A surfboard design class with senior coach Harry Knight at the Surf Simply coaching resort in Costa Rica.
For most surfers to make sense of and relate to this scale, it helps to work out the ppl ratio of both your own boards and also those of your friends or the surfers whom you wish to emulate. You’ll then get an idea of where you sit in the 3.4 – 6.7 ppl scale and can go surfboard shopping pre-armed with a much better idea of the volume of the board you should be taking home. The coaches at Surf Simply say that since doing the math for all their boards, this ppl number is now the singular most important thing that they want to know about any board. They are quick to point out though that, whilst they would argue that this number is the best place to start, there is still a lot more that you need to know about any board. Nick Blair agrees that volume is an important factor to consider when purchasing a board, and he also points out that it shouldn’t be the only factor:
“Volume is really important, but to look at it holistically, you can’t just view the numbers and necessarily go off a volume suggestion chart- this is just a guide and should be adjusted according to factors like where the volume is distributed and for what reason. It does not provide a single solution to surfboard design, but can be utilized by a shaper to create a board that is even more closely matched to a persons build, experience/ability, the types of wave’s ridden and any other specific things the surfer may want out of the board”
And he’s absolutely right; there are so many factors to consider when designing and shaping surfboards that it would be impossible to boil it down to a single measurement. We’re talking about a finely tuned and unbelievably complicated shape that’s meant to provide optimum hydrodynamic performance under the control of a human being in a range of conditions. We’re all different, our surfboards are all different, and the waves that we surf are all different, every single last one of them. But the more that we understand about the inter-related factors of surfboard design, the more informed we are as consumers and the more we can appreciate the knowledge and skill of the craftsmen who tie it all together to produce our surfboards.
