Kassia Meador heading out with one of her tried and true single fins. Photo: @riseupsurfretreats//@salty_seeia me
Kassia Meador has helped her fair share of people fine-tune their surfing, from in-person surf retreats to developing online courses like her Definitive Guide to Longboarding. There are endless topics she can discuss and things to work on when it comes to “getting better on a faster timeline” or simply helping a beginning surfer start out on the right foot. And one seemingly obvious topic that can be easy to overlook is choosing the right equipment — your surfboard — that’s going to get you into the most waves as well as help make the most of each ride.
It all starts with board selection, which is why Kassia devoted nearly 20 minutes of video in her recent Longboarding Level Up 3.0 to talking about choosing the right board. Ironically, much of her philosophy comes from an idea that seems like it’d give board shoppers more questions than answers.
“I would never suggest one surfboard is going to do it all. Normally, you’d want a couple of different boards,” she says.
Kassia points out that idea isn’t meant to overwhelm surfers, it’s actually meant to help them start narrowing down the best board(s) for the conditions and locations they’ll be surfing. And once we start answering those questions, selecting a first board or our next board soon becomes an answer that reveals itself. Tail shapes, rails, length, and a number of other design factors are examined when we go through this process, and when it comes to longboards, few things are compared as much as two specific fin setups: single fins versus the two-plus-one.
This is where Kassia dives into a series of questions worth answering.
Kassia Asks These Questions When Selecting a Longboard
“Are you surfing beach breaks a lot? Are those beach breaks small or bigger? Are you riding slower point breaks all the time? What is your main break that you surf most often like? Answering these questions for yourself will lead you to selecting the right board,” Kassia says.
Tail shapes and certain board dimensions will, of course, be affected by the answers to these questions. But when it comes to single fin and two-plus-one differences, Kassia categorizes each as performing best in one set of conditions versus another. As a general guideline, she points out that a single fin will serve surfers best in slower and even smaller peeling waves while the two-plus-one or tri-fin setup is going to perform better in beach breaks and the occasional bigger, faster days. The tri-fin offers a lot of versatility that the single fin may not, making it her pick for surfers who have more range in the conditions and locations they surf.
“These (fins) ensure that when you’re on the rail, you’re still engaging one of the fins,” she explains. “For example, if you’re on a single fin and it’s a bigger day, it can be easy to ‘skip out.’ But that tri-fin will hold you into the wave face a little bit better. This is why gauging which conditions you’re surfing more is really important.”
This may seem simplistic but it offers a launching pad into Kassia’s approach to board selection, which includes trying as many different boards as you can in order to find your own style. Surf shops have demo boards. Friends have different shapes that can be borrowed. And before you know it you’ll be thinking about building a solid three-board quiver that fits you, not stressing about one magic board that can do it all.
Learn more about kick outs from Kassia along with other tutorials on parallel stance, turning, fade take offs, and more in the Longboarding Level-Up 3.0. You can also check out Kassia’s 45-video lesson Definitive Guide to Longboarding 3.0 here. The Inertia readers save 10 percent by using code WELCOME10 at checkout.
