lost Puddle Jumper. It’s psychological, sure, but colours give a summer board a personality. And summer boards are all about personality.