How to Choose Your First Surfboard: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

You’ve seen Blue Crush, you’ve watched Point Break, and once, in Hawaii, you even caught a wave. So, this August we don’t really blame you for wanting to hunt for a little Endless Summer of your own. At the beach, the surf is up, the waves are calling, all you need is your very first surfboard.

Forget starting online, some surf shops merely list the length of the board next to a tongue-in-cheek, inside baseball description like Over Easy (an allusion to the egg), Magic Ham (that’s a pig), Deviated Septum (a nod to the classic noserider), or Rabbit’s Foot (just don’t even worry about this one). Clicking on a board might lead you to an accompanying jargon-filled description about concave, rocker, “exaggerated hips,” “more belly,” and its performance in “critical sections,” but, according to Phil Browne, owner of Glide Surf Co. in Asbury Park, New Jersey, which sells just as many cultish boards to die-hard surfers as it does introductory shapes to its fair share of beginners, the only thing you have to worry about when shopping for your first board is starting a conversation with your local shopkeeper and being as honest as possible.

What’s Your Frequency?
“How serious are you about this?” is among the first questions Browne will throw out at fresh meat, not because he’s trying to scare them off, but because the answer will help inform him whether or not to steer new customers toward sturdy boards they can ride five times a year and always have fun on or to more sensitive shapes that they can invest time in and grow with over the years. Though, he notes that buying a soft-top foam board (vs. a hard-top board sealed in resin) is a short-sighted investment that everyone will outgrow in just a few sessions in the water.

Location, Location, Location:
Next you’ll need to consider where you’ll be surfing—this will help determine the length of your optimal board. In the continental United States, East Coasters are likely to encounter “steep and fast” waves lining up at the beach breaks along the coast of New Jersey and New York. When these waves grow taller than waist-high, they can be unfriendly to brand-new longboarders, who will find the 9-plus feet of resin, fiberglass, and foam beneath them “cumbersome” for dropping in on the punchy sets.

The Long and Short of It:
“Mid-length boards lose the cumbersomeness, but have plenty of float and planing speed,” meaning that, clocking in roughly  between 6’8” and 8’4”, they’re easier to catch waves with than short boards, and easier to navigate on the aforementioned “critical” terrain than longboards.

Meanwhile, Californians, who are blessed with a coastline of softer, easier waves formed by reef breaks, rocky shorelines, and point breaks have the ideal setting for learning to longboard. “A beginner [longboarder] can be way more comfortable on a wave in Malibu than they would in New Jersey,” says Browne. In such gently folding waves, learning the art of cross-stepping to the nose on a classic log can become a lifelong pursuit.

For short-boarders looking to speed down the line of a wave, the ultimate introduction board that you’ll find in nearly every surfer’s quiver is a fish—the abbreviated, wide, swallow-tailed board with a pointed tip. “You still have a lot of the flow and paddle-ability,” says Browne of the width of the board, but its length provides the greatest maneuverability once you’re standing up. Simply put, short-boarders can zigzag up and down the face of waves quickly because, “there’s less board to move.”

The Fine Details:
Once your shape is chosen, the length within each category of board is based on your weight and height. This is also a quite straightforward approach. “The bigger you are, the thicker and longer you [should] go.” And the number of fins that adorn the bottom of your board won’t make a huge difference to a first-timer. Though the studied surfer will feel that the board has more “grip” for turning with three or four fins catching the wave beneath them, while a single- or twin-fin board allows for easier flow, relying more on the rails of the board to generate speed. For these final details, Brown suggests trusting the advice of your local shopkeeper. “They’ll know what they’re talking about.”

 

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