With the 4th Annual Punta Sayulita Surf Classic starting today, Friday March 8th, we though it might be a good time to talk surfboards. So here we go.
These days, in the water and on the beach, in Sayulita and around just about every surfing beach in the world, you will find an amazing variety of surfboards. Once upon a time, everybody rode single fin longboards. Then, everybody rode shortboard thrusters, and longboarders were basically banished to the hinterlands of surfing history, only to re-emerge triumphant, ridden by kings of retro style.
Today, the basic shortboard/longboard debate, quandary, or whatever you want to call it, is sort of irrelevant, due to the design innovations that have given surfers an amazing variety of wave-riding tools to choose from, each shape and style offering some variation on how to ride a wave. You’ve seen this, walking the streets of Sayulita or any beach town. Longboards and shortboards. Single, double, triple, quad, quintuple fin boards. Swallow tails. Pointed tails and rounded noses, rounded tails and pointed noses. Boards with no fins at all are even making a comeback from the depths of Hawaiian history. A multitude of soft tops ranging from dinky little kiddie boards up to 11 or 12 foot bombers for big dudes to learn on have also come into play, perfect tools for beginners. There are no rules, no arguments, no hassles, at least not about board styles: everybody rides what they want, and if they don’t wave hog, don’t cut people off, don’t snake people, and don’t ruin waves for other surfers, well, any surfer out there is free to ride their board of choice.
You see it out in the water here everyday: locals of every age and every skill level riding every kind of board imaginable, from finless alaias to 11 foot longboards. Truth is, these days many surfers, especially professionals, have a “quiver” of up to 20 or 30 or more boards for personal use, and which board they use on a given day depends on mood, surfing conditions, size of waves, strength of wind, and other variables.
We spent a little time with Joshua Howdeshell and Marilee Woolace, who run Sayulita’s vintage surfboard shop, Quiverito, to get a brief take on board shapes and styles, and also to photograph some of the many cool vintage boards they offer for sale and/or rent. For all the variety, surfboards come in three basic types. First, the longboard, your classic old school board, over 8 feet 6 inches long, usually between 9 feet and 11 feet in length. While in the old days longboards had just one fin, these days they usually have three fins with an option to remove two and go single fin. Next are shortboards, which took over the surfing world in the 1970s and remain the board of choice for those seeking surfing at its highest, most challenging level. These boards are usually 5 to 6 feet long with a pointed nose and three fins. They are also known as thrusters, although there are many variations on the basic thruster shape. Finally there is the funboard, which is essentially a short longboard.
There are myriad variations on these basic types, some of which you can see in the photographs. A variation not seen here is a gun, designed for surfing bigger, faster waves than we usually see around here (Puerto Escondido and Todos Santos Island are two Mexican waves that often require guns). What you do see here along with the usual long and shortboards are eggs, which are rounded longboards and super fun for learning; fish, which are usually under 7 feet and have a swallow-shaped tail and generally are ridden with 2, 3,4, or 5 fins, and several unique variations from the Quiverito collection. Finally, there is the alaia, the mythic surfboard of old Hawaii, which modern day shredders all over the world are learning to ride in homage to surfing’s roots, and also because it is incredibly challenging to ride a wooden surfboard without a fin.
The number and placement of fins, the thickness of the rails, the shapes of nose and tail, the amount of rocker (the shallow concave curve from nose to tail), the basic building materials (epoxy or foam and fiberglass), and numerous other factors come into play when you talk surfboard design. Every kind of board works better in certain types of surf, faster, slower, bigger, smaller, mushier or more hollow, pointbreak, beachbreak, or reefbreak.
For beginners, a good-sized soft top is the safest and easiest to learn on. Once you’ve gotten some basics down, you can decide if you are committed to becoming a shredder, and take up shortboarding, or just becoming a cruiser, and take up longboarding (although there are plenty of longboarders shredding out there these days). My general take on beginners is, if you are over 30, unless you are extremely determined and athletic as hell—and have a lot of time to spend learning to surf–longboarding is the way to go. If you’re under 30, and have a season or two at a surfing beach in your future? Get a shortboard and learn to shred. Either way, you’ll have a ball.
