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Hello all! Been reading a lot of helpful information on here and the community seems excellent. I currently race in competitions and wanna start sup surfing comps this summer as well. EAs of now I surf a 9'6x29 naish and a 8'8x30 vida and im ready to step up to a high preformance surf model. I wanna keep in between seven and eight foot length wise and no more than 28 inches in width. Im stuck and lost haha looking at everything from a coreban 7ft hyper to 8ft fanatic prowave and everything in between! I want something I can do aerials with and pop off the lip easily. Im intermitade/advanced in paddle surfing and need the real deal! 
Im 140lbs/63kg and 5'9 in height. Thanks for any help!
Hard one..... what's best for one guy is not right for the next. If you really want a board that suits you are going to have to ride everything you can get your hands on. The dimesions might seem good on paper but until you ride them, you won't know.
Or you could get a custom.
Okay.
You're going to go through a few boards (at least) whilst working your way down in size.
What kind of conditions are you going to surf in? If it's clean, you can end up somewhere around 7x24. If it's rough, you might end up in the upper 7' or even 8' range.
So how clean, and what kind of waves? Barreling, mushy, in between?
Either way, your first step would be to something like 8'5x28 or 8'5x27. Unless you're surfing rough conditions every day, that 8'8x30 is massive for someone your size. And 8'5x28 is a great size to keep around for a long time as a step up board on rough days.
Work your way down to the lower 8' higher 7' range and 27-26" wide, then work your war towards the mid-low 7' range. You can stay at 27" wide or go much narrower (23-24-25), depending on how things are progressing and your conditions.
If you want "real" high performance, aerials and cetera, you need to be in the low 7' range.
hi mate
sounds like you need to go and talk to a shaper, there are some guys out there now making some great high performance customs,
u just have to look around and demo boards if you can, being 60 odd kg's and less than 6 foot you can pretty much ride any production board,
but production boards are generally made for the masses, IMO you need to talk to a shaper as you have a general idea of what you want, i had a custom DTM board and now have a production board, it's a great board but my custom was way ahead and my next board will be a custom, a couple to look at would be Laguna Bay or DTM, hope this helps
Jarryd
Thanks for all the replies! I do know a shaper and can get a custom one made, but I would have no idea of what I want in terms of rockers and concave. I guess he would know where to start with me. The conditions I ride are usually mushy wind swells and beach breaks. The more I research tho, the 8ft x 28in Fanatic prowave keeps looking better and better. Super responsive like a shortboard but stable at 92L and super super light! Im racking my brain all day and night for the last week trying to decide, its very exciting haha
Gulf coast Florida US. But I travel for reg surfing and SUP races so im sure ill be taking trips for comps and such wit my new board. Plus not to many SUP surf comps here, just TONS of races!! So ill be going to the east coast to surf in the atlantic for SUP surf comps.
The JP Aus board is very interesting as well....hmm. I really like the coreban hyper 7ft x 29 but it has 5" inch rails so I dont think I could carve and drive hard on the rails wit something so thick.
At 115L and 30" wide it's going to be too much board for you after about two weeks. I weigh 73kg and ride 84L boards with no issue. At 63kg, a 115L board is going to be gigantic.
If you're going to put the time into this sport, get something which will challenge you up front and then reward you once you've mastered it.
I'd HIGHLY recommend you call/email both L41 ('The Original SimSUP') and Corran Addison to custom make you a Simmons board. Talk to both of them and see which you prefer.
L41, talk to Kirk: www.original-simsup.com/
Corran Addison, talk to... Corran: http://corransup.com/
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You get the Simmons board, that's going to be your daily driver at home. You CAN compete on it, you CAN do aerials on it, but it's not ideal for that. Later on, after your balance and skills have progressed, you get a high performance shape board. If you jump on an 8' high performance shape now, you're going to be kicking yourself six months down the line - it'll be way to big and you'll have no use for it. When I mentioned the 8'5 and 8' board before, I assumed you were in pumping Aus conditions. For East Coast USA, those will be too big on all but the biggest and best days.
A 7'2x28 Simmons board will be really good out there.
I agree with JeanG, and will add:
I'd advise also to get, not a real Simmons board (Camel deck, full square tail, big tail concave, twin keel fins on the tail) but what people are often calling "Simmons" but are actually more modern "wide planshape" (wombats, sweet potatoes, ...) boards: wide in the nose and tail (but tail a tad pulled in compared to a true Simmons) no concave in the tail but a V or double concave, and a modern cluster sin setup (5 boxes are nice for versatility). The L41 boards and Corran, but some other brands have these kind of boards now. It would be logical for East coast shapers to invest a lot in these shapes.
These boards will be heaps of fun in east coast conditions (and in most conditions, actually), can be ridden quite short (which is helpful in mushy waves), and can be surfed somewhat "normally", whereas a true Simmons surf in special way (has a latency to go into turns) that may not please everybody.
Also they are very stable for their size, so you can get low volume boards, I guess between 85l to 95l max for your weight to keep comfort.
I would avoid things like the prowave. Their tail is too pulled in for mushy weak waves (people here in Mediterranee are reselling them, they need more power)
thank you so much for all the help. It looks like im going to go custom and talk to my east coast shaper thats around locally. He does surf boards and sups so im sure we could figure it out. Im thinking 7~7 1/2 ft length and 25~27.5 inches width and keep the volume under 90L. Once again, thanks for all the help!
If you have the skills for it, the goal for someone your size would be something like Starboard's 7'1 and 7'4 Pros, or JP 7'4 which will already have a bit to much volume for you at 90l.
That's if you really want to push your limits and have a production board that will not be limiting your surfing.
Another board that would probably also suit you would be Kai Lenny's Hokua LE, the 8'0".
Anything other than these boards in the production realms will probably be too big for you.
Your alternative would be to go custom!
okay so after talking to a shaper we have etermined a good size. 7ft~7'2 by 26~27inches width wise. we want to keep the volume around 80l because a lot of the surf around here is choppy and that way I have a little room to play with balance wise. weight will be under 12 pounds. will take some getting used to and some practice but once I get it will be well worth it. I can already see the aggravation now though haha. thanks for all the help
Are you doing a Simmons style board or an HP one?
With mushy windswell waves, a Simmons-ish board will be golden...
We were going to work off the 7'4 starboard pro for shape and dimensions, just a little wider.
I think you did the right thing going to a local shaper, and on your general dims, but as JeanG, I would urge you to use more "planing" shapes than the "world cup" shapes. Somethings like the L41, or the Gong "faking" (you can see the dims there: www.gong-galaxy.com/magazine/pics/1-hour-4-boards/ )
It will give you the power your waves lack 99% of the time, and be still fun in the 1% stellar sessions, as you can see on these capo verde pics: www.gongsup.com/+PHOTOS-Mika-vert+.html www.gongsup.com/+PHOTOS-energy+.html www.gongsup.com/+PHOTO-Mister-bottom-4423+.html )
Im 140lbs/63kg and 5'9 in height. Thanks for any help!
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I love the look of that shape! The pulled in tail would make turns really easy on something so wide. How many inches thick is that 6'4x29?? Those gong boards look awesome as well! Ill have to check those out.
Alight so local shop let me try a custom surfer. Its 8x26x3.25 84L. Wow, the boards pretty much submerged when paddling and its super unstable and I do fall off alot. But once you catch the wave, good Lord, surfs just like a shortboard. Its only day two so im still falling a lot, but I knew it would take some time to get completly use to it, tho I was surfing windswell chop first two times prolly not best learning conditions haha. The worst is falling in right before a nice set, cause then you just miss every wave lol I hated that. Besides that, small SUPS rule!
