Can someone explain to me like I’m 5 why bigger boards help you get into big waves sooner? Is it just because bigger boards have more foam? Or is it because their waterline is longer so they paddle faster?
I ask because I have a 5’8 x 2 7/16 x 19 5/8 30 liters and a 6’3 x 2 1/2x 19 1/2 and I don’t notice much of a difference. Waves I’ve been surfing are a little bit overhead. I have been having a lot of late drops.
Interesting thing about surfing is that behavior of a given board on a given wave is always the combination of multiple things, never one. Here are just a few:
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The longer the board, the longer the rocker is spread out, and this reduces drag.
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The wider the board, the more area it has, and more area makes it plane earlier.
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The bigger the board, the more foam it has, and this makes it sit higher in the water. When it’s higher in the water, less of the rails are submerged, and so you plane earlier and faster.
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Traditionally, bigger boards are designed with certain rails to make them plane and trim faster. For example, the rails of a shortboard are usually smaller and sharper so they can dig into the wave, allowing you to turn up and down the face. But on a longboard, where we usually do not ride them that way, but instead trim and glide, etc, the rails are larger and rounded, like 50/50 rails, and these glide faster in certain waves. Please note that this point branches out into a longer discussion, because rails behave one way in slow waves and different in fast waves.
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Traditionally, bigger boards have bottom contours that dont slow it down. A shortboard will usually have a combination of concave, double concave, etc a good amount of it. This enables you to turn it in quicker. A longboard will have much less of this and usually simplified, like totally flat bottom contour with a bit of vee in the tail, is common.
I should add that comparing boards to eachother is rather involved. Of course you can always just look at the length and rocker and say A will be faster than B, but it gets complicated. Aside from what I already mentioned, here are some attributes that you also have to consider: number of fins, fin placement on board, fin height, fin foiling, fin toe in, fin cant, nose shape, shape of rocker entry, tail shape, rail apex, foam distribution across Y axis, foam distribution across x axis (aka foiling), chine, location of wide point in relation to mid point, location of wide point in relation to rocker apex…
Shorter boards need a steeper wave to takeoff on, longer board you can get in before it gets steep. Unless it’s a close out beach break, then no board is going to be helpful there.