Surf

Riding a wave's moving slope on a board shaped to fit it

110 boards · 3 brands · 671 sizes

Board surfing means paddling a board into an unbroken wave, standing up, and riding along its face as it breaks toward shore. Most of a session is paddling and waiting, and the ride itself lasts seconds. It covers everything from beginners on long, soft boards at sandy beach breaks to Olympic finals on the reef pass at Teahupo'o.

A typical surf board, 2134 by 552 mm
the typical outline: every board’s shape averaged at the median length and width

The typical board

The typical surf board is 1956 × 545 mm, 53.5 L, with a rounded pin tail and its wide point ahead of centre.

1676–2819mm long · median 1956

475–597mm wide · median 545

28.2–86litres · median 53.5

3.9length over width, median · derived

Ranges hold the middle 80 % of every size listed · tails: rounded pin tail 48, swallow tail 21, square tail 20, round tail 17, pin tail 4

How It Rides

What moves it

A wave is energy travelling through the water; as it reaches shallow water it slows, steepens and pitches forward. The surfer paddles to match the wave's speed, then gravity pulls the board down the sloping face while water rushing up the face lifts it to a plane. Riding across the unbroken shoulder instead of straight to the beach trades height for speed, which is what every turn is made of.

Reading the shape

Length and volume buy paddling speed and stability, while shorter, thinner boards with more curve (rocker) fit into steep waves and turn tighter: flatter rocker glides and paddles faster, more rocker stops the nose diving on a steep drop. The ISA defines a longboard as at least 9 ft long with widths at the nose, middle and tail adding up to at least 47 in; fishes are short, wide and end in a swallow tail, and mid-lengths sit between. In the drawings, read the tail: a pin narrows to a point and digs in for hold in big surf, a squash's square corners release water for quick turns, a swallow works like two small pins on a wide tail that keeps speed in small waves, and a round tail sits between pin and squash. A common shop rule of thumb, the 'guild factor', is volume in litres ≈ body weight in kg × a skill ratio: about 0.55–0.6 for intermediates and 0.34–0.38 for experts, with beginners near 1.0.

How to read any board: length and width, wide point, tails, rails, rocker

Wind

none needed; light offshore or no wind is best

Water

swell breaking over sand, reef or a point; from knee-high to giant

Worth knowing

The swell is made by distant storms; local wind only grooms or spoils the face.

The Rack

Every surf board, shortest to longest, one scale · from the Gong Surf Inflatable Compact 2021 (1524 mm) to the Gong Surf Winstone EPS 2025 (3079 mm)

All 110 in the catalogue

Good To Know

  1. The largest wave on record was surfed by Germany's Sebastian Steudtner at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, on 29 October 2020: 26.21 m (86 ft), authenticated by the World Surf League. The women's record is from the same beach: Maya Gabeira's 22.4 m (73.5 ft) wave on 11 February 2020. [1][2]

  2. Surfing's longest natural rides are on river bores, not ocean waves. On 10 March 2016 James Cotton rode the Bono tidal bore on Sumatra's Kampar River for 17.2 km; the wave face reached about 8 ft and travelled at roughly 20 km/h. [3]

  3. Surfing joined the Olympics at Tokyo 2020, held in July 2021 at Tsurigasaki Beach, where Italo Ferreira (Brazil) and Carissa Moore (USA) won the first golds. Duke Kahanamoku had argued for its inclusion after his 1912 swimming medals, more than a century earlier. [4]

  4. Paris 2024 held its surfing about 15,000 km from Paris, on the reef at Teahupo'o in Tahiti. On 5 August 2024 local surfer Kauli Vaast won men's gold for France and Caroline Marks won for the USA. [5]

  5. The olo credited to high chief Abner Paki, ridden at Waikiki in the 1830s and now in the Bishop Museum, is 15 ft 7 in long, 18 in wide, 6¼ in thick and weighs about 160 lb. It is a single piece of solid koa. [6]

  6. The fish began in 1967 as a kneeboard: Point Loma kneeboarder Steve Lis split the tail so it was wide enough for swim fins but held like two pin tails, and built it for hollow San Diego reefs. Its small-wave reputation came in 1972, when Jim Blears and David Nuuhiwa took first and second at the world championships on fishes in waist-high surf. [7]

Watch And Read

Who Makes Them

Where And When

Where to watch it

  • Waikiki, O'ahuWhere Hawaiian chiefs rode olos and where Duke Kahanamoku surfed; the long, gentle reef waves still suit longboards.
  • Praia do Norte, Nazaré, PortugalA submarine canyon about 230 km long and up to about 5,000 m deep focuses swell here; both big-wave records were set on this beach.
  • Teahupo'o, TahitiA heavy reef-pass wave at 'the end of the road' that hosted the Paris 2024 Olympic surfing.

Where it came from

Hawaiians were riding wooden boards when Lieutenant James King of Cook's third voyage described it in 1779, and pre-contact Hawaii had distinct board classes, from the long olo of the chiefs to the thin alaia and short paipo. Duke Kahanamoku, Olympic 100 m champion in 1912, carried board surfing abroad, including his Freshwater demonstration in Australia in December 1914. Tom Blake's hollow boards and fixed fin (1935), Bob Simmons' planing hulls, polyurethane foam from 1958 and the shortboard revolution from 1967 shaped the boards drawn here.

More disciplines

Sources

  1. [1]

    Largest wave surfed (unlimited) - male

    Guinness World Records, 2020-10-29 · tier 1 · record

  2. [2]

    Largest wave surfed (unlimited) - female

    Guinness World Records, 2020-02-11 · tier 1 · record

  3. [3]

    Longest surfing ride on a river bore

    Guinness World Records, 2016-03-10 · tier 1 · record

  4. [4]
  5. [5]
  6. [6]

    1830 Chief Paki's Olo 15ft 7'' #502

    Surfresearch (Geoff Cater) · tier 2 · reference

  7. [7]
  8. [8]

    ISA Rulebook & Contest Administration Manual (December 2024)

    International Surfing Association, 2024-12 · tier 1 · federation

  9. [9]

    Basic tail shapes

    Surf Science · tier 3 · reference

  10. [10]

    The complete guide to surfboard rocker

    Degree 33 Surfboards · tier 3 · manufacturer

  11. [11]

    Surfboard volume calculator and guide

    Rider Shack · tier 3 · manufacturer

  12. [12]

    Nazaré Canyon

    Wikipedia · tier 4 · reference