How wide for a shortboard

I am 170lbs 5’11 been surfing for 33 years. Been surfing funboards for about 10 years so I lost touch with shortboards design. Now I am surfing a 6’6 board and like it. My board is 20" wide with 12 nose and 15" tail, very thick though 2/7/8" Why are most of the shortboards I see at the shops 18" to about 19 1/2" wide. Will this perform better? I am working my way down to surfing smaller and smaller boards, till I reach the point of lack of performance and paddle. The guy at the surf shop thought I should be riding 6-2 , 6-3" x 19 1/12 x 2 3/8 " !!

Ride what you like!

You can go with shop rec, but you better surf 3 days a week, want to surf vert, and paddle like a 20 year old.

Depends what kind and size you want to concentrate riding. No board works in all sizes.

Wider boards work in smaller waves, paddle and float better, don’t work in fast overhead.

of years surfing has no bearing on your board choice, as you could be surfing 10 days a year for 30, or 200 days a year for one, and be the same skill level.

Gotta balance your paddle, your float, your ease of wave catching with your duck, pushtru, and turtle, then figure if you are quick enough to go really small or need more board for slower reactions.

Thanks for the good feedback Lee. I guess I need to make a few different sizes to know what I do and dont like.

Lee pretty much nailed it…for me its a compromise between paddling and on-wave performance. Im 40 y/o, 175lb and been surfing 25 years, after a brief stint riding wide 6’10 hybrids Im now riding light EPS 6’4 x 19.4 shorties. B4 I thought I was just getting older, but it was those boards that were slowing me down. Depending on your ability and wants, you could ride a 6’3…you can get float/paddle/catchability by keeping the rocker low/relaxed (~2.2 tail rocker) and a little extra width (19.5) and thickness (2.4 - 2.6). But the truth is there are too many variables…just keep trying new things.

shoots man I tap danced around your question…

std thrusters require rail to rail surfing to get them going and keeping the board narrow facilitates this. Adding a little width makes rail to rail a touch more challenging…lots more width and the board becomes a planeing machine. I like wider shorties cuz it gets me in earlier in weaker surf and I dont have to pump so aggressively to get the most out it. For a 6’3, I would consider a little more width… ~18.75 to 19

moderate to heavy width ~19.25 to 19.75

Thanks meecrafty sounds like you went through what I am going through. You did answer my question. I’ll make one under 20" to see how that works. I used to work in the industry for years, but boards changed quite a bit since then. I still like to surf vertical and love roundhouse cutbacks. Even in my forties I get out there and it feels like i’m 20 again. Only now I burn on the top of my head.

Dro,

I’ve been down this road too, I rode semi-fish type board (thicker, flatter,wider) for a while, liked the paddle power and drive but found it tended to surf flat, I missed the rail to rail style of surfing you can do with a narrower more rocker board.

So I came up with a compromise that works well for me. I did this board on the APS3000. it’s almost a hybrid between a lazor zap and a contemporary shorty. Paddles,catches waves and duck dives better than my semi-fish but performs like a normal short board.

Imagine you get a standard shortboard about two inches longer than you would normally ride, drop the tail and nose rocker and then push widepoint, foil and rocker low point back two inches behind the wide point. This gives you a bit of volume and curve between your feet and width in the tail, so the board feels looser than it’s length and gives you a gradual low entry so the board paddles well. You fatten up the rails in the tail, so the tail picks up when you are paddling for waves and catching waves is easier. With the extra volume and width in the tail I had to reduce area behind the front fins to make the board more managable in the pocket, I used a round pin in the tail, the board goes great forehand but backhand I feel I have less drive off the bottom so in hindsight think I should have used a swallow to reduce tail area as this would have given me a bit straighter rail line behind the fins.

Hey PH,

Interesting approach but I dont see the resemblance to a Zap.

I’d say the rocker and outline looks fairly standard. Your rocker specs are almost identical to a std Clark R blank…

http://www.foamez.com/store/productDetails.cfm?prodID=5&prodIDCat=8

From my limited understanding of Zaps, they are much lower in rocker…very flat…like 4N and 1.5T…I could be wrong.

Regardless, that design is very sweet…looks a lot like one of my travel shapes.

PS - lack of drive remedy may be your fin setup…rocker and fin setup are the two biggies IMO.

Meecrafty,

Maybe the lazer zap reference is drawing a long bow. I’ve got a 4ws fin set up in it, so I might try toeing out a little or using a fin with more area when I next surf lefts.

Cheers