Building a quiver is fun. There’s nothing I like more than geeking out over surfboards and daydreaming about the future waves I’ll get on a shape. Out of all of these boards, the most important board in any quiver, though, is the daily driver. The daily driver should be the board that works and that you use for the largest range of wave sizes, like from waist high to overhead range.
My current daily driver, a 5-10 Bonzer 3 by Danny Martinez. Looking nice and worn in with a bunch of dirty wax and the requisite pressure dents on the deck.
I find many people with mega-quivers have many boards that overlap in this range, and they often have board-decision angst. They could have a lot less stress if they simply found a good daily driver. Although shapers are probably not a fan of it, I’m a proponent of the minimalist quiver, but even people who have ten or twenty surfboards would be best served by having a good, versatile, fun daily driver.
My surfing is better when I have less choice and am forced to use a single board in a wide range of conditions. Since I’m not a pro, I also do better on something that is familiar. I’m more apt to try more radical maneuvers when I know exactly how a board is going to react.
What functions as your daily driver is going to depend on where you live and what kinds of waves you surf daily. In my area, the best kind of daily driver is one of the stubby high performance shortboards that are so popular nowadays. Relaxed rocker, some extra width, and a little bit of extra thickness can do wonders for the low end of the wave size range and won’t hurt you when it gets head high. Obviously, if you live in Hawaii or Indo, your requirements are going to be different. The key is to be able to find a balance in the design aspects of the board that gives you the ability to ride it in a large variety of conditions.
The dimensions, planshape, and fin setup of the daily driver will be different for everyone, but that is for you and your shaper to figure out – and that’s part of the fun.
