Ahmmmm- a few things;
http://jfmillbiz.home.comcast.net/~jfmillbiz/swaylocks/Surfboard_Design_and_Construction_1977.pdf
is something I put up as a resource. The construction info is a bit dated ( you'd get better here) and the dynamics and design stuff - well, the approach has fundamental flaws. I don't agree with a lot of it, and as Sammy has quoted ( albeit not from me, though I do agree with the statement)
Watch out the official surfboard design stuff contains many myths, and is at least 80% BS. . . .
Or, as Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth:
Messenger
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.
Much of what has been written about 'how a surfcraft works' is, charitably, silly. Or uninformed. Kinda like aerodynamics in the 1700s, or electrical theory in the same times. Little real testing has been done, just a whole lot of handwaving and 'whooooaaa, gnarly, duuude' level stuff. Those who actually do anything real tend to be voices in the wilderness.
Let me suggest a few ( 1969 ) articles on surfcraft hydrodynamics, to start with: http://www.rodndtube.com/surf/info/Hydrodynamics.shtml - Dr. Hendricks is alive and well and yes, posts here now and again.
Warning! There are numbers involved! Equations, Physics! As they said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Run Awaay".
Haven't run off yet? Good.
Follow Dr. Hendricks with The Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls by Lindsay Lord ( another guy with a doctorate) , still the essential text on what makes planing hulls work- that would be surf craft in use. Be careful in applying this directly: surfboards generally ain't symmetrical with respect to the water when in use. For what it's worth, Simmons used Lord's work extensively, waaay back in the dark ages. And did the math.
Now that ( hopefully) one has developed an appreciation for how things work rather than the half-baked 'theories' propounded by the surf industry, we have http://ocw.mit.edu/ which is a cornucopia, on line courses in all sorts of cool stuff.
Have fun. Me, I started out as this crazed kneeboard type, with an interest in maths and in building ships and finding out how things worked, which led me to naval architecture/marine engineering. It's been a very twisted path from there....
hope that's of use
doc...